Leighton

“ Leighton was an artist of that true type in whom no influence whatsoever can deter or slacken incessant zeal for work. In the deepest recesses of his nature burnt the unquenchable fire, the paramount longing to follow in Nature's footsteps, and to create things of beauty. Among the many loyal servants who have dutifully worshipped at the shrine of art, never was there one who more completely devoted the best that was in him to her service.
"Va! your human talk and doings are a tame jest; the only passionate life is in form and colour." ”

“ No rule without an exception—Leighton did not bear with resignation the sorrows of his friends, nor of those he pitied as overweighted and in any need of help which he could give. No better proof exists of the fineness, the distinction of a nature, or the reverse, than the effect which misfortune or suffering produces on it. Pity with Leighton was ever allied with profound respect. He gave help as one indulging himself in a privilege rather than as one conferring a benefit. ”

“ Family annals record the delight with which Leighton, the boy of ten, enjoyed the beauty of nature in Switzerland, the flowers and everything he saw in the land of mountains. When he reached Rome, the buildings, the fountains, the ruins, the models awaiting hire on the Piazza di Spagna, fascinated him, and he filled many sketch-books with records of all the picturesque scenes that struck him as so new and wonderful. From earliest days, drawing was Leighton's greatest amusement, and he had it always in his own mind that he would be an artist and nothing else. ”

“ As a magnet, Italy drew Leighton to her. [6] Under the influence of her radiant beauty, breathing such a life of charm and colour beneath sunlit skies, he felt the sources of happiness in his own nature expand and his powers ripen. In the fertility of her soil, the vitality of her people, the superb quality of her art—fine and gracious in its perfection, and distributed [20] generously throughout the length and breadth of her land—he experienced influences which intensified his emotions and vivified his imagination. ”

“ When Watts wished it recorded that Leighton's nature was the most beautiful he had ever known, he referred, I think, more specially to that lovable, kind-hearted ingenuousness and noble simplicity which were its deepest roots, notwithstanding a life of conflicts, ambitions, and unparalleled success. There are among those who most honour and love Leighton's memory, and who felt most keenly his loss, poor and unsuccessful artists and students, of whom the world has never heard, but to whom the great President gave of his very best in advice and sympathy. ”

“ Scarborough Evening News, February 3, 1896.
Leighton's death touched, as did his life, all sorts and conditions of men; for he had been the true friend alike of the greatest and of the least. The soil in which true distinction is rooted is of a quality too rich, too fertile to be affected by class prejudice. Leighton's own life was made beautiful by the gratitude he felt for the joy nature's loveliness inspired in his soul, and by the passion to make known [339] through his work the mysterious treasure, the never-failing fountain of delight, ever springing up in his heart. ”

“ They not only knew him to be great, but knew why he was great. Undoubtedly [viii] as a draughtsman Leighton was unrivalled; but bearing in mind his English contemporaries—Watts, Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones—it is not as a painter that even his truest friends would claim for him his right to the exceptional position he undoubtedly occupied.
What was it that gave Leighton this position? He himself was the very last to claim it as a right. His creed and his practice were ever to fight against the weaknesses of his nature rather than to rejoice in its strength. ”

“ For weeks the name of Lewis Leighton had been whispered about the house, first by the grown-ups and finally, when the Reverend Orme and his wife had come to the great decision, by the children. The children knew nothing of the great decision nor did they know the sources of their sudden joy. Their spirits were reaching out to clasp this new thread in life at an age when all new threads are golden. ”

“ Leighton was far too wise a man to believe in the constant recurrence of inspirations: he knew that the moment when the whole spirit is ready to act is involuntary; he knew that to reach the supremacy of that moment, labour was necessary; that in labour is the foundation of the building for that moment of inspiration. One may question if the first vision in Leighton was very [5] strong—strong as Blake's, strong as many artists whose powers of attainment were much less than Leighton's, but whose vision was clearer at the outset. ”

“ No live man would have thought of the figure as "Woman Leading the Way," once his eyes had fallen on that thigh. To such a one the statue named itself with a single flash to the brain, and the name it spoke was "Invitation."
Leighton's first impulse was one of unbounded admiration—the admiration we give to unbounded power. Then realization and a frown began to come slowly to his face. Vi, crumpled up on the couch, and sobbing hard, dry sobs,—the sobs that bring age,—-helped him to realization. Lewis, his boy, had done a base thing. ”

“ At the age of twenty-five, in the wing-like petals of a cyclamen, Leighton had succeeded in securing with the pencil the quality towards which he aimed from the beginning to the end of his studies—and these only ended with his life—namely, absolute completeness as far as human eye and hand can reach completeness in rendering the perfection of nature's forms. ”

“ Sometimes one missed in his work just the touch of the rugged which would have given more grace by comparison, by contrast. His grace of diction, his oratory, his writing, was sometimes over-refined, and missed its mark by over-elaboration. The very speciality of Leighton was completeness. One has seen pictures in his study only half finished, which had a charm of freshness that vanished as each portion became worked into equal value. ”

“ There rang out perhaps, at times, just a note reminding one of the German pedant in these discourses—a note singularly discordant when sounding together with an ornate diction; but this was only heard when Leighton was not deeply moved by his subject; when, on the other hand, the not over-tutored, bigger instinctive self had full sway, as, in the subjects he chose for the first three discourses, the glowing style harmonised most rightly as the appropriate language for the earnest and lofty feeling in the thought. ”

“ Nothing could give a better record of two sides of Leighton's nature, often believed to be incompatible, than the contents of the letter from Naples to his sister, with its remarks on Nordau, Nietzsche, and the like, and this beautiful picture recalled by his old friend Costa—Leighton on his knees before a little child. The intellect which could crack the hardest of intellectual nuts was surmounted by lowly reverence for all beauty, most ardently adored when that beauty came to him in its most innocent childlike garb. ”

“ Indeed, his next words proved how far any such conclusion was from his mind.
"You overwhelm me," said he. "It was hard enough to look upon George or Alfred as capable of a crime so despicable, but Leighton!—I shall have to readjust all my memories and all my fancied relations with this family if he is to be looked upon with suspicion. Then there is Claire!"
"Pardon me," I ventured, in vague apology for an interruption which seemed out of place from a stranger. "Have you looked upon Leighton as a well man? You speak of a great grief——"
"The loss of his wife." ”

“ Fanny Kemble.
After the Prince Consort's death in 1861 Leighton wrote the following letter to his younger sister, who was in Italy:
I have just returned from a fortnight in Bath, where I have at last finished the Johnnies, [22] I believe, and hope you will like them; they are at all events much improved. I am glad for the poor lad that the corvée of settling is over; he was dying to get back to his work. If zeal and enthusiasm can make an artist, he ought to become one. ”

“ First, there was Leighton, the great man, the public servant, gifted with exceptional powers of intellect and character, who attained the highest social position ever reached by an English artist; the Leighton the world knew, whose sway was paramount in the many councils and assemblies to which he belonged no less than when fulfilling his duties as President of the Royal Academy, and whose helpfulness and zeal in promoting the extension of a knowledge and appreciation of English art in foreign countries and in the colonies became proverbial. ”

“ To whatever class in society a man or woman might belong, whether a Royal or a quite humble friend—once a friend, Leighton gave of his very best and worthiest. No time or trouble would he spare in such service; though he was too eager a worker, and felt too keenly a responsibility towards his calling for him to allow any moment of his life to be frittered away by claims which were not in his eyes real or of any serious advantage to others. ”

“ To Leighton the simple joyous child of nature, in the form of the unsophisticated Italian, was a preferable being. To the end of his life he retained much of the child in his own nature, and had ever an inborn sympathy with the love for children so evident everywhere in unspoilt Italy; for the gracious caressing of them by the poorest of the poor—old men in the veriest tatters and rags showing a complete and beautiful submission to the dominating charms of babyhood. ”

“ His call was not needed, however, for the horsemen had already drawn rein.
"So-ho!" cried one of them as he unsheathed his sword, and spurring his horse again he drove the animal on as if to run Timothy down. "We have caught you, you rascals, have we?" he cried with an oath. "We shall teach you better than to go about a-pillaging of honest folks' farmyards and carrying off their ducks and hens! 'Tis Plymouth gaol that shall be your lodging to-night if I be not vastly in error." ”

“ Leighton was never guilty of being sentimental, and when referring to the word ideal in one of his letters, he writes he "hates such stuff." After he died, it was written of him: "He was no idealist; needless to say, he was no materialist, no one less so; nor does the term realist seem to recall his nature. He was—if such a word can be used—an actualist, the actual was to him of primary importance. But the actual meant a great deal more to Leighton than it does to most of us. Life and its vivid interests was spread over a much wider area ”

“ Then Leighton remarked, with a forced composure and something more than his usual melancholy:
"Because of the unhappy prominence given me by the circumstances attending my father's death?"
"That, and something else. I may as well be frank, sir. We have heard of the little house, leased under your name, in New Jersey."
"Ah!"
A chord had been touched which vibrated keenly in this mysterious breast. I saw his hand go to his throat and fall again quickly. Meantime the Captain went on:
"We are not frightened by sin and we hold out our hands to sinners ”

“ Leighton knew that to suppress the vitality which needs such an outlet was to minimise the forces necessary for life's best work. He himself, in the working of his mind, was possessed of a magnificent facility—a facility which left the strength of his emotions fresh and free, to enjoy the ecstasies of admiration and delight which the choice gifts of nature and art had given him ”

“ I raised my eyes and surveyed him.
"'Shall I tell you why this is so—why I associate Miss Leighton's caprice with your return, and regard both with suspicion? Because I have seen [145] you look on her with love; because I have surprised the passion in your face and beheld her—'
"'Well?'
"The tone was indescribable. It was as if a hand had taken me by the throat and choked me. I drew off and was silent.
"He seized the word at once.
"'You have seen nothing. If you think you have, then have you deceived yourself. Marah Leighton has beauty, but it is not a kind that moves me—'
"He paled. ”

“ G. Aitchison, who built his house, a worthy interpreter of his fine conception. This hall where colour is triumphant, was dear to Leighton, and even forms the background to some of his pictures. Towards the end of his life he still meant to embellish it by substituting marble for that small part that was only painted. The generous employment of his fortune alone prevented him from realising his intention.
"England has at all times given the example of honouring great men; she will, I am sure, find the means of preserving for art a monument of which she had such reason to be proud." ”

“ Leighton, for all you tell me about my sister and the children; she never writes, you know, and so I am thirsty all the time for some tidings of her. It is very sad to be so far away and hear so seldom from those one loves. Good-bye, God bless you; and thank you once more for the "Vision." I am sorry I cannot tell you of the sale of either of your pictures; they are in the Boston Athenæum, very safe, and highly ornamental to it, but not, I regret to say, sold. ”

“ The typical Englishman does not know—does not care to know, despising the whole thing as beneath his notice. But Leighton knew well what it meant. From experiences in his own nature he realised that it was but an innocent outlet, through voice and gesture, of an excitement resulting from an imperative dramatic instinct, a vital force in the emotional nature of the Italian. He recognised the necessity for such an outlet in such temperaments through his sympathy with the glad exuberance of physical vitality enjoyed in this sunlit land ”