Part 2

Four years after Leighton became a British artist, by residence as well as by birth, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. In this same year, 1864, he exhibited a picture, "Golden Hours," which is notable as one of the most successful examples of his Italian manner. But though the memories of his youth were still powerful, and had, even at that date, an influence upon his art, there was a definite change coming over his practice. Whether this change was due to closer contact with the traditions of English painting, or simply to the inevitable maturing of his convictions as he drew near to middle age, it is hard to say; but certainly as years went on he inclined more and more away from the sumptuousness of Italy, towards the purer and less emotional dignity of Greece. He sought more persistently for the classic atmosphere, his idealism became more severe, and his decoration more reticent, and he turned more frequently for his subjects to the Greek myths. As an illustration of his new view, it is interesting to compare his "Syracusan Bride leading Wild Animals for Sacrifice to the Temple of Diana," exhibited in 1866, with the "Cimabue's Madonna," by which his reputation had been established eleven years before. Both are processional compositions of large size, both have the same sort of decorative intention; but while there is in the first some kind of story, and some attempt to realise the atmosphere of a particular period of history, in the second there is little more than a purely fanciful pattern of forms and colours, which is interesting solely on account of its beauty. A similar comparison might be made between the "Dante going forth into Exile," which belongs to the same year as the "Golden Hours," and the "Venus Disrobing for the Bath" of 1867, or the "Helios and Rhodes," "Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon," and "Daedalus and Icarus," of 1869. In this latter year he exhibited also his diploma picture, "St. Jerome in the Desert"--as he had been elected a Royal Academician in 1868--but this, a study of strong action, and vehemently dramatic in effect, is neither Italian nor classic, and belongs really to a class of art into which he only occasionally digressed. As time went on the statuesque repose of his canvases increased, and the classic severity became perceptible even when he treated subjects which had no Grecian allusion. It is quite apparent in his large picture of "Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis" (1871), though in this there is no lack of vigorous movement; it gave a particular charm to his conception of the exquisite "Summer Moon" (1872), perhaps the most perfect work he ever produced; and it is felt most of all in the vast composition, "The Daphnephoria," which, exhibited in 1876, rounds off significantly that important decade in his career which opened with the "Syracusan Bride."

Henceforth Leighton must be counted among the many artists of distinction who have, in this country, striven assiduously to keep alive the Greek tradition. He never sank into a mere pictorial archaeologist, and rarely tried to produce those cold and lifeless reconstructions of ancient life which are too often put forth by painters who depend for their inspiration upon book-learning and museum study rather than imagination. But the beauty of Greek art, its strength and delicacy, its dignity and ideal grace, absorbed him as they did Fred Walker and Albert Moore, and, like these two British masters, he allowed its influence to determine the way in which the whole of his painting was treated. Even in such pictures as "The Slinger," an Egyptian subject, or "Gathering Citrons; a Court in Damascus," which was one of the results of his Eastern travel, both of which belong to this period, he made no pretence of avoiding, for the sake of what may be called local exactness, the antique preconception; both are as evidently statuesque in design, and classic in manner, as any of his Grecian fantasies; and, to take another instance, it is instructive to note how, in his "Noble Lady of Venice," a subject which seemingly demanded a purely Italian quality, the sumptuousness of effect has been refined and purified by a kind of simplicity of statement borrowed obviously from antique art.

It is curious, however, that in the first important piece of sculpture for which he was responsible, the "Athlete Struggling with a Python," which was at the Academy in 1877, he should have avoided almost entirely any hint of Greek spirit. This statue is essentially Italian, both in its general design and in its details of modelling. It has none of the firmness of line, and little of the largeness of method, which are so decisively characteristic of antique sculpture, and owes plainly more to Donatello than to Phidias. Yet it has great and distinguished merits, and can be placed in the company of the few great things which have been produced in this branch of art during modern times. As an anatomical study it is most convincing, for it reveals an astonishingly complete knowledge of the construction of the human form, and is exceedingly true in its realisation of muscular action. Perhaps the chief objection that can be urged against it as a work of art is that it records an impossibility--a snake of the size represented would be more than a match for a man even with the fine physique of the athlete, and the ending of such a struggle, the difficulty of which the statue hardly suggests, would be prompt and disastrous. But Leighton's fine craftsmanship has made even an impossibility seem credible, and his work must not be condemned because it involves an error in natural history.

He exhibited another large statue, "The Sluggard," in 1886, which, like the "Athlete Struggling with a Python," has found a permanent home in the Tate Gallery. It is again a study of action which, if less violent than that of the earlier figure, is still vigorous enough to show how well the artist understood anatomy; and it is again Italian rather than Greek. It is also open to criticism because there is an apparent contradiction between the suggestion of the title and the physical character of the "Sluggard." This well knit, muscular youth, stretching himself in an attitude of graceful freedom, could have lived no slothful life. Activity and the capacity for strong exertion are evident in every line, and his condition is too good to have been obtained without exercises which the sleepy, sluggish man would not have cared to perform. The title, indeed, is unfortunate because it implies an intention on the artist's part to illustrate a particular motive which he has failed to express, though what he has actually given us is artistically admirable and full of noble beauty.

In the interval between 1876 and 1886 Leighton's pictorial production continued without intermission, and without any abatement in the loftiness of his aim. "The Music Lesson" (1877), "Winding the Skein" (1878), and "Nausicaa," in the same year, "Psamathe" (1880), "The Idyll" (1881), and "Cymon and Iphigenia" (1884), are all typical examples of his mature performance, and with them must be included "Cleoboulos Instructing his Daughter Cleobouline," which though an earlier picture--it was exhibited in 1871--is in style and character closely allied to the "Music Lesson." Nor must his "Phryne at Eleusis" (1882) be overlooked, though this is scarcely one of his happiest achievements, and is a little too pedantic in style. It claims consideration chiefly for its richness of colour and fine drawing of the nude female figure.

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PLATE VI.--A NOBLE LADY OF VENICE

(At Lord Armstrong's seat, Rothbury Castle, Northumberland)

As a technical exercise, searching, precise, and careful, and yet distinguished by a sumptuous breadth of effect, this memorable study of a fine type of feminine beauty takes high rank among the artist's smaller paintings. It bears most plainly the stamp of his correct and cultivated taste.

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Into this decade fall two of the greater events of his life, his election as President of the Royal Academy, and the execution of his famous wall paintings, "The Arts of War," and "The Arts of Peace," in the South Kensington Museum. On the death of Sir Francis Grant, who had held the Presidential office since 1866, Leighton was chosen, on November 13, 1878, to fill the vacant post. In making this selection, the members of the Academy did honour to a man who had raised himself, by sheer strength of personality, to a position of acknowledged leadership in the art affairs of this country, but they also secured as their President an artist who was almost ideally fitted to deal with the many responsibilities which have necessarily to be incurred by the head of such an institution. Leighton's commanding and yet attractive presence, his great power of organisation and grasp of details, his wide knowledge of the world, and his unusual capacity as a linguist, gave him not only a high degree of authority as an official, but also ensured to him the sincere confidence of those associated with him. To every one outside the Academy he was the personification of all that was best in academic art; and by his breadth of mind, his wise toleration of all types of earnest effort, and his ready sympathy with the struggling worker to whom merit had not brought success, he gained the respect and even affection of the great mass of the profession. No President since Reynolds has been so worthy to direct the policy of the Academy, and it may fairly be said that none, Reynolds not excepted, has ruled over it with more discretion, or with better appreciation of the possibilities of the position.

The other event, the carrying out of the South Kensington wall paintings, is specially notable because in these works Sir Frederic Leighton--he received the honour of knighthood on his election as President--was able to put to legitimate uses all his capacities as a decorator, and to prove that in paintings on the largest scale he was as much a master of his craft as in the easel pictures to which, for want of greater opportunities, he was obliged to confine himself. He had made a previous experiment in this direction in 1866, when he executed the fresco of "The Wise and Foolish Virgins" in the church at Lyndhurst, an admirable composition treated with rare intelligence and distinctive originality; but the South Kensington lunettes were more exacting undertakings, and calculated to test his powers to the utmost. "The Arts of War" was begun towards the end of the 'seventies and took several months to finish, the companion lunette was painted two or three years later; and both of them, though some of the preliminary work was done by assistants, are substantially from his hand.

In many respects "The Arts of War" is the more satisfying performance. A scene from mediaeval Italian life, it is handled with something of his earlier manner, but with an amount of breadth and freshness which he scarcely approached in his younger days. It has infinite grace without a hint of weakness, firmness without formality, and style without conventionality; and it is, above all, a true decoration erring neither in the direction of excessive pictorial effect, nor in that of dull unreality. "The Arts of Peace" is less masculine and more studied, and is neither so ingenious in design, nor so happy in its grouping; though in parts it shows quite his finest art, and there are in it individual figures which are delightful examples of his masterly skill as a draughtsman. It suffers, perhaps, most of all from the want of freedom of brush-work, and from the substitution of an over-careful precision of touch for the looser and larger handling which is one of the sources of the charm of "The Arts of War." Two other decorative achievements must be added to the record of Sir Frederic's effort in this direction, the ceiling for the music-room of Mr. Marquand's house in New York, painted in 1886, and the admirable panel, "Phoenicians Bartering with Britons," executed nine years later for the Royal Exchange.

It is greatly a matter for regret that it should be possible to include in such a meagre list practically the whole of the artist's work as a serious decoration. It is true that he was concerned in one of the many schemes which have been devised for the decoration of St. Paul's Cathedral, but this scheme was never advanced beyond the preliminary stage, and his part in it is represented only by the cartoon symbolical of the Resurrection--"And the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it"--which now hangs in the Tate Gallery. The chances which he desired were denied to him, as they were to G. F. Watts, and to other painters of like ambitions, and the world has in consequence lost much which would have been of supreme interest. That he, with his often renewed memories of the frescoes of the Italian masters, must have felt resentment at the British indifference to this noble form of art can well be imagined. He knew that, with his aspirations, and his power, triumphs as great as any of the old painters achieved were well within his reach, but with all his earnest advocacy, even he was unable to induce the stolid patron of art to believe that an artist should be encouraged to produce anything but canvases of a convenient size, which would serve for the furnishing of modern houses.

So it comes to this, that his only commission for mural decoration on a large scale was for the two lunettes at South Kensington; the Lyndhurst fresco was a gift he made to the church, as a thank-offering, it is said, for his recovery from an illness, and the Marquand ceiling, the Resurrection cartoon, and the Royal Exchange panel were only paintings on canvas. It is a poor record, indeed, and one of which the people in this country have every reason to feel ashamed. But the thwarting of his ambitions in one direction did not make him in others a less conscientious artist. "The Arts of Peace" was finished during 1885, and for another ten years he went on painting pictures into which he put all his love of ideal beauty, and all his striving for greater perfection of technical expression. There is certainly no diminution of power to be perceived in any of these later works, though for some while before his death he suffered increasingly from the heart trouble to which at last he succumbed on January 25, 1896.

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PLATE VII.--ELIJAH IN THE WILDERNESS

(At the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool)

Though this canvas is scarcely typical of Leighton's usual achievement, it has a particular value as an illustration of his adaptability as a painter. The contrast between the figure of the Prophet and that of the Angel, between the rugged vigour of the man and the grace of the celestial being, is curiously effective.

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Indeed, it was during this last ten years that some of the most memorable additions were made to the list of his successes. "The Last Watch of Hero" (1887), as charming in sentiment as in execution; the large composition, "Captive Andromache" (1888); "The Bath of Psyche" (1890), a delicate piece of fancy in his happiest manner; "Perseus and Andromeda" and "The Return of Persephone," in 1891; "The Garden of the Hesperides" (1892); "Hit" (1893); "Summer Slumber" (1894); "'Twixt Hope and Fear," and that wonderful study of glowing colour, "Flaming June," in 1895; and the "Clytie," which was at Burlington House after his death, are worthy of praise as generous and unhesitating as can be given to anything he showed before. "The Bath of Psyche" and the "Clytie" are, in fact, pictures which have few rivals among his other works, the first because of its inimitable purity of feeling and classic refinement, the other because of its convincing force and dramatic passion. In this last effort of a dying man it is easy to find a kind of symbolical meaning: there is a pathetic significance in the attitude of the nymph who loved the light, as she kneels with arms outstretched towards the setting sun. Such a conception, and such a treatment of the subject, typify so exactly the sadness of an artist who was working actually under the shadow of death, and with full consciousness that his days were nearly numbered, that it is difficult not to look upon the "Clytie" as Leighton's farewell to the world in which he had found so much beauty and so much brightness. The sun was setting for him, and though he was too brave a man to despair or rail at fate, his yearning for a little longer spell of sunshine was not to be repressed.

His death, which released him from sufferings that had towards the end become scarcely endurable, was the more pathetic because an honour had just been bestowed upon him which showed in a most significant fashion how highly his claims to special recognition were approved. In 1886 he had been created a baronet, and a bare month before he died he was advanced by Queen Victoria to be a peer of the United Kingdom, with the title of Baron Leighton of Stretton. It is sad, indeed, that he should not have lived to enjoy a distinction which he had so amply earned, and to use his splendid mental gifts in the wider sphere of activity which was opened up to him by accession to the peerage. There was so much he might have done, so much he would have wished to do, to help on those artistic movements which were always first in his thoughts, that to have lost him then, just as greater opportunities of usefulness were promised than had ever before been offered to him, was an irreparable disaster for British art. As he died his last words were, "Give my love to the Academy," that institution with which he had been associated for more than thirty years, and in the service of which nearly half his life had been spent.

To most people it would seem incredible that such a career could be spoken of as anything but a success, or that an artist so respected and so honoured should not be counted among the very few to whom fate has been consistently kind. And yet to say that Leighton died a disappointed man would not be untrue. He had been a great figure socially, he had played his part in public as an official with brilliancy and distinction, he had enjoyed the friendship of the greatest of his contemporaries, but no one knew better than he did that the popular homage was offered to his personality rather than to his art. He was conscious that he had failed to convey to the people among whom he lived that aesthetic message which was to him so vital and so urgent, and that the purpose and principle for which he always laboured remained to the end unintelligible to the world. He felt that the public attitude towards him was exactly summed up in that cynical saying with which Whistler has been credited: "Oh yes, a marvellous man! He is a great speaker, a master of many languages, a fine musician, a leader of society; and they tell me he paints too." That which was to him the one thing worth living for seemed to every one else the last and least of his accomplishments! It is small wonder that he can be spoken of as disappointed; he had given so much for art, and in return he was recognised as nothing more than an amazingly clever man of the world, who painted pictures in his spare moments.

Yet it can be freely admitted that his work was not of the kind which was likely to appeal as a matter of course to ordinary men. It was, as has been already said, the outcome of his own temperament, and had from the first a specific character which was too personal to be wholly intelligible to people accustomed to look only at the surface of things. It must be remembered that he had naturally a very remarkable mind, and that he received an education which was quite unlike that usually given to men who adopt the artist's profession. He had a sound basis of book-knowledge, and was taught especially to study and understand the classics, but to this was added, by his prolonged residence abroad, an intimate insight into many things which never come within the view of the majority of men, or at best are only dealt with in later life when the receptivity of youth has become dulled. He was encouraged partly by his father's precepts, partly by circumstances, to analyse and investigate, to compare this and that phase of thought and form of expression, to seek for the reasons why there should be such marked differences between the methods of workers who all professed to be advocating the same principles. Superficial information could not, and did not, satisfy him; he had to get down to the foundation and to find out the causes for the results which were presented to him.

But of course when he came to build a system of art practice upon his early experiences, and to shape it by the aid of his analytical habit, he evolved something which most men could scarcely appraise at its full value. Therefore, his artistic purpose was persistently misunderstood and, it may be added, habitually misrepresented. His art was over the heads of his contemporaries because their tastes and sympathies had never been cultivated to his level, because their grosser preferences failed to find satisfaction in the purity of his idealism. He was absorbed always in the pursuit of beauty, which he had sought and found in many lands, and it was his earnest desire to give to his representations of this beauty a kind of unhuman perfection, passionless, perhaps, and cold, but exquisite always in its studied refinement. No hint of coarseness or sensuality ever crept into his pictures; it would be a strangely constituted mind indeed that could find in his work any suggestiveness, or anything to gratify the baser instincts of humanity. He kept aloof from the common things of existence, and lived in a self-created paradise to which the rest of mankind could hardly hope to gain admission.

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PLATE VIII.--PORTRAIT OF SIR RICHARD BURTON

(At the National Portrait Gallery, London)

It would be no exaggeration to describe this painting of the famous explorer as one of the more notable of modern portraits, so strong is it in characterisation and so masterly in manner. The artist was fortunate in having a sitter with such a striking personality, and the sitter in being painted by a man of Leighton's deep insight and great executive power.

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