Thomas 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." ”

“ I said, as I stretched out the large and beautiful wings of gray-blue feathers and proceeded to bind the bird's feet with a string.
"The very same that Thora spoke of, I'll be bound!" Tom exclaimed with satisfaction, as he evidently thought of his sister's secret of the nest on the Black Craigs.
"What'll we do with it?" asked Hercus. "Is it good for eating?"
"Nonsense, Willie!" said I. "Surely we've birds in plenty without eating hawks! Let's give it to the dominie."
"Ay, let's give it to the dominie," chimed in Robbie Rosson, always ready to agree with whatever I proposed. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Although, indeed, there be many men in Plymouth who would be mightily proud to display so honourable a scar, for I doubt not your worship came by it in some desperate battle against our enemies of Spain."
It was at this moment that Timothy returned into the shop. He overheard his father's remark, and noticed that for some reason the stranger winced, as though he were far from being proud of the old wound.
"I do perceive that 'tis the cut from a sword," added the barber-surgeon, looking at the scar more closely. "I trust, for the honour of England, that you slew the rascal who gave it you." ”

“ It was only when, as a boy of twelve, he viewed art as the serious work of his future life, and when this view was met by the authorities as one not to be encouraged, that the strong passion of his nature asserted its rights. Clearly in opposition are planted the firmest roots of those inevitable developments which make the great of the world great. In Leighton was nurtured that sense of responsibility towards his vocation, so salient a characteristic throughout his career, partly by his father's attitude towards the worship of his nature for beauty and for her exponent art. ”

“ It is difficult to form a just or at least a full estimate of Leighton's character. He stands almost alone in his age. In some respects he was immeasurably superior both in intellect and in piety to most of the Scottish ecclesiastics of his time; and yet he seems to have had almost no influence in moulding the characters or conduct of his contemporaries. One is half inclined to think that he would have shown himself a greater or at least a more complete man if a few natural weaknesses and imperfections had intermingled with his nobler qualities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet a strange superstitious terror had seized upon them, and for a long time no word was spoken and no sound heard but the creaking of the ropes, the light bubbling of the water at the bow, and the intermittent sobbing of young Robin Redfern. They yearned for the coming of daylight, and dreaded every moment that the eerie green light might again surround them. Again and again Jacob Hartop as he sat at the tiller glanced furtively behind him, as if to assure himself that he was not being pursued by what he firmly believed to be the phantom of his lost ship. ”

“ At which Timothy laughed and said:
"Hark ye, father, and listen to me. Thou hast cropped thy last head of hair and shaven thy last chin. No more work shalt thou do for the rest of thy days. Thou shalt have a coach to drive in, and a lordly mansion to live in, with a tribe of serving people to do thy bidding, and shalt live on the best in the land—"
"Nay, mock me not, boy," cried the barber. "I can ill bear thy jests just now; for of a truth I am [Pg 350] deep in debt, and know not how we shall contrive to live without charity beyond another week." ”

“ The restless Leighton paused in his stride to gaze through fiery, but gloomy, eyes upon his fair-haired baby daughter and his son, pale, crowned with dark curls, and cried, with a toss of his own dark mane: "As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them!"
This realization of the preciousness of children in adversity paved the way for the reception of one who was to come to them from under the shadow of a family cloud, a certain mysterious personage of tender years, Lewis Leighton, by name. ”

“ He who knows how to hear the voice of nature has found the safest guide, and he only is a good master who opens the mind of his pupil to that voice." At the age of twenty-one, Leighton had realised, and was himself pursuing, the only right course in studying any art. By invariably drawing deeply from the fountain in his own nature, he ever remained true and sincere as an artist. ”

“ Jemima and Angelina, having disposed of the judicial pawn-brokering establishment, stroke down their skirts, and send round the currant-wine; whilst Master Tom and a few other daring youths consume lighted candle-ends, made of turnip, with almond wicks; and the merry little man, Lark, who can no more be quiet than a robin in a rat-trap, is now hopping with a paper tail, composed of this evening’s “Sun”—a sun that seems to be incombustible, for the boys are trying 82 to ignite it, but cannot,—only waxing Mr. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The accounts that Leighton gives of his ecstasies in the presence of beautiful scenes, enforce the belief entertained by those who knew him best, that it was the power which beauty exercised over him that developed his exceptional strength in all artistic directions. What force in the over-riding of difficulties does not passion give to the lover! No less a force was engendered in Leighton by the inspiration of the beauty of nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Judging by the ‘long attendance on Majestie in the English Court,’ and the ‘many extremities and oppressions undergone in his later days,’ of which he writes in his ‘Musicall Ayres,’ Leighton must have been an elderly man in 1614, and cannot therefore be identical with the Sir William Leighton who was confined in the Tower in 1658–9 (Rawlinson MS. A. 57) . Leighton had a son and two daughters by his wife Winifred, daughter of Simon Harcourt of Ellenhall in Staffordshire. She died in 1616. Copies of Leighton's three books are in the British Museum. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This be tasting glory!"
"Ah—h!" breathed Jeff Dimsdale, the man who was taking the dipper from young Robin Redfern. "'Tis such glory as might fill many of our friends at home with envy. May I taste more on't ere I be like Tom Wilson that's down below on the ballast with a bullet in his honest heart!" He raised the water to his pale lips. "Tom would ha' given a deal for this drop o' water, I reckon," he said. Then, still hesitating to drink, he added: "Here's to Queen Bess, God bless her!" ”

“ Between the years 1863 and 1866 he painted pictures which proved that, as a distinct artificer in painting, he had found himself, and was no longer under the controlling influences of German or Italian Art, though, unfortunately, hints of German methods in the actual manipulation of his brush clung more or less to his painting to the end. From boyhood Leighton's power of designing, his sense of beauty in line and form and of dramatic feeling, his extraordinary facility in drawing with the point, proved his genius as an artist ”

“ 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. ”

“ And when Leighton started, at the age of twenty-one, to begin his independent life, we feel that it is with the actual that he grappled—the actual in his sensations, his feelings, his impressions, his conditions. An unmistakable note of reality rings through his description of all these. He has no tendency, even unconsciously, when under the glamour of the most entrancing impressions, to colour the picture other than he actually saw it. In the strength of his own real nature he goes forth on the journey of life.
[61]
DIARY Innsbruck, August 18, 1852. ”

“ Jake left the foot of the ladder, his companions being now on the cottage roof, and waded through the mud to where Timothy was.
"Nay, sir, there were but two; we sought for three, but the third had made good his escape. And well for him that he did so, for 'twas he—so Robert Harvey avers—who ran his rapier into Master Gilbert's arm."
"Plague on the man!" cried Timothy, in vexation. "But we shall catch him yet, I promise you. Prithee, did the constable search the men ere you came away?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ His silvery hair and beard had been trimmed and combed, and he wore a small white ruff that covered from view his thin and scraggy neck. Some kindly villagers had given him a shepherd's jacket of russet [Pg 128] frieze with red sleeves, a pair of thick start-up boots, and a pair of rough cloth stockings. He lifted the yellow-haired maid from his knee and stood up, taking Timothy's hand.
"How fares your young master?" he inquired; and when Timothy had told him, he bade farewell to the children and walked by the tall young fellow's side towards the bridge that crossed the little river. ”