CHAPTER VI

LIFE WANING--DEATH

1887-1896

Already in 1887 his friends noticed that Leighton showed at times that he was overtaxing his strength. On retiring from the Academy as an active member, Mr. George Richmond wrote:--

20 YORK STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE, W., _January 13, 1887_.

MY DEAR SIR FREDERIC,--I have just received your most kind and generous note, and thank you and the Council for so promptly complying with my request to retire from the R. Academy as an active member.

To do it was much worse than making a will; but, having done it, I am greatly relieved.

Had it been earlier it would have been wiser; but as delay has not forfeited the esteem of my dear President and others, I am thankful and content.

But one word of parting advice I crave to offer, which my admiration of your rule and guidance in your high office constrains me to make.

Many of us have remarked that you draw upon your strength too severely; my parting words then are, and please accept, follow, and forgive them:--

Spare yourself when you can, that you may long be spared to give yourself, when you ought.

And now farewell, from your loyal and affectionate old friend,

GEO. RICHMOND.

From San Martino, 20th September 1889, Leighton wrote to his father:--

SAN MARTINO, _September 20 (1889)_.

DEAR DAD,--I received your letter two or three days ago, but have deferred answering till I could say something one way or another about my health, for of course I have nothing else to tell of in these high latitudes. Well, I am in fairly good trim, and as well as I am likely to be till I leave, for San Martino will be shorn of my presence on Friday next as ever is (my address for the first fortnight in October will be Hotel Brufani, _Perugia_). On the other hand, if you were to ask me whether I am "as fit as a fiddle" or a "flea," or "as a strong man requiring to run a race," or "a giant refreshed," or "a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber," or whatever simile you like, I am obliged to own that I am not. I am aware that the air is superb, and when I get on to an exposed slope and open my mouth like a carp I am further aware at (and for) the time--so to speak, "for this once only"--of very gratifying symptoms; then they are fugitive, and my _average_ condition is perhaps a little less satisfactory than on Hampstead Heath. On the other hand, of course, such air _must_ in some occult way be benefiting my tissues, and I shall no doubt, as the stock phrase is, "feel _so_ much better _afterwards_." Meanwhile, I undergo much humiliation; whilst _ladies_ make with comfort and ease delightful ascents to neighbouring peaks, I humbly pant up an anthill or two, resting at every third yard--puffy, helpless, effete. And lest I should console myself with inexpensive commonplace about my years, &c. &c., I have before me two acquaintances, _not_ climbers by trade, one 65 and the other (most charming of men, Sir James Paget) 73, who put in their twelve, sixteen, or even at a pinch eighteen or twenty miles to my one, and back again without turning a hair or having a vestige of fatigue! Ugh!!

I am most truly sorry that your strength did not enable you to see Manchester; but it is _wonderful_ that you do what you do on the doorstep of 89!--Your affectionate son,

FRED.

From Tours, October 30, he wrote to Mrs. Matthews:--

TOURS, _October 30, 1890_.

I hope, when I get back next week, that I shall find the old dad fairly well. More can't be expected; and especially I hope to find Lina drawing within sight of the end of her anxious toil.[83] I am delighted to hear that she means to leave town again for a bit--a _good_ bit, I hope. Tell her with my love that she is to make herself _very_ comfortable, and _not to look at the money_, but _send for a cheque whenever convenient_. She _must_, in justice to herself, do her work under the most favourable circumstances she can command.

I have, of course, no particular news; I have been visiting _till now_. (I am going to-morrow to Blois and Chambord.) Nothing but old familiar scenes with the old familiar enjoyment, in the more serious sense of the word, but not of course with the old buoyancy of spirit--_that_ must necessarily fade with every year now, and I must be content with an occasional little flicker of the waning candle. I have, however, been better in health during the second than during the first half of my holiday. In Rome I was the whole time with old Nino,[84] whom I further took on a _Giro_ to Siena and Florence. I also gave him a commission: very few things could give him so much pleasure (_inside_--he is not demonstrative!), and _nothing_ is now so needful to him. His lameness is not as bad as I had feared; but he had a bad attack of his enemy, rheumatism, at Florence, and had to bolt back to his people. Of course, too, his anxiety about Georgina, my god-daughter, who has only just pulled through a terrible illness, has put a heavy strain on him in every way.

Weather has broken up; of late _bitter_ cold, to-day cold _plus_ rain, worthy of London.

On January 24, 1892, Doctor Leighton died at the age of ninety-two, at 11 Kensington Park Gardens, where for many years, every Sunday when in London, Leighton invariably went to see his father and his two sisters at five o'clock, remaining to the last minute before dinner. This regular habit he continued after Doctor Leighton's death; Mrs. Sutherland Orr living on in the same house and Mrs. Matthews in the close vicinity. In the autumn of 1893 Leighton was advised to go to the Hotel Riffel Alp, Zermatt. "What a stupendous view this is from my window," he wrote. "Weather in the main superb; it is finest for this scenery when it is not fine. Knee still rather troublesome--nuisance! Am seeing a doctor." In the October of the same year he wrote to Mrs. Matthews:--

VERONA (Italy again!), _October 2, 1893_.

DEAR GUSSY,--I hope you are not very savage with me for not writing sooner. I've had a tremendous "Hetztour" through Germany--_thirty_ towns in thirty days; a Yankee might be proud of it; and over an area contained between _Luebeck_ (N.), if you please, and Berne (S.), Vienna (E.), and Colmar (W.), and I have made notes everywhere, _and_ I have a game knee, with the result (not so much of the game knee as of the hurried travelling) that I have had little time for writing anything beyond notes of immediate necessity. But you _will_ be savage at hearing that I never received your Munich letter (alluded to in Lina's last), either at the hotel or "Postlagernd"--can you remember at what _date_ you wrote it? I would _try_ to recover it--I hate losing letters, don't you? Thank Lina for her letter, and say that I am concerned at the very poor and shabby account given of her. She was going to send for the doctor; I hope he was able to help her (though I don't know on what plea one expects that of a doctor). By this time you may have recovered from your cure. What a rickety lot we are! At Perugia, where I shall be on Wednesday, I am going under physic for my knee, which, though hardly more than an inconvenience, is a very depressing prospect. I have written to Roberts, who has sent me prescriptions which I shall have made up (to-morrow) by his namesake in Florence. My journey has been, I am bound to say, in a high degree interesting and sometimes delightful. (I wonder whether you were ever at Hildesheim--its amazing picturesqueness, Renaissance houses, carved and painted, are enough to make your hair curl for the rest of your natural life.) But I have not bought a single German novel, after all the trouble you took twice over, except _Soll und Haben_, which I have just begun; how amazingly _altmodisch_ and stodgy it is, but evidently very clever. I have grown very indolent about reading in trains. Wednesday I reach Perugia--Thursday I shall take a holiday--Friday I shall--but enough! In Berlin I saw dear old Joe (Dr. Joachim)--(the only person I did see, except Malet, the Ambassador, a very old friend of mine--very snug and _good_ little bachelor dinner there--"just as you are"). He (Joe) seemed very fit after "les eaux" somewhere, and sent you kind messages. He was pleased at my calling, and came next day to see me off at the station.

In August 1894 he took his sister, Mrs. Matthews, to Bayreuth. On his rapidly returning to London he completed the panel he presented to the Royal Exchange. He worked hard at this for three weeks. He then went to Scotland, and finished his holiday, as usual, in Italy. On his return, after attending the first Monday Popular concert at St. James' Hall, when walking to the Athenaeum he was seized by his first attack of angina pectoris. Dr. Roberts, to whom Leighton was attached, and in whose judgment and skill he had had great confidence for years, writes, "I attended Lord Leighton for over twenty years. I was constantly seeing and watching him. He never was a robust man; but all his organs kept in health till two years before his death, when I discovered the commencement of the trouble that ultimately proved fatal. I never told him of this condition, as I felt its progress would be slow.... He once told me he considered my fees to him were too small, and asked me to increase them." Some years previous to this first attack Leighton would say, "I always see Dr. Roberts every Sunday for him to tell me I am not ill." In November 1894 Sir Lauder Brunton was called in for consultation, and he and Dr. Roberts prescribed a course of Swedish massage; and to this Leighton devoted the later hours of his afternoons for several months that winter. Work continued as vigorously as ever. The pictures--"Lachrymae," "'Twixt Hope and Fear," "Flaming June," "Listener," "Clytie," "Candida," "The Vestal," "A Bacchante," "The Fair Persian," were the fruit of the last year's labours, besides the sketches which he painted on his last journeys to Algiers, Ireland, and Italy.

Very characteristic was the manner in which Leighton faced his condition. Absolutely natural as he invariably was, without nervousness, and considerate to the last degree in not making his state a burden on others, he never, even at this juncture, concentrated his thoughts on himself. Once when a friend implored him to draw in and not expend his strength unnecessarily, he answered, with almost impatience, "But that would not be life to me! I must go on, thinking about it as little as possible." There was something of the boy about Leighton up to the very end, and in those last months much of the pathos of the boy who is known to be doomed, but who plays his game with just as much eager verve up to the end.

Mr. Briton Riviere, the comrade whose nature was so worthily tuned to Leighton, writes:--

One of the last times that I met him actively employed was at a committee meeting of the Athenaeum. He had some pain and difficulty in climbing the stairs to the committee-room, and evident pain in speaking; but because he felt that the candidate he proposed ought to be elected, and that no one else would propose him with more earnest conviction than he could (and he was the best proposer of a candidate I have ever heard), he came there at all risks to himself and _would_ have done so against all opposition and all disadvantages, simply because he thought it his particular duty to do so. This is only a type of the manner in which he treated all his official work during those last years of physical suffering which he fought so bravely. Watching him, it was then I recognised that he was on the same plane as the seaman who never strikes his flag, and at the last goes down practically unvanquished.

Every day that grey pallor increased, and that sunken, indescribable look of waning life in the face. Nevertheless Leighton lived much as before, never making illness an excuse for avoiding any duty. As matters grew more serious his doctors enforced a rest--a voyage--an absence from the May Academy Banquet. At this juncture Leighton tendered his resignation as President of the Academy. It was not accepted.

To Mr. Briton Riviere he wrote:--

DEAR RIVIERE,--Many thanks for your most kind words. I have been deeply touched by the generous, and, I must almost say, affectionate attitude of my brother members in this painful conjuncture. How much I value _your_ friendship, you, I am sure, know.--Sincerely yours always,

FRED LEIGHTON.

He decided on leaving England for two months, and fixed on Algiers as a dry climate likely to suit his health. It had lived in his memory also ever since the first visit in 1857, as a country singularly fascinating to him. Before leaving he fulfilled his duties as President in choosing the pictures for that year's Exhibition. These duties he had often described as the most wearing of the whole year. His intense sense of duty, and desire to judge in every case the interests of the individual artist together with those of art, fairly and adequately, inflicted a strain and entailed an indescribable fatigue, he said, even when he was well. During those days in 1895 he suffered acutely.

From Hotel Continental, Tangiers, 18th April 1895, Leighton wrote:--

DEAR WELLS,--Although letters do not leave these wilds daily and take an unconscionable time, as I now find, on the way, I trust this will reach you in time for the first varnishing day, on which I believe you hold the general meeting; it carries with it warm and grateful--and _envious_ greetings to you all. These you will, I know, deliver to my brother members at lunch, for then only is the _whole_ body gathered together. They, knowing me, will understand my humiliation at not being under arms and at my post at this season. I wish I could ask you to tell them that I see much sign of betterment in my condition: the slowness of my cure--if cure it be--is, of course, depressing; but I shall comfort myself on Thursday with the thought that perhaps, at some time between one and two, you are wishing well to one who claims to be a faithful friend to you all. I look forward keenly to what will, I feel sure, be the admirable performance of our dear old Millais. Unfortunately, I have not the remotest notion of where I shall be when the news might reach me--in Africa or in Europe--but reach me it will in time. You perhaps think of me as basking in the sun between blue skies and blue seas. How different are the facts! Blustering winds, occasionally rain, chilly atmosphere, everything murky and without colour! A change _should_ not be far off, for this sort of thing has prevailed for a month and more. I did not bargain for it.

I hope, my dear Wells--and indeed I do not doubt--that you are getting on well and comfortably with your vice-regency, and am always yours sincerely,

FRED LEIGHTON.

TANGIERS, _April 25, 1895_.

DEAR LINA,--The day before yesterday I received your nice long letter--you had not yet got mine from Gib.--and yesterday one came from poor Gussy, and I am going, as you will both believe when this reaches you, to kill two birds with one epistolary stone. First, let me say that I am grieved--I dare hardly say, _surprised_, for it is, alas! a wicked way you both have--to hear that neither of you has derived any benefit, to speak of, by your outing, and you indeed, poor dear, appear to be a little worse. The fact is that at our ages, _con rispetto_, when one happens to have pretty homes, one _does_ miss them under the discomforts and shortcomings of lodgings or inns. As for me, though I am fairly comfortable here, I have whiffs of a certain "House Beautiful" in Kensington which are very tantalising. How am I? Well, I think I may at last claim a _little_ improvement, of course I give myself every chance, and am superlatively, disgracefully lazy, _and put myself to no tests_; but I notice this, that though I have my regulation three attacks (when not more) a day, they are milder, I think, and I _know_ that I can get rid of them almost immediately by certain respiratory exercises my Swede taught me. This I assume is again _no more capsules_, we shall see.

Yes, I do perfectly remember the old home in St. Katherine's at Bath, and should hugely like to see it. I hope when the old inhabitant goes off, it will fall into reverent hands.

No, I have not yet tackled Nordau. I am looking forward to him much, but have so far, except some Pater (Greek studies), mostly fribbled; two or three Spanish novels; a few short tales by Hardy, clever, but his figures are talking dolls, taught out of a book; _L'Innocente_, dull, but not so _coarse_ as I had understood. "Tales of Mean Streets"--now there, if you like, is powerful stuff. For pithy terseness and absolute sobriety of means, for subtle and humorous observation and scathing directness, they are unrivalled; but oh! what a picture! what a state of things, and who shall ever let the light into the tenebrous and foul depths? But how funny too, and grim; the old woman who pockets the ten shillings given for port, in order that she may have mutes at the funeral! Have also read "Keynotes." Clever, one or two even powerful, but other than I expected. Who is the woman? half Norse? half Irish? The writing is bad; intentionally, apparently; a cross between an interviewer and Ibsen for scrappy abruptness. _Her_ keynote is belief in the _immeasurable_ (but not explained) superiority of women, whom no man can _understand_; well, certainly, _I_ don't know _wo sie hinaus will_.

I have had more kind notes, this is a kind world _tout de meme_. When stodgy, elderly Englishmen talk to me of the number of people who _love_ me, I feel quite a lump in my throat. Of another kind, but pretty, is the enclosed from W. Watson, the poet, whom I admire, you know; nice also the telegram. I wrote a _menschlich_ letter when her husband died (_I_ have known them nearly forty years), and again a pretty letter t'other day about the wedding.

But I _must_ finish this scribble. I shall be gone when you get this, write _Algiers_ (poste restante), I shall get it _some_ time or other, but am still vague.

Love to poor Gussy.--Afft. bro.,

FRED.

Leighton enclosed the following from William Watson, and the telegram from the Comtesse de Paris:--

66 CHERITON ROAD, FOLKESTONE, _April 18, 1895_.

DEAR SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON,--May I venture to say, somewhat superfluously, what a delight it was to be made free of your Palace of Art on a recent Sunday, and how highly I valued the privilege. Mr. Wilfrid Meynell had already made me happy by reporting the generous things you had said about my verses. I wish the great pleasure thus given me were not alloyed by the news of your temporarily impaired health. But in common with the rest of the world I hope those sunnier regions to which you perhaps feel more spiritually akin than to our own may quickly renew your full energies.

Pray forgive anything which may be intrusive or otherwise unwarrantable in this letter, and believe me, dear Sir Frederick, with very grateful sense of your kindness, and pride in your good opinion, yours sincerely,

WILLIAM WATSON. SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON, Bart., P.R.A.

_Telegram._] _April 16, 1895._ TO SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON, 2 HOLLAND PARK ROAD, KENSINGTON, LONDON.

Profondement touchee de votre si bonne lettre et aimables voeux pour ma fille, je vous en remercie de tout mon coeur, y voyant une nouvelle preuve de votre amitie. Je regrette vivement pas avoir le plaisir de vous revoir avant longtemps, mais suis sure penserez a moi.

COMTESSE PARIS. BUCKINGHAM.

On arriving at Alger, Leighton wrote:--

HOTEL D'EUROPE, ALGER, _May 9, 1895_.

DEAR WELLS,--I got your first kind letter three days ago at Tlencen, and this morning, on passing through this place, your very interesting account of the Banquet. I know you will not resent a _very_ brief acknowledgment; I have _one_ day here only, and a large pile of letters, with a good many of which I must deal, however laconically, at once. I need not assure you that your most kind words, like so many manifestations of friendship that I have received, touch me to the quick and will not be forgotten. That my dear old friend Millais could carry away his audience by his earnest and intense personality, I was quite certain. I rejoice in my heart at his success, apart from what I feel about his affectionate and warm expressions. It is worth while to break down, to be treated with such infinite kindness as I have met with everywhere amongst my colleagues and friends. I know you will like to hear that I am at last very decidedly better; in another month--for I don't mean to come home sooner--I really expect to be externally quite patched up--of course, the warning and the constant threat will remain by me, but I shall try to be careful, and hope yet for long to be the devoted servant of my brother members in the Academy. Meanwhile, believe me, always sincerely yours,

FRED LEIGHTON.

_P.S._--I trust you have not suffered in your throat, which is a frequent anxiety to you from the necessity of much speaking. _I_ know how trying that is.

HOTEL D'EUROPE, ALGER, _May 21, 1895_.

DEAR LINA,--In an hour or two I leave for Europe, and in three weeks I shall be home again in comfortable Kensington.

I am grieved that you should have been worried--as well you might--by that idiotic report that I should not return to society or my profession (I wonder who invented it!), but you were fortunately soon relieved; I think I told you about the trouble Reuter and Hardy took in the matter. By-the-bye, you were right in supposing that the "long walk" was also a figment of the correspondents.

I am very glad to hear that you and Gussy are both at all events a little better at last. My bulletin is chequered, but certain things are satisfactory; in the first place, I see that fine weather and sun and pure air and the rest of it have nothing whatever to do with my condition; this, as I can't choose my climate, is distinctly reassuring; also, the fact of my having been much better shows that I may hope distinctly for much improvement: in the other, a certain relapse which is now upon me shows how needful caution is, only it is disappointing to have had to go back to capsules. I have had in the main a most enjoyable time; have been very fortunate in the weather, inasmuch as the heat has not yet been intolerable, and I have done some work which will be useful perhaps and certainly delightful as a reminiscence and suggestion. A variety of untoward things, one on the top of the other, no doubt quite account for my, I hope not durable, relapse, and I have no doubt when I write again I shall be able to report fresh improvement. The odd thing is, the bad effects _last_ so curiously. I understand hot railway journeys, bad food, &c. &c., telling on me, but I have been now two whole days and a bit in Algiers in _utter_ idleness, and a great deal on my back, and yet this morning I got an attack _lying in bed_! but don't let this disturb you--for several weeks I was much better and required _no_ capsules at all. This short little note will reach you, I suppose, on Friday morning; a line on that day or on Saturday or Sunday, just to say that it has reached you would catch me at the Hotel Continental, Rue Castiglione, _Paris_. Please tell me, on the altogether improbable chance of my "looking in" on the Channel Islands, what the _best_ hotels are--I _must_ be comfortable. Best love to Gussy.--From your affectionate old brother,

FRED.

_P.S._--I wrote to the P. of W.'s secretary, asking him to say how much H.R.H.'s kind words had gratified me--I enclose the answer, which is nice, I think.

On Leighton's return to London he resumed his duties as President. He tried to believe what Sir Lauder Brunton hoped, but found it somewhat difficult to do so in the face of _facts_, he used to say. He, however, assumed that he was mending. On 19th July 1895 he wrote:--

DEAR BRITON RIVIERE,--Very many thanks for your kind and thoughtful note. Do not think of postponing your motion; I have already been the innocent cause of the postponement of two very contentious motions in Council; I could not think of standing further in the way--pray, therefore, proceed with it. I had a nasty attack at that meeting but have felt no after effects, and am no doubt slowly mending. In haste, yours ever sincerely,

FRED LEIGHTON.

From his account to his friends after his return, his health had varied while abroad in an unaccountable manner, except in one instance where, as my husband and I knew from personal experience, the conditions were normally unhealthy. This evidently was the cause for his having had specially violent attacks at Morlaix in Brittany, which he visited on his journey home--and where, some years previously, our whole party had become more or less ill, owing, it was thought, to the unhealthiness of the place. His condition was much the same as when he left England. He worked steadily in his studio, and received the guests at the Annual Soiree of the Royal Academy. At the conclusion of the function a friend asked him how it had really fared with him--for apparently his vitality had appeared, as usual, inexhaustible. "I think the attacks must be greatly a matter of nerves," he answered. "I have stood here three hours and a quarter and have not had one,--while I was dressing and fearing how I should get through it, I had _three_."

Leighton did not go to Scotland that autumn but to the wild west coast of Ireland, again to that Malinmore that had so greatly fascinated him, and whose wild beauty he had longed for his sister to enjoy, "taking her courage in one hand, her goloshes in a second, and umbrella in the third."[85] On his way there he wrote to Mrs. Orr:--

IMPERIAL HOTEL, PEMBROKE STREET, CORK, _Thursday, September 5, 1895_.

DEAR LINA,--I was glad to glean from your letter of last Thursday that, taking it all round, you are having a fairly good time, and Gussy ditto. (I can't stand _wind_ either, it aggravates my system.) I've never seen Mull--should like to--but _not_ being a sociable bird (like you) should wish to have no acquaintances. Is it Napier of _Magdala_? if so, I knew the old lord of that ilk; indeed, to be accurate, I knew him even if it was not so; or Lord Napier of _Ettrick_? if so ditto, ditto. It is always the previous lot _I_ knew. By this time you will have been to Lindisfarne[86] (lovely name!)--if you did not enjoy the sands and the Abbey you need not call on me again. I suppose you are at home now. In a week or two I shall no doubt know how I am. Just off to Killarney, then Galway, then _Malinmore_, County Donegal, where I shall be from (say) the 10th to (say) the 17th, your affectionate old brother.

In another letter he wrote to Mrs. Orr: "I am too glad that you have made acquaintances--been a gregarious person. If I make an acquaintance anywhere, I have simply lost the game." From Malinmore on September 19th he wrote to me: "I'm sorry that you saw Scotland in a mist; its beauty is _succulent colour_--you want rain first and then a burst of sun--I am enjoying unsociable solitude keenly, like the bear I am; health so so; I'm sowing patience, but so far reaping nothing in particular. In a fortnight, off to Italy." On this visit to his "second home" Leighton began with Venice, from whence he wrote to me Oct. 9th: "The wind is howling and the rain pouring down in torrents--not a correct attitude in Venice--I'm no better." Leighton next went to Naples, where he wrote the following letter to Mrs. Orr:--

HOTEL BRISTOL, NAPLES, _October 18, 1895_.

DEAR LINA,--I am sorry that you and Gussy don't see your way to going to Bayreuth, since it is your health that seems to stand in the way; other reasons are all my eye. I KNOW from Gussy's own mouth that she would particularly like to hear the Siegfried Tetralogy at Bayreuth (and this _may_ be the last time of giving it _there_), I _know_ also that, given, of course, the Fuersten Loge with its facilities, you would like to go, because you have said so. Well it will remain open in case you change what you, fondly and perhaps sincerely, regard as your minds.

I am very glad you take such a very sensible view of my ailment, because it makes it more easy to speak of it; I also live in the hope and, almost, expectation, that it will fizzle out some day of its own accord, and this enables me to bear up against the entire absence _at present_ of any improvement. I have at last finished my "Nordau," which I have read through from cover to cover; it is a very vigorous and remarkable book and of riveting interest to any one who likes polemics (from _outside_) as I do. The author is at his best when he is dissecting a particular victim--say Nietzsche--on the other hand one is not a little repelled by his astoundingly unparliamentary insolence, his not infrequent disingenuousness and _spitzfindelei_ and his curious narrownesses and lacunae. The _Boecke die er schneidet_ when he gets on the subject of graphic art are quite comic. The fact is he is in some respects absolutely devoid of perception, like an otherwise most intelligent and cultured man who should have no ear for music. What, for instance, can we say of a man who asserts, as a truism, that aesthetic and _sexual_(!) feelings (not sensual but "_geschlechtlich_") are not merely akin but actually cover one another to a very large extent! I doubt whether there is anything chaster than the sense of beauty in abstract form; he has no inkling of this. When all is said and done he is himself in some measure a _crypto_degenerate, if I may so call him; degeneracy is a _Zwangsvorstellung_ with him, he sees it everywhere; a curious instance is his seeing it in the fondness of English writers for alliteration; of course he knows, with his wide culture, better than I do that this assonance of the beginning of words dates from the dawn of our literature; _he might_, no doubt, say, "Yes! it is a _Rueckschlag_," but he would therein give another proof of his ineptitude in aesthetic matters. In _every_ Art, _iteration_, of which alliteration is a form, has ever been a powerful source of expression and charm. Meanwhile his last, remarkable, chapter "Therapie" takes a good deal of the sting out of the book; he owns that certain peculiarities--excess of sensibility and the like--are present in _nearly all art_, that it is, in fact, only a question of a degree and, he adds, in a passage which Gussy has marked, "Who shall say _where_, exactly, madness begins?" Amen! And that little (or large) spice of something which _might_ be madness if there was much more of it, has given to us poor mortals some of our keenest delights--"more grease to its elbow," say I, in my vulgar way. But, I say! Nietzsche!! eh?--I've also read J. Kowaleski, with great interest--but, crikey! _what_ a creature to live with!!

Tell Gussy, with my love, that I have got the usual two seats (Queen's Hall) for the November _Wagner_. Tell her to keep the day open.--Afftly. yrs.

FRED.

From Naples he travelled to Rome to find his dear friend Giovanni Costa, with whom he spent the last weeks of his holiday. Of this visit Costa wrote the following in his "Notes":--

"His last study from nature was painted in Rome in October 1895, for the unfinished picture of 'Clytie,' exhibited in the Royal Academy, 1896. It was a study of fruit, and he enjoyed working on it for several hours, though he was then ill; and I believe that the hours he passed in the courtyard of the Palazzo Odeschalchi painting these fruits, which he had arranged on a marble sarcophagus, afforded him, perhaps, the last artistic pleasures he ever enjoyed. It is true that after this he went to the Vatican, to Siena, and to Florence, where he saw for the last time the masterpieces with which these towns abound. But, standing before the great works of the masters of the past, he could only sigh.

"He worshipped children, and his pictures of children with fruit and flowers are among the most delicious and spontaneous work ever done by him in painting. And I can see him again, during the last visit he paid to Rome in 1895, on his knees before my little girl, to accede to her request that she should have a lock of his hair as a remembrance."

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.

Writing to me on his return on November the 6th Leighton says: "I shall try to look in to-morrow at five. I want very much to hear Fuller-Maitland's preachment" (Lectures on Purcell were being given at our house previous to the Purcell Festival). "I am sorry to say I am no better, rather worse." On being asked the next day, as he came into our house, "How is it?" the answer Leighton gave was, "Oh, worse! Sometimes fifteen attacks a day." On his birthday, the 3rd of December, he wrote to his sister:--

2 HOLLAND PARK ROAD, KENSINGTON, W., _December 3, 1895_.

DEAR LINA,--The grand leaves in a mossy pot, and the sweet flowers, and the poems, and your letter, came all together. I know you will let me answer you both on one piece of paper. I know, dears, how true is your love, and though I am not a demonstrative person, it is very precious to me. I know you will both like to hear that after an _hour's_ innings between L. Brunton, Dr. Tunnicliffe his partner, Roberts, and three most ingenious scientific instruments, and after tapping and auscultating of my wretched ear cap fore and aft, it was pronounced that (in some mysterious way) I am _not_ worse, but _better_; well, I am glad to hear it; meanwhile my medicine is being strengthened, and will be again in the (pretty certain) event of its requiring more strength. L.B. quite _hopes_ to rig me out for the May banquet. Much love to both from affectionate old brother.

On the 14th he wrote to his friend Mr. Henry Wells:--

2 HOLLAND PARK ROAD, KENSINGTON, W., _December 14, 1895_.

DEAR WELLS,--Many thanks for your kind letter, relying on which I hasten to "nail" you for the _27th_; I shall be very much disappointed if you say me "nay." I never give a _long_ notice, in part so as to bring about a little shuffling of cards, and relieving my guests of a certain monotony of routine which might in the end irk them. I need not assure you that I am most warmly sensible to the vigilant and truly friendly interest which you manifest concerning my health; believe me, if I differ from you in not believing in the efficacy or feasibility of a suspension of activity for a year or two, it is in no unreasoning or perverse spirit (and let me, by-the-bye, say in passing that I have, for a few days past, certainly been a little better). Putting aside for a moment the fact that I have for the next year, and more, definite professional _obligations_ in the way of commissioned work (which is, unfortunately, not incompatible with having a certain number of unsold works!), to withdraw from Academic duties would mean _leaving England_ for the period in question; it would be morally impossible to remain here, apparently in robust health, congratulated constantly, as I am, on my healthy appearance, going about unrebuked by a _very_ cautious doctor (Lauder Brunton), taking the pleasures of life _apparently_ without any stint (as a matter of _fact_ I am very quiet and regular, and under _continuous_ medical treatment), and then shirking all its _duties_; but experience has shown that I gain nothing by absence--by change of climate and the rest; and, on the other hand, my temperament being what you know, the withdrawal from my active life would infallibly prey on me and have a marked effect on my health through my spirits; this is also the opinion of Lauder Brunton. My care must be to live quietly but not idly, and thus try to mend gradually, as I doubtless shall, in the hands of my doctor _and my masseur_. _If_, which God forbid, I am pronounced still unfit in May, I will bow, with whatever bitterness, to the judgment, but till then I must not forego hope. Meanwhile, you have all done me infinite service in prohibiting the "Discourse" for this year--I can't say how grateful I was for that! I shall also avoid, as far as may be, all _controversy_ at our table; that is the worst thing of all by far, for yours sincerely always,

FRED LEIGHTON.[87]

With the New Year honours and among those bestowed was a Peerage on Leighton, who was created Lord Leighton, Baron of Stretton (see chap. i. vol. i., Antecedents). Needless to say, congratulations poured in from all sorts and conditions. One of these in writing was preserved because enclosed in a note to his sister.

_January 13, 1896._

MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--I have just come back from Italy, and hope that it is not too late to tell you with how much satisfaction I read of the mark of honour that has been accepted by you. I am not a passionate admirer of the legislative feats of the House of Lords, but so long as it stands, it is well that such a man as you should sit there. I hope that the thing has given you pleasure, and for my poor part I rejoice both as a friend and as a humble admirer of art and genius that this honourable recognition has fallen to you.--Yours sincerely,

JOHN MORLEY.

Not a word of reply, I pray.

From his native place Leighton received the following:--

When it was announced on Wednesday that the Queen had been pleased to confer the dignity of a Peerage of the United Kingdom upon Sir Frederic Leighton, Bart., President of the Royal Academy, who is a native of Scarborough, having been born here sixty-five years ago, the Mayor (Alderman Cross, J.P.) sent the following telegram:--"Sir Frederic Leighton, 2 Holland Park Road, London, the Mayor, Corporation, and inhabitants of Scarborough present their hearty congratulations on the honour conferred upon you.--The Mayor, Scarborough." The next morning the following reply was received:--"The Mayor of Scarborough,--Sincere thanks for congratulations from my birthplace.

LEIGHTON."

Leighton had been loath to acquaint his sisters with the real nature of his complaint, as he was aware how much their anxiety for him would be increased if they knew. However, he at last felt it was necessary to tell them. Very characteristically, he chose the moment when they were at the theatre, thinking it might produce a less painful shock when mentioned casually, and when their attention might be distracted more easily. It was difficult, however, under any circumstances to temper the blow. Leighton wrote the next Sunday--"I do hope I shall find you better this afternoon.... I ought not to have spoken to you about my ailment." I received the following in Somerset, dated January 20, dictated, ... "As I am (not to put too fine a point on it) in bed with a very bad cough at this moment, you will, I know, forgive my using the hand of a secretary in writing to you. I see that you want a contribution for Mrs. Watts Hughes' Home for Boys; I therefore enclose a cheque." ... On the day following, Tuesday, his doctors decreed that he should remain in his room, but on Wednesday, the day after, Leighton insisted on getting into his studio, where he worked all the morning from models. In the afternoon he drove in his open carriage--certainly without the permission of his doctors!--to Westminster, getting out and standing in the raw damp of a cold January afternoon to watch the pulling down of some old houses which had interested him. In the evening he wrote to me a letter, which happened to be the last he penned. A Lecture was to be given for the benefit of Mrs. Watts Hughes' Home for Boys; and in return for Leighton's contribution I had sent him four five shilling tickets to give away, offering to change them for half guinea tickets, but suggesting it would be most rash of him to go himself. However, he intended to go, and wrote that Wednesday evening:--

DEAR MRS. BARRINGTON,--... Since you are good enough to offer to change the tickets for tenners, I will ask you to do so, and thank you in advance. Yes, Mackail's book, which oddly enough I _have_ read--for, alas! I never read now--is an exquisite bit of work.

When the Lecture was given on the evening of January 29, Leighton had left us already four days!

At five o'clock on Thursday morning, January 23, he woke, feeling terrible pain and great distress in breathing, but would not ring for his servant because he believed him to be delicate, and thought it might hurt him to be disturbed so early. At seven he rang, and Dr. Roberts, who was telegraphed for, at once saw that the situation was of the gravest. Sir Lauder Brunton also was summoned. Leighton's servant had promised his sisters that they should be sent for at once if the symptoms at any time became more acute; but on his mentioning this, Leighton said he must not send for Mrs. Orr and Mrs. Matthews, as they were both more ill than he was. However, as the morning went on and there were no signs of any change for the better, the sisters were told of his condition, and at once came--not leaving him till the end.

On Thursday afternoon, when he was supposed to be sinking, and they were with him alone, he expressed his wishes as to his property--the sums of money he wished given to various friends--adding that he should like ten thousand pounds to be given to the Royal Academy. These were wishes expressed--not legacies, as he left his whole property unconditionally to his sisters, and believed that they, as next-of-kin, would, as a matter of course, be his heirs.

Contrary to the doctor's expectations, Leighton rallied on the Friday, and hopes were expressed that he might recover from the acute attack from which he was suffering. On his hearing this, he exclaimed to his sisters, "Would it not have been a pity if I had had to die just when I was going to paint better!"

On the Saturday morning the gravest symptoms returned, and every hope vanished. It was then suggested to Leighton that it would be better for him to make a will, and his lawyer was sent for; but it was some time before he could arrive. Though the agony was great, Leighton refused all alleviations till his will was written out. It was as follows:--

This is the last will and testament of Frederic Leighton. I will and bequeath to my sisters, Alexandra Orr and Augusta Newnburg Matthews, the whole estate unconditionally.

FRED LEIGHTON.

Mrs. Orr wrote: "When the official will had been drawn up and signed, he said, 'Does this give my sisters absolute control over all I have?' On the lawyer answering in the affirmative, Leighton asked, 'Then no one can interfere with them?' 'No one,' answered the lawyer; 'they are paramount.' He was afraid that the brief paragraph was not sufficiently strong."

After signing it, he said, "My love to the Academy"; but his last words were spoken in German, and meant for his sisters' ears alone. Then came the end.

* * * * *

"We went together," writes Lady Loch, "to see Fred Leighton the Sunday before he died, and he said, 'Mind you come to "my concert." I have just settled it all with Villiers Stanford, and it will be beautiful.'" In about ten days after, with aching hearts at the loss of so true, so warm, so great a friend, we attended his burial service at St. Paul's Cathedral, seeing such proofs of real mourning all along the Embankment and streets, for indeed every man, woman, and child had lost a real, true friend.

All who were present must ever remember the last "Music" in the March before, when (contrasting so strongly in colour and sentiment) "Lachrymae" and "Flaming June" stood on the easels, and for the first time the silk room was open, hung with the work of Leighton's friends; how, through all the beautiful strains from Joachim and the rest, a tragic note rang out to tell, as it seemed, of the waning life of the centre of it all. No one said it, but all felt that the last chapter was ending of those many, many perfect pages in life known as "Leighton's music."

A voice sang with emotion Charles Kingsley's soul-stirring verse--

"When all the world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down, Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maim'd among; God grant you find one face there You loved when all was young."

Cruelly pathetic did it seem that one who had ever had the vitality of a boy, who had ever been the inspirer and support of those weary overwrought ones whose wheels had run down before their time, should himself be stricken, creeping home "the spent and maimed among."

The studios emptied, and he came down the stairs with the last of us. Dainty figures of girls were dancing round the fountain in the empty Arab Hall; and as he went to the outer door they flew to him, throwing their arms round his neck. "They are all my god-children," he said, as each, fleet-footed, fled out of the gate. A clasp, a wring of a friend's hand; then, ashen pale, tired and haggard, he turned back lonely into the House Beautiful--and that book was closed.

Instead of strains of perfect song and music hailing their completion, the six pictures of the next year looked down on the coffin, and over a rich carpeting of beautiful flowers. In the centre, above the head, the sun-loving "Clytie" stretched out her arms, bidding a passionate farewell to her god.

The coffin was borne away to the Academy on Saturday, February 1, previous to the funeral on the Monday.

The following is a correct account of the public funeral, written on the day it took place, and forwarded to Leighton's birthplace.

At half-past ten this morning, by which time a dense crowd had collected in the neighbourhood of the Royal Academy, the workmen commenced to remove the numerous wreaths from the Central Hall, where the body of Lord Leighton has rested since Saturday night, and to load the huge floral car. Prominent among these wreaths was one from the Princess Christian; but that from the Prince and Princess of Wales was conveyed in a separate carriage by representatives of the Prince and Princess, General Ellis and Lord Colville of Culross. The wreath consisted of choice white flowers rising from a bank of delicate green foliage, and attached was a card written by the Princess of Wales, and inscribed as follows:--

"Life's race well run, Life's work well done, Life's Crown well won, Now comes rest."

Then follow the words, "A mark of sincere and affectionate regard, esteem, and admiration for a great artist and much beloved friend, from Alexandra and Albert Edward." At the head of the card were the words, "To Sir Frederic Leighton." There was also a wreath from the Empress Frederick, bearing the words: "From Victoria, Empress Frederick," in the Empress's own writing.

The Queen's wreath for the funeral of Lord Leighton was sent from Buckingham Palace this morning to Colonel the Honourable W. Carington, by whom it was conveyed to St. Paul's Cathedral. The wreath is composed of laurel, entwined with which are immortelles, and it is tied with broad satin ribbon. Attached to the wreath is an autograph card from Her Majesty, with the following inscription: "A mark of respect from Victoria, R.I."

About five minutes to eleven the coffin was removed from the Central Hall, and carried through the vestibule into the quadrangle. A detachment of the Artists' Volunteers was drawn up here, and saluted the coffin as soon as it emerged into the open by presenting arms. The remains were placed in a glass hearse, and the volunteers took up their position at the front and sides. The pall-bearers, relatives, and others meanwhile formed in procession, and punctually at eleven the cortege left the Academy, the crowd reverentially uncovering as the hearse passed into the street. The whole length of the route, from Piccadilly to St. Paul's, was lined with people; but the crowds were quiet and orderly, and maintained a clear space for the funeral cortege without the assistance of the police. The volunteers marched with arms reversed, and the remains of the deceased artist were carried to their last resting-place with every manifestation of mournful regret. Flags were at half-mast on many public buildings, and as the solemn procession passed slowly along, the remains were reverently saluted by the crowd. Passing into Pall Mall by Charing Cross, the procession wended its way through Northumberland Street, proceeding thence along the Thames Embankment, New Bridge Street, and Ludgate Hill, St. Paul's being reached shortly before noon.

The service in the Cathedral, which occupied an hour, was at once picturesque as a spectacle and impressive in its solemnity as a religious function.

More than an hour before the time appointed for the arrival of the funeral cortege, the space available to the public in St. Paul's was occupied, and a few minutes after eleven o'clock, visitors of distinction, who had been provided with special invitations, began to fill up the reserved seats in the transept.

Among those present were representatives of the Royal Family, the German Emperor, and the King of Belgium, members of both Houses of Parliament, including the Speaker; delegates from learned bodies and artistic associations, as well as from the art committees of various provincial municipalities.

The first lesson was read by the Dean, and the succeeding passages were given by the Bishop of Stepney; but the greater part of the service was undertaken by the Archbishop of York, chaplain of the Royal Academy. The musical portions of the service were exceptionally fine, and included, as a somewhat unusual feature, a trombone quartette.

Lord Salisbury had promised to be one of the pall-bearers, but found himself unable to attend. The pall-bearers were Major-General Ellis, representing the Prince and Princess of Wales; the Duke of Abercorn, Sir Joseph Lister, Sir J. Millais, Sir E. Thompson, Sir A. Mackenzie, and Professor Lecky.

After the coffin was lowered into the crypt by a central opening directly beneath the dome, the two sisters of the late Lord Leighton came to the front, and took a last look at it. When the coffin was lowered many beautiful flowers were placed upon it, and again, after the opening was covered up, the space was more than covered by further wreaths sent by various Academicians, the Royal Academy, students, and personal friends, many of whom lingered some time after the conclusion of the solemn ceremony.

_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 through his work the mysterious treasure, the never-failing fountain of delight, ever springing up in his heart. Lovingly human, he ardently desired not only to pass on his own joy in beauty to every fellow-creature who crossed his path, but, where he saw in any possible way help could be given, to give it.

Of the eager, great-hearted Leighton, not a few can echo Romola's tribute to Savonarola--the last words of the great book whose pages he vivified with his art: "Perhaps I should never have learned to love him if he had not helped me when I was in great need."

A light has passed that never shall pass away, A sun has set whose rays are unequalled of might; The loyal grace, the courtesy bright as day, The strong, sweet, radiant spirit of life and light, That shone and smiled and lightened in all men's sight, The kindly life whose tune was the tune of May, For us now dark, for love and for fame is bright.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.[88]

FOOTNOTES:

[83] "Life and Letters of Robert Browning."

[84] Professor Giovanni Costa.

[85] It was during this last visit to Malinmore Leighton made those sketches of the sea thistle (see chapter iii. vol. i.), and also some last sketches in oil.

[86] Leighton had visited Mr. Pepys Cockerell and his family at Lindisfarne (Holy Island) more than once when going or returning from Scotland.

[87] Mr. Percy Fitzgerald wrote the following:--

"Being in the same club with Lord Leighton, I could note many instances of his good humour and sweetness of temper. I am happy to think, for it was a high compliment from him, that he made my acquaintance, not I his. He had always a pleasant word; as when, entering the writing-room with his hasty tramp, he looked over at me, seated at the window pencil in hand, and rushed over in his impetuous way: "Ah, one of _our_ trade, I see!" He was particularly interested in a museum or institute at Camberwell, and one day thanked me most warmly for having gone down to lecture there, and that it was appreciated by the people, &c. This was good-natured.

"The day he received his title, an old gentleman of the club, who did not know him, congratulated him as he passed by in high-sounding Italian. He was delighted, and poured out a reply in the same tongue, adding some pleasant remark. This little incident quite illustrates his _bonhomie_. It is just what Dickens would do. I gave him a copy of Sir Joshua's Discourses, a presentation one to Burke. It was fitting that the modern President should have it.

"How tragic were his last appearances at the Academy _soiree_! How jaded, shrunk and haggard looked the once handsome painter! He must have suffered cruelly, and at the end seemed worn out. There was something of a likeness to the lamented Irving, the same sweetness of manner, the same grace and romantic view of things. His dress was characteristic, somewhat showy, yet not scrupulously neat like a dandy. His clothes, like Irving's, seemed old friends, and lay about him in roomy fashion. His somewhat unkempt beard left some traces on the lapels of his favourite snuff-coloured coat with the flowing tails. The blue or red silk, its ends flying free, was a note of colour. Three men of mark, and on some points resembling each other, had each this fancy for a somewhat theatrical attire.

"I noticed that a nervous guest innocently presented to the porter a ticket for some artistic _soiree_, which was declined, to the embarrassment of the visitor. But Leighton promptly stepped forward, and kindly came to his rescue. It was curious that those three eminent artistic beings, Dickens, Leighton, and Irving, should have perished from outwearing their nervous systems, Leighton and Irving from heart-failure, Dickens from an overtaxed brain."

[88] "A Reminiscence," Leighton, 1896.

APPENDIX

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

_Delivered by_ SIR F. LEIGHTON, Bart., P.R.A., _at the Art Congress, held at Liverpool, December 3rd, 1888_.

I cannot but feel that to some of my hearers, and to not a few of those who do not hear me, but whom the words spoken in this place may chance to reach through the Press, some brief explanation is, at the outset, due as to my occupancy of this chair. To them it is known that weighty reasons have for many years compelled me to decline all requests--and those requests have been frequent, urgent, and most gratifying to me in form and spirit--that I should publicly address audiences, beyond the walls of Burlington House, on the subject which is to occupy this Congress, the subject of Art. It is not without some compunction that I have followed this course, but the exigencies, on the one hand, of the duties of my office, and, on the other, a firm purpose, which you will not, I hope, rebuke, to remain always and before all things a working artist, have left to my too limited strength and powers no alternative but that which I have adopted. Nevertheless, I have felt justified in obeying the summons of the founders of this Congress--and for this reason that, while the far-reaching character of the effort here initiated, and my earnest desire to contribute, in however small a measure, to whatever of good may flow from it have seemed to make it incumbent on me to accept the duty of saying a few words on this occasion, its comprehensive and national character lifts it into a category wholly apart from and outside the sphere of purely local interests such as those which I had hitherto been invited to support.

I trust I shall be pardoned this short obtrusion of private considerations, and that you will see in it not a movement of egotism but the discharge of a simple debt of courtesy; which said, let me address myself to the task imposed upon me--the task of showing cause and need for the existence of the association which inaugurates to-day its public work, and of arousing, if it is in my power, your efficient sympathy in that work, that it may not remain barren and without fruit. But here I am at once conscious of a perplexity lurking in your minds. "Why," I hear you ask, "should an organisation have been called into life for the sole purpose of considering in public matters relating to the development and spread of art in this country? What hitherto unfulfilled ends do you seek to achieve? Do you aim at the wider extension of artistic education in this country? But vast sums from the public purse are annually devoted to its promotion; schools of art multiply, one might almost say swarm, over the face of the land. Or do you tax the great municipal bodies of England with remissness on this score? But day by day efforts in this direction among the great provincial centres of trade and industry become more marked and effectual. No announcement more frequently meets our eyes than that of the opening, with due ceremony and circumstance, and seemingly with full recognition that the event is an important one, of spacious public galleries for the annual exhibition, or for the permanent housing, of works of contemporary art. Or does art find private individuals lacking in that noble spirit which so often prompts Englishmen to devote to the enjoyment and profit of their fellow-citizens a large share of the wealth gained by them in the pursuit of their avocations? But a great gallery of art which rises hard by across the road would shame and silence any such assertion. Or, again, can it be denied that what encouragement to artists is afforded by the purchase of innumerable pictures, at all events, was never more liberally meted out to them than within our generation, and does not the crowding of exhibitions, of which the name is legion, evince abundantly the responsive attitude of the country, as far at least as one of the arts is concerned? Are not statues multiplying in our streets? Is not architecture, as an art, finding at this time increasing, if tardy, acceptance at the hands of private individuals? Is not a wholesome sense dawning among us that even a private dwelling should not offend, nay, should conciliate, the eye of the passer-by in our public thoroughfares? and lastly, has not a more than marked improvement taken place within our day in the character of all those intimate domestic surroundings which are the daily diet of our eyes, and should be daily their delight? Are these not facts patent to all, and do they not seem to cut from under your feet the ground on which you seek to stand?" Yes, all this and more may be said; and I should be blind as an observer--I should be ungrateful as one speaking in the name of artists--did I not recognise the force of these words which I have put into the mouth of an imaginary querist. I acknowledge with joy that there is in all these facts, and still more in their significance, much on which we may justly congratulate ourselves, much that points to a quickening consciousness, a stirring of slumbering aesthetic impulse, a receptive readiness, a growing malleability in the general temper, which promise well; and it is precisely such a condition of things which justifies our hope of good results from this Congress, and in it we find our best encouragement.

Well, what then is our charge in respect to the present relation of the country to art? What are the shortcomings for which we are here to seek a remedy? Our charge is that with the great majority of Englishmen the appreciation of art, as art, is blunt, is superficial, is desultory, is spasmodic; that our countrymen have no adequate perception of the place of art as an element of national greatness; that they do not count its achievements among the sources of their national pride; that they do not appreciate its vital importance in the present day to certain branches of national prosperity; that while what is excellent receives from them honour and recognition, what is ignoble and hideous is not detested by them, is, indeed, accepted and borne with a dull, indifferent acquiescence; that the aesthetic consciousness is not with them a living force, impelling them towards the beautiful, and rebelling against the unsightly. We charge that while a desire to possess works of art, but especially pictures, is very widespread, it is in a large number, perhaps in a majority of cases, not the essential quality of art that has attracted the purchaser to his acquisition; not the emanation of beauty in any one of its innumerable forms, but something outside and wholly independent of art. In a word, there is, we charge, among the many in our country, little consciousness that every product of men's hands claiming to rank as a work of art, be it lofty in its uses and monumental, or lowly and dedicated to humble ends, be it a temple or a palace, the sacred home of prayer or a Sovereign's boasted seat, be it a statue or a picture, or any implement or utensil bearing the traces of an artist's thought and the imprint of an artist's finger--there is, I say, little adequate consciousness that each of these works is a work of art only on condition that, is a work of art exactly in proportion as, it contains within itself the precious spark from the Promethean rod, the divine fire-germ of living beauty; and that the presence of this divine germ ennobles and lifts into one and the same family every creation which reveals it; for even as the life-sustaining fire which streams out in splendour from the sun's molten heart is one with the fire which lurks for our uses in the grey and homely flint, so the vital flame of beauty is one and the same, though kindled now to higher and now to humbler purpose, whether it be manifest in the creations of a Phidias or of a Michael Angelo, of an Ictinus or of some nameless builder of a sublime cathedral; in a jewel designed by Holbein or a lamp from Pompeii, a sword-hilt from Toledo, a caprice in ivory from Japan or the enamelled frontlet of an Egyptian queen. We say, further, that the absence of this perception is fraught with infinite mischief, direct and indirect, to the development of art among us, tending, as it does, to divorce from it whole classes of industrial production, and incalculably narrowing the field of the influence of beauty in our lives. And with the absence of this true aesthetic instinct, we find not unnaturally the absence of any national consciousness that the sense of what is beautiful, and the manifestation of that sense through the language of art, adorn and exalt a people in the face of the world and before the tribunal of history; a national consciousness which should become a national conscience--a sense, that is, of public duty and of a collective responsibility in regard to this loveliest flower of civilisation.

Well, it is in the belief that the consciousness of which I have spoken is rather dormant with us than absent, waiting to be aroused rather than wholly wanting, that the founders of this Association have initiated the movement which has brought you together, and laid upon me the ungracious task to which I am now addressing myself--a task I have accepted in the hope that, at least, some good to others may come out of the wreck and ruin of any character for courtesy which may hitherto have been conceded to me.

But let us now look closer into my indictment; and let us, first, for a moment, and by way of getting at a standard, turn our thoughts to one or two of those races among which art has reached its highest level and round whose memory art has shed an inextinguishable splendour. Let us first consider the Greek race in the day of its greatest achievements and the most perfect balance of its transcendent gifts. What is it that impresses us most in the contemplation of the artistic activity of this race? It is, first, that the stirring aesthetic instinct, the impulse towards and absolute need of beauty, was universal with it, and lay, a living force, at the root of its emotional being; and, secondly, that the Greeks were conscious of this impulse as of a just source of pride and a sign of their supremacy among the nations. So saturated were they with it that whatever left their hands bore its stamp. Whatever of Greek work has been preserved to us, temple or statue, vessel or implement, is marked with the same attributes of stately and rhythmic beauty; in all their creations, from the highest to the lowest, one spirit lives, and whatever be the rank of each of these creations in the hierarchy of works of art, in one thing they are even-born and kin--in the spirit of loveliness. And of the dignity of this artistic instinct, which they regarded as their birthright, they were, as I have said, proudly conscious. Would you have an instance of this high consciousness? Here is one. At the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian war the Athenians having, according to ancestral custom, decreed a public funeral to those who had fallen in battle, Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, was chosen by them to speak the praises of the dead. It is a famous speech, that in which he obeyed their injunction, and it opens with a lofty eulogy of the Republic for which the heroes whom they mourned had fallen. In this magnificent song of praise he enumerates the virtues of the Athenians; he shows them heroic, wise, just, tolerant, _lovers of beauty_, philosophers--in all things foremost amongst men. Mark this! At a celebration of the most moving solemnity--in a breathing space between two acts of a gigantic international struggle for hegemony--you have here a great statesman enumerating the titles of his fellow-citizens to headship among the nations, and placing not at the end of his panegyric and as an oratorical embellishment, but in its very heart and centre, these words: "We love the beautiful."

But we may gain, perhaps, a yet more vivid sense of the extent to which the artistic impulse possessed and filled this people in the fascinating epitome of Grecian handicraft which is presented to us in Pompeii, or rather in the Museo Nazionale at Naples. Here you have the work, not of Athenian Greeks, of the Periclean or of the Alexandrian age, but the work of provincial Greeks inhabiting a watering-place of no very great importance, in the first century of our era; a period as far removed from the days of the Parthenon sculptures as we are from the days of the Canterbury Tales. And what a display it is! How full of interest! Here we are admitted into the most intimate privacy of a multitude of Pompeian houses--the kitchens, the pantries, the cellars of the contemporaries of the Plinies have here no secret for us; indeed, for aught we know, more than one of those dinners of which that delicate _bon vivant_, the nephew of the naturalist, was so appreciative a judge may have been cooked in one of these very ranges, one of these ladles may have skimmed his soup, his quails may have been roasted on yonder spit. Nothing is wanting that goes to make the complete armament of a kitchen--stoves, cauldrons, vessels of every kind, lamps of every shape, forks, spoons, ladles of every dimension. And in all this mass of manifold material perhaps the most marked characteristic is not the high level of executive merit it reveals, high as that level is, but the amazing wealth of _idea_, the marvellous intellectual activity brought to bear on what we now call objects of industrial art--whatever that may mean--in this outpost of Greek civilisation. These accumulated appliances of the kitchen and the pantry form a museum of art--a museum of art of inexhaustible fascination; and not only does this vast collection of necessary things contain nothing ugly, but it displays, as I have just said, an amazing wealth of ideas; each bowl, each lamp, each spoon almost, is an individual work of art, a separate and distinct conception, a special birth of the joy of creation in a genuine artist. But, above all, let us bear this fact in mind--_the absence there of any ugly thing_; for the instinct of what is beautiful not only delights and seeks to express itself in lovely work, but forbids and banishes whatever is graceless and unsightly.

As next to the Greeks, and as almost their equals in this craving for the beautiful, the Italians will occur to you. And here it may be well to note, in a parenthesis, that a vivid sense of abstract beauty in line and form does not necessarily carry with it a keen perception of shapliness in the human frame. This curious fact we see strikingly illustrated in a race which possesses the artistic instinct in certain of its developments in a greater degree than any other in our time--I mean the Japanese. With them the sense of decorative distribution and of subtle loveliness of form and colour is absolutely universal, and expresses itself in every most ordinary appliance of daily life, overflowing, indeed, into every toy or trifle that may amuse an idle moment; and yet majesty and beauty in the human form are as absent from their works as from their persons. Be this said without prejudice to the fact that in the movement imparted by them to the figures in their designs there is often much of daintiness and dignity, the outcome of that keen perception of beauty of line in the abstract which we have seen to be dominant in them. I need not follow further this, I think, interesting train of thought, but the digression seemed to me useful, not as illustrating the fact that beauty is not to be regarded only in connection with the human form, which is a mere truism, but as showing that the abstract sense of it, in certain aspects, may possess and penetrate a race in which the perception of comeliness in the human body is almost entirely absent; and I meet by it also, in anticipation, certain objections that may suggest themselves to you in connection with the Italians, as far, at least, as the Tuscans are concerned; for in them, too, we find occasionally, side by side with an unsurpassed sense of the expressiveness of line and form, a defective perception of beauty in the human frame--witness the ungainly angularities, for instance, of a Verrocchio, a Gozzoli, a Signorelli.

The thirst for the artistically delightful was the mark in Italy of no particular class; it was common to all, high and low, to the Pontiff on his throne, to the trader behind his counter, to the people in the market-place. And here, again, observe that this desire was not alone for the adornment of walls and public places with painting and statuary--though every wall in every church or public building was, in fact, enriched by the hand of painters and of sculptors--but it embraced every humbler form of artistic expression, and was, indeed, especially directed to one which has in our time touched, here and there, a melancholy depth--the craft of the goldsmith. I said "humbler form" of art for lack of a better word; for a craft cannot fitly be called humble which has occupied and delighted men of the very highest gifts. Did not the mind that conceived the "Perseus" of the Loggia dei Lanzi pour out some of its richest fancies in a jewelled salt-cellar for the table of a Pope? Did not the sublimest genius that ever shone upon the world of art receive its first guidance in the workshop of a jeweller--a jeweller who was himself a painter also of high renown? For was it not that painter-goldsmith whose hands adorned with noble frescoes the famous choir of Sta. Maria Novella?

Now, to a cultured audience such as that which I am here addressing, these facts are familiar and trite, so trite and so familiar that it may, perhaps, be doubted whether their true significance has ever stood quite clearly before your minds, and whether you have fully grasped the solidarity of the arts--if I may use an outlandish expression--which at one time prevailed. Let us in imagination transfer the last quoted fact into contemporary life. Let us suppose that the municipality of a great English city, proud of its annals and of its culture, determined to decorate with paintings in some comprehensive manner the walls of a great public building; and suppose, further, that an artist, admittedly of the first rank, were to answer to its call from the workshop--and I say advisedly from the workshop, for it is there, and not on an armchair in the office, that the head of the house would have been found in the old day--suppose, I say, that such an artist came forth from some great firm of jewellers, in Bond Street for instance, we should have, on the artistic side, the exact parallel of the case of the Dominicans of Sta. Maria Nuova and Domenico, the son of Thomas the garland-maker of Florence. Meanwhile, striking as is this instance of the unity of art in long past days, it is but just to add, and I rejoice to be able here to do so, that signs are not wanting on the side of our own artists of a strong tendency towards a return to closer bonds between its various branches, in which direction, indeed, a movement has been for some years increasingly marked and practical; and it is with a glad outlook into the future, and with a sense of breathing a wider air, that I place by the side of the cases which I have just mentioned--cases which were, in their time, of natural and frequent occurrence--one which is of yesterday. The chief magistrate of an important provincial centre of English industry, the Mayor of Preston, wears at this time a chain of office which is a beautiful work of art, and this chain was not only designed but wrought throughout by the sculptor who modelled the stately commemorative statue of the Queen that adorns the County Square of Winchester, the artist who presides over the section of sculpture in this Congress, my young friend and colleague, Mr. Alfred Gilbert.

I have pointed to the Italians and the Greeks as culminating instances of people filled with a love of beauty and achieving the highest excellence in its embodiment, and I have named the Japanese as manifesting the aesthetic temper in a high degree of sensitiveness, but within certain limitations. It is not necessary to remind you that I might extend this list, if with some qualification, and that the same lesson--the lesson that the nations which love beauty seek it in the humblest as well as the highest things--is taught us by others than those I have mentioned. Whosoever, for instance, has wondered at the work of Persian looms, or felt the fascination of the manuscripts illuminated by the artists of Iran, or noted the unfailing grace of subtle line revealed in their metal-work, will feel that for this race also the merit of a work of art did not reside in its category, but in the degree to which it manifested the spirit which alone could ennoble it, the spirit of beauty. And if, further, this dominant instinct of the beautiful is not in our own time found in any Western race in its fullest force, and among one Eastern people, with, as we saw, important limitations, there is yet one modern nation in our own hemisphere in which the thirst for artistic excellence is widespread to a degree unknown elsewhere in Europe; a people with whom the sense of the dignity of artistic achievement, as an element of national greatness, an element which it is the duty of its Government to foster and to further, and to proclaim before the world, is keen and constant; I mean, of course, your brilliant neighbours, the people of France. Here, then, are standards to which we may appeal to see how far, all allowance being made for many signs of improvement in things concerning art, we yet fall short, as a nation, of the ideal which we should have before us.

Let me now revert to my indictment. I said that the sense of abstract beauty with the mass of our countrymen--and once again I must be understood not to ignore, but only to leave out of view for the moment, the considerable and growing number of those in whom this sense is astir and active--with the mass, I repeat, of our countrymen, the perception of beauty is blunt, and the desire for it sluggish and superficial; with them the beautiful is, indeed, sometimes a source of vague, half-conscious satisfaction, especially when it appeals to them conjointly with other incitements to emotion, but their perception of it is passive, and does not pass into active desire; it accepts, it does not demand; it is uncertain of itself, for it lacks definiteness of intuition, and having no definite intuition, it is necessarily uncritical. This weakness, among the many, of the critical faculty in aesthetic matters, and the curious bluntness of their perceptions, is seen not in connection with the plastic arts only, but over the whole artistic field, in the domains of music and the drama, as in that of painting and sculpture. Who, for instance, where a body of English men and women has been gathered together in a concert room, has not, at one moment, heard a storm of applause go up to meet some matchless executant of noble music, and then, five minutes later, watched in wonder and dismay the same crepitation of eager hands proclaiming an equal satisfaction with the efforts of some feeblest servant of Apollo? Or have you not often, in your theatres, blushed to see the lowest buffoonery received with exuberant delight by an audience--and a cultivated audience--which had just before not seemed insensible to some fine piece of histrionic art? And what could proclaim the lack of true, spontaneous instinct in more startling fashion than the notorious fact that the most thrilling touch of pathos in the performance of an actor reputed to be comic will be infallibly received with a titter by a British audience, which has paid to laugh and come to the play focussed for the funny?

Now this little glimpse into the attitude of the public in regard to other arts than ours has its bearing upon our present subject. This same feebleness of the critical sense which arises out of the indefiniteness--to say the best of it--of the inner standard of artistic excellence, is not unnaturally accompanied by and fosters an apathy in regard to that excellence, and an attitude of callous acquiescence in the unsightly, which are inexpressibly mischievous; for you cannot too strongly print this on your minds, that what you demand that will you get, and according to what you accept will be that which is provided for you. Let an atmosphere be generated among you in which the appetite for what is beautiful and noble is whetted and becomes imperative, in which whatever is ugly and vulgar shall be repugnant and hateful to the beholder, and assuredly what is beautiful and noble will, in due time, be furnished to you, and in steadily increasing excellence, satisfying your taste, and at the same time further purifying it and heightening its sensitiveness.

The enemy, then, is this indifference in the presence of the ugly; it is only by the victory over this apathy that you can rise to better things, it is only by the rooting out and extermination of what is ugly that you can bring about conditions in which beauty shall be a power among you. Now, this callous tolerance of the unsightly, although it is, I am grateful to think, yielding by degrees to a healthier feeling, is still strangely prevalent and widespread among us, and its deadening influence is seen in the too frequent absence of any articulate protest of public opinion against the disfigurement of our towns.

Let me give you an instance of this indifference. Our country is happy in possessing a collection of paintings by the old masters of exceptional interest and splendour, a collection which, thanks to the taste and highly trained discernment of its present accomplished head, Sir Frederick Burton, is, with what speed the short-sighted policy of successive Governments permits, rising steadily to a foremost place among the famous galleries in the world. Some years ago, the building destined to receive it being found no longer adequate, it became necessary to provide, by some means, ampler space for the display of the national treasure. It was resolved that another edifice should take the place of that designed by Wilkins, an edifice which, be it said in passing, has been made the butt of curiously unmerited ridicule in the world of connoisseurship, and which, apart from certain very obvious blemishes, it has always seemed to me to be much easier to deride than to better. A competition was opened, and designs were demanded for a spacious building, equal to present and future needs, and worthy of the magnificence of the collection it was to house. It is hardly necessary to say that we have here no concern whatever with the controversy which arose over these designs. My concern is with its final outcome, which is this: the original building has remained unaltered as to its exterior; but on the rear of one of its flanks loom now into view, first, an appendage in an entirely different style of architecture, and further on, an excrescence of no style of architecture at all; the one an Italian tower, the other a flat cone of glass, surmounted by a ventilator--a structure of the warehouse type--the whole resulting in a jarring jumble and an aspect of chaotic incongruity which would be ludicrous if it were not distressing; and we enjoy, further, this instructive phenomenon that a public opinion which sensitively shrank from the blemishes of the original edifice has accepted its retention, with all those blemishes unmodified, _plus_ an appendage which adds to the whole the worst almost of all sins architectural--a lack of unity of conception. Now, I have never to my knowledge heard one single word of articulate public reprobation levelled at this now irremediable blot on what we complacently call the finest site in the world; and yet I cannot find it in me to believe that many have not, like myself, groaned in spirit before a spectacle so deplorable--a spectacle which, indeed, is only conceivable within these islands. I think that a good deal is summed up in this episode, and I need not, for my present purpose, seek another in the domain of architecture.

In regard to sculpture, the public apathy and blindness are yet more depressing and complete, and illustrate the deadness of the many to the perception of the essential qualities of art. To the overwhelming majority of Englishmen sculpture means simply the perpetuation of the form of Mr. So-and-So in marble, bronze, or terra-cotta--this, and no more. That marble, bronze, or terra-cotta may, under cunning hands, become vehicles, for those who have eyes to see, of emotions, aesthetic and poetic, not less lofty than those which are stirred in us by the verse of a Dante or a Milton, or by strains of noblest music, of this the consciousness is for practical purposes non-existent. For sculpture, for an art through which alone the name of Greece would have been famous for all time, there is, outside portraiture, even now, under conditions admittedly improved, little or no field in this country. Portrait-statues galore bristle, indeed, within our streets; but the notion of setting up in public places pieces of monumental sculpture solely for adornment and dignity, or of monuments that shall remind us of deeds in which our country or our town has earned fame and deserved gratitude, and incite the young to emulation of those deeds, or that shall be the allegorised expression of any great idea--and yet our race has had great ideas, and clothed them in deeds as great--hardly ever, it would seem, enters the heads of a people whose aspirations are surely not less noble or less high than those of other nations. Nay, even a monument commemorative of the great public services of some individual man which shall be a monument _to_ him rather than exclusively an image _of_ him, a monument of which his effigy shall form a part, but of which the main feature shall be the embodiment or illustration, in forms of art, of the virtues that have earned for him the homage of his countrymen--even this is suggested in vain.

And if we are tolerant of treason against fitness in architecture, what shall we say of our tolerance in regard to its sculptural adornments? What shall we say of the complacent acceptance, above and about windows and doorways in clubs, offices, barracks, and the like buildings, of carven wonders such as no other civilised community would accept in silence? Though I fear I must here, with all deference, add that my brethren, the architects, who suffer their work to be so defaced, are themselves not wholly blameless; and indeed, it is a truth in the assertion of which the most enlightened workmen in every branch of art will stand by me, that among ourselves also the sense of the kinship of the arts is too often a mere theory, received, no doubt, with respect as an abstract proposition, but not perceptibly colouring our practical activity.

In sculpture the inertness of demand and tolerance of inferior supply is due mainly to the want, to which I have alluded, of a sense of and a joy in the purely aesthetic quality in artistic production, an insensibility to the power inherent in form, by its own virtue, of producing the emotion and exciting the imagination, a power on which the dignity of this pure and severe art does or should mainly rest.

In the appreciation of painting, which on various grounds appeals as an art to a far wider public than either architecture or sculpture, the same shortcomings are evident, though in a less degree, and with less mischievous results; for the witchery of colour, at least, is felt and appreciated, more or less consciously, by a very large number of people. The inadequacy of the general standard of artistic insight is here seen in the fact that to a great multitude of persons the attractiveness of a painted canvas is in proportion to the amount of literary element which it carries, not in proportion to the degree of aesthetic emotion stirred by it, or of appeal to the imagination contained in it--persons, those, who regard a picture as a compound of anecdote and mechanism, and with whom looking at it would seem to mean only another form of reading. Time after time, in listening to the description--the enthusiastic description--of a picture, we become aware that the points emphasised by the speaker are such as did not specially call for treatment in art at all, were often not fitted for expression through form or colour, their natural vehicle being not paint but ink, which is the proper and appointed conveyor of abstract thoughts and concrete narrative. I have heard pictures extolled as works of genius simply because they expressed, not because they nobly clothed in forms of art, ideas not beyond the reach of the average penny-a-liner.

Now I know that in what I am here saying I skirt the burning ground of controversy long and hotly waged--skirt it only, for that controversy touches but the borders of my subject, and I shall of course not pursue it here. I will, nevertheless, to avoid misrepresentation in either sense, state, as briefly as I can, one or two definite principles on which it appears to me safe to stand. It is given to form and to colour to elicit in men powerful and exquisite emotions, emotions covering a very wide range of sensibility, and to which they alone have the key. The chords within us which vibrate to these emotions are the instrument on which art plays, and a work of art deserves that name, as I have said, in proportion as, and in the extent to which, it sets those chords in motion. The power and solemnity of a simple appeal of form as such is seen in a noble building of imposing mass and stately outlines. When, however, form in arts is connected with the human frame, and when combinations of human forms are among the materials with which a beautiful design is built up, then another element is added to the sum of our sensations--an element due to the absorbing interest of man in all that belongs to his kind; and the emotion primarily produced by the force of a purely aesthetic appeal is enhanced and heightened by elements of a more intimate and universal order, one more nearly touching our affections, but not, therefore, necessarily of a higher order. Thus the episode, for instance, of Paolo and Francesca, clothed in the rare, grave melody of Dante's verse, entrances us with its pathos; but our emotion, intensely human as it is, is not therefore of a higher kind than that which holds us as we listen to sounds sublimely woven by some great musician; nor are the impressions received in watching from the floor of some great Christian church the gathering of the gloom within a dome's receding curves of less noble order than those aroused by a supreme work of sculpture or a painting--by, say, the "Notte" of Michael Angelo or the "Monna Lisa" of Lionardo; and yet in both of these last the chord of human sympathy is strongly swept, though in different ways--in the "Notte" by the poetic and pathetic suggestiveness of certain forms and movements of the human body; in the "Monna Lisa" by a more definitely personal charm and feminine sorcery which haunts about her shadowy eyes, and the subtle curling of her mysterious lips.

I say, then, that in a work of art the elements of emotion based on human sympathies are not of a loftier order than those arising out of abstract sublimity or loveliness of form, but that the presence of these elements in such a work, while not raising it as an artistic creation, does impart to it an added power of appeal, and that, therefore, a work in which these elements are combined will be with the great majority of mankind a more potent engine of delight than one which should rest exclusively on abstract qualities. And it follows, therefore, that while a work of art earns its title to that name on condition only, once again I say, of the purely aesthetic element being present in it, and will rank as such in exact proportion to the degree in which this element prevails in it; and while, further, this element, carrying with it, as it does, imaginative suggestiveness of the highest order and of the widest scope, is all-sufficient in those branches of art in which the human form plays no part, the element which is inseparable in a work of art from the introduction of human beings is one which it is not possible for us to ignore in our appreciation of that work as a source and vehicle of emotion.

Every attempt at succinct exposition of a complex question risks being unsatisfactory and obscure, and I am painfully alive to the inadequacy of what I have just said. I trust, however, that I have conveyed my meaning, if roughly, yet sufficiently to shield me from misconception in regard to the special emphasis I am laying on the importance of a proper estimation of the essentially aesthetic quality in a work of art, an importance which I urge upon you, not so much here on account of the effect its absence may have exercised on the development of painting, as on account of the significant fact that its want--the lack of a perception that certain qualities are the very essence of art, and link into one great family every work of the hands of men in which they are found--has led with us to a disastrous divorce between what is considered as art proper and the arts which are called industrial. I say advisedly "disastrous," for the lowering among us in the present day of the status of forms of art, in the service of which such men as Albert Duerer, for example, and Holbein (men, by-the-by, of kindred blood with ourselves), Cellini and Lionardo, were glad to labour and create--and that not as a concession, but in the joyful exercise of their fullest powers--is one of its results, and carrying with it, as is natural, a lowering of standard in these arts, has generated the marvellous notion, not expressed in words, but too largely acted on, that art in any serious sense is not to be looked for at all in certain places--where, in truth, alas! neither is it often found--and led to the holding aloof to a great extent, until comparatively recent years, of much of the best talent from very delightful forms of artistic creation; and this notion has led further to the virtual banishment from certain provinces of designing of the human figure, or where it is not banished, to its defacement, too often, in the hands of the untrained or the inept.

We are to a wonderful degree creatures of habit, our thoughts are prone to run--or shall I say rather to stagnate?--within grooves; and if we are a people of many and great endowments, a swift and free play of thought is, as we have been forcibly told by a voice that we shall hear no more, and can ill miss, not a distinguishing feature among us. Is it not an amazing thing, for example, that human shapes, which in clay or plaster would be ignominiously excluded from a second-rate exhibition, are not only accepted, but displayed with a chuckle of elated pride, when cast in the precious metals, flanked, say by a palm-tree, borne aloft on a rock, and presented in the guise of a piece of ornamental plate? But is this even rare? Is it not of constant occurrence? Do you demur? Well, let me ask you a plain question: Of all the nymphs and goddesses, the satyrs, and the tritons, that disport themselves on the ceremonial goldsmithery of the United Kingdom, how many if cast in vulgar plaster, and not in glittering gold, would pass muster before the jury of an average exhibition? And if few, I ask why is this so? In the name of Cellini--nay, in the name of common sense, why? And is it on account of the low ebb of figure modelling for decorative purposes that on our carved furniture--what we mysteriously describe as "art furniture"--the human form is hardly ever seen? Then why is the best talent not enlisted in this work? Certain it is that the absence of living forms imparts to much of the furniture now made in England, unsurpassed as it is in regard to delicacy and finish of handiwork, and frequently elegant in design, a certain look of slightness and flimsy, faddy dilettantism which prevent it from taking that rank in the province of applied art in which it might and should aspire.

But I have, I fear, already unduly drawn upon your patience, and I must bring to a close these too disjointed prefatory words, leaving it to the accomplished gentlemen who head the various sections of this Congress to amplify and enrich as they will out of the wide fund of their knowledge and experience the bald outline I have sketched before you. They, in their turn, taking up, no doubt, our common parable, will emphasise and press on you the fact that by cultivating its aesthetic sense in a more comprehensive and harmoniously consistent spirit than hitherto, and with a clearer vision of the nature of all art and a more catholic receptiveness as to its charms, and by stimulating in a right direction the abundant productive energy which lies to its hand, this nation will not only be adding infinitely to the adornment and dignity of its public and private life, not only providing for itself an increasing and manifold source of delight and renovating repose, mental and spiritual, in a day in which such resting and regenerating elements are more and more called for by our jaded nervous systems, and more and more needed for our intellectual equilibrium, but will be dealing with a subject which is every day becoming more and more important in relation to certain sides of the waning material prosperity of the country. For, as they will no doubt remind you, the industrial competition between this and other countries--a competition, keen and eager, which means to certain industries almost a race for life--runs, in many cases, no longer exclusively or mainly on the lines of excellence of material and solidity of workmanship, but greatly nowadays on the lines of artistic charm and beauty of design. This, to you, vital fact is one which they will, I am convinced, not suffer to fall into the background.

One last word in anticipation of certain objections not unlikely to be raised against an assumption which may seem to be implied in the existence of our Association--the assumption that the evils and shortcomings of which I have spoken with such unsparing frankness can be removed or remedied by the gathering together of a number of persons to listen to a series of addresses. The causes of these evils, we may be told, and their antidote, are not on the surface of things, but rest on conditions of a complex character, and are fundamental. "Who," I hear some one say, "is this dreamer of dreams, who hopes to cure by talking such deep-seated evils? Who is this shallow and unphilosophical thinker who does not see that the same primary conditions are operative in making the purchaser indifferent what he gets and the supplier indifferent to what he produces, and who attributes the circumstance that good work is not generally produced in certain forms of industry to the lack of demand, rather than to the deeper-lying fact that suppliers and demanders are of the same stock, having the same congenital failings; and satisfied with the same standards?" My answer to this imaginary, or I ought, perhaps, to say this foreseen objector would be, first, this--that I am not the visionary for whom he takes me, and that I do not believe in the efficacy of words either directly to remedy the state of things I have been deploring, or to create a love of art and a delicate sensitiveness to its charms in those to whom the responsive chords have been refused; neither is the eloquence, trumpet-toned and triumphant, conceivable by me before which the walls of the Jericho of the Philistine shall crumble in abrupt ruin to the ground; least of all do I believe in sudden developments of the human intellect. But it has nevertheless seemed to me, as it has seemed to the framers of this Association, that words, if they be judicious and sincere, may rally and strengthen and prompt to action instincts and impulses which only await a signal to assert themselves--instincts, sometimes, perhaps, not fully conscious of themselves--and that a favouring temperature may be thus created within which, by the operation of natural laws, in due time, but by no stroke of the wand, a new and better order may arise. Neither, indeed, do I ignore the force of my critic's contention that the causes of mischief lie deep, and are not to be touched by surface-tinkering, if they are to be removed at all; although I demur to his pessimistic estimate of them as a final bar to our hopes. It is true that certain specific attributes are, or seem to be, feeble in our race; it is true, too true--I have it on the repeated assurance of apologetic vendors--that with us the ugliest objects--often, oh! how ugly--have the largest market; nevertheless, the amount of good artistic production in connection with industry--I purposely speak of this first--has grown within the last score or so of years, and through the initiative, mind, of a mere handful of enthusiastic and highly gifted men in an extraordinary degree; and in a proportionate degree has the number increased, also, of those who accept and desire it; and this growth has been steady and organic, and is of the best augury. Now, the increase in the number of those who desire good work, and the concurrent development of their critical sensitiveness in matters of taste, stimulate, in their turn, the energies, and sustain the upward efforts, of the producers, and thus, through action and reaction, a condition of things should be slowly but surely evolved which shall more nearly approach that general level of artistic culture and artistic production so anxiously looked for by us all. It is in the hastening of this desired result that we invoke, not your sympathy alone, but your patient, strenuous aid. And if I am further asked how, in my view, this association can best contribute to the furtherance of our common end, I would say, not merely by seeking to fan and kindle a more general interest in the things of art, but mainly by seeking to awaken a clearer perception of the true _essence_ of a work of art, by insisting on the fundamental identity of all manifestations of the artistic creative impulse through whatever channels it may express itself, and by setting forth and establishing this pregnant truth--that whatever degrees of dignity and rank may exist in the scale of artistic productions, according to the order of emotion to which they minister in us, they are in one kind; for the various and many channels through which beauty is made manifest to us in art are but the numerous several stops of one and the same divine instrument.

And if in what I have said I have laid especial stress on that branch of art which is called industrial, it is not solely to develop this cardinal doctrine, neither only because of the pressing, practical, paramount national importance of this part of our subject, but also because I, in truth, believe that it is in a great measure through these very forms of art that the improvement, to which I look with a steadfast faith, will be mainly operated. The almost unlimited area which they cover in itself constitutes them an engine of immense power, and I believe that through them, if at all, the sense of beauty and the love for it will be stimulated in, and communicated to, constantly increasing numbers. I believe that the day may come when public opinion, thus slowly but definitely moulded, will make itself loudly heard; when men will insist that what they do for the gracing and adornment of their homes shall be done also for the public buildings and thoroughfares of their cities; when they will remind their municipal representatives and the controllers of their guilds of what similar bodies of men did for the cities of Italy in the days of their proud prosperity in trade, and will ask why the walls of our public edifices are blank and silent, instead of being adorned and made delightful with things beautiful to see, or eloquent of whatever great deeds or good work enrich and honour the annals of the places of our birth. And lastly, I believe that an art desired by the whole people and fostered by the whole people's desire would reflect--for such art must be sincere--some of the best qualities of our race; its love of Nature, its imaginative force, its healthfulness, its strong simplicity.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, my task is ended. My duties to-night were purely prefatory; my words are but the prologue of the proceedings which begin to-morrow--a prologue which I undertook to speak less from any faith in its possible efficacy than in the belief that the first word spoken at such a time should be heard from the lips of one to whom, from the nature of the office he is privileged to fill, as well as from the whole bent of his mind, everything that concerns art, from end to end of its enchanting field, must be, and is, a source of deep, of constant, and engrossing interest. The curtain is now raised, the stage is spread before you, and I step aside to make room for others, leaving with you the expression of my fervent wish that the hopes which have brought us together in this place may not have been entertained in vain.

LORD LEIGHTON'S HOUSE

AND WHAT IT CONTAINS[89]

PREFACE TO CATALOGUE

Two miles and a quarter from Hyde Park Corner, removed but a few steps from the main thoroughfare between London and Hammersmith, and running parallel to it, is Holland Park Road, facing which stands Lord Leighton's House. "I live in a mews," he used to say. This meant more than a figure of speech merely, though the "mews" in question is very different from a London street mews. Low, odd-shaped, irregular buildings, formerly stables (a few are still used as such), were in Lord Leighton's life converted into studios by artists who wished to cluster around the President of the Royal Academy. These stand in old gardens and are studded at intervals along the road, bordered by trees branching across it, and taking away all idea of its being a London street. Screened by a hedge of closely-cut lime-trees, the Leighton House stands back but a few yards from the pavement. Through a porch and a small outer hall the House is entered. Monsieur Choisy, the distinguished French architect, in his letter to the _Times_ of April the 27th, 1896, written with the view of trying to induce the English nation to rise to the value of preserving this House as a national treasure, writes as follows:--

"Allow me also to point out the original beauty of the house where so many masterpieces are grouped. The French public have been enabled to admire this house through the excellent article of my friend and fellow-member of the R.I.B.A., Mr. Charles Lucas.

"Nowhere have I found in an architectural monument a happier gradation of effects nor a more complete knowledge of the play of light.

"The entrance to the house is by a plain hall that leads to a 'patio,' lit from the sky, where enamels shine brilliantly in the full light; from this 'patio' one passes into a twilight corridor, where enamel and gold detach themselves from an architectural ground of a richness somewhat severe; it is a transition which prepares the eye for a jewel of Oriental art, where the most brilliant productions of the Persian potter are set in an architectural frame inspired by Arab art, but treated freely; the harmony is so perfect that one asks oneself if the architecture has been conceived for the enamels or the enamels for the hall. This gradation, perhaps unique in contemporary architecture, was Leighton's idea; and the illustrious painter found in his old friend Mr. 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."

As is now well known, Lord Leighton's executrixes, his two sisters, have assigned the lease of the property, which has sixty-six years yet to run, to three gentlemen who are members of the committee formed to preserve it for the use and education of the public, in memory of Lord Leighton, and the committee are now tenants at will of the proprietors. Works by Lord Leighton have been collected and placed in the studios and other rooms of the House. A large collection of his drawings and sketches and a few finished paintings have been secured through the generosity of his sisters, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Mrs. Matthews, and his personal friends, the list of these being headed by the Prince of Wales. This collection of original works numbers 1114, 594 being now framed and hung on the walls. The collection also contains 28 proof engravings from Lord Leighton's principal pictures, presented by those who own the copyrights, _i.e._ Mrs. James Watney (who has also given an original drawing), the Fine Arts Society, the Berlin Photographic Company, Messrs. Agnew, Graves, Colnaghi, and Tooth. There are also 112 photographic reproductions by Mr. F. Hollyer and Messrs. Dixon, these, with a few exceptions, having been taken for Lord Leighton in his studio. The greater number of these photographs were given to the House by Mr. Wilfred Meynell, Mr. F. Hollyer, and Messrs. Dixon; the remainder by Lord Davey, Sir Henry Acland, Mr. A. Henderson, Mr. Philipson, Mr. A.G. Temple, and Mr. George Smith. The reproductions of completed pictures have been hung on the walls together with the sketches executed for them, in order that the student may realise how Leighton developed the designs he made into finished pictures. When funds permit, the 520 remaining drawings and sketches will be framed, and it is the desire of the committee that, though the Leighton House should always remain the chief centre of the collections, groups of sketches should be lent to exhibitors in the provinces and in the poorer parts of London. In the middle of the centre hall is now placed a reproduction presented by Mr. Brock, R.A., of the bust of Lord Leighton, executed by his sculptor friend--that perfect likeness in bronze of the President placed among the Diploma works in Burlington House. Surrounding this reproduction and lining the walls and staircase are plaques of Oriental designs, pictures in enamel, framed in by a background of Mr. William De Morgan's beautiful blue tiles.[90] The same treatment is continued through the "twilight corridor" leading to the great casket of treasures known as the Arab Hall. In the summer of 1899 the Society of the Library Association was received at the Leighton House, and at the meeting which preceded the conversazione, Lord Crawford, President of the Association, ended the speech he made on the merits and rare gifts of his friend, Lord Leighton, by a reference to the unique value of this casket of treasures. "We often," he said, "see Persian tiles in England. They are chiefly made in England, but they are bought in Persia! A genuine Persian tile is a very rare thing. When you meet it, cherish it!" In this Arab Hall hundreds of these "rare" things are collected, each individually of a quality of uncommon beauty and almost priceless, owing to the fact that large spaces on the walls are filled with these gorgeous tiles, fitted together as originally designed and intended by the Persian artists who invented them. Travellers who went to the East when there was still a chance of buying genuine Persian tiles know how it came about that these could sometimes be procured. The owners of the houses on the walls of which they were placed would become impoverished and were easily induced to sell a single tile to a traveller as a specimen. When the money paid for it was spent and more was wanted, if a second traveller came by another single tile was sold. The first purchaser might have been an Englishman, the second a Frenchman, the third a German, and so on. In this way the several tiles making one design got hopelessly dispersed. Lord Leighton, aided by his friend, Sir C. Purdon Clarke, the Director of the Art Museum, South Kensington, was extraordinarily lucky in obtaining large plaques of tiles intact. "During his visits to Rhodes, to Cairo, and to Damascus," writes Mr. George Aitchison, R.A., "he made a lovely collection of Saracenic tiles, and had, besides, bought two inscriptions, one of the most delicate colour and beautiful design, and the other about sixteen feet long and strikingly magnificent; besides getting some panels, stained glass, and lattice-work from Damascus afterwards; these were fitted into an Arab Hall in 1877." The enamelled tiles made the keynote of this beautiful creation, the Arab Hall, which, to repeat Mr. Choisy's words, forms a harmony "so perfect that one asks oneself if the architecture has been conceived for the enamels or the enamels for the Hall." Round three sides (the fourth being filled by the large inscription) runs a frieze in mosaics, the designs of which are among the most beautiful of those invented by our great English decorator, Walter Crane. Sir C. Purdon Clarke has designated this creation of Lord Leighton's, in which he was so ably assisted by his friend, Mr. George Aitchison, R.A., President of the Royal Society of British Architects, and in which is to be traced that generous delight which Leighton took in all that was good in the art of his contemporaries, as "the most beautiful structure which has been raised since the sixteenth century." It would, alone, make the preservation of the House as an effective medium for education in the beautiful a necessity to any truly art-loving people.

To turn to the collection of Leighton's own paintings, the most complete work secured is the "Clytemnestra from the battlements of Argos watches for the beacon fires that are to announce the return of Agamemnon" (No. 212).

Mr. G.F. Watts, R.A., writes: "I am more pleased than I can say that the picture is possible. It is very fine, a grand pictorial realisation of Greek sculpture and Greek poetry, very noble in form and expression, and singularly fine in the arrangement of drapery. Certainly a better example of Leighton at his happiest could not, I think, be found. It is also _especially_ Leighton."

Mr. Watts has himself presented a finished painting by Leighton--a half-length figure of a man, which is an exquisite piece of work and given to Mr. Watts many years ago by the artist. When presenting it to the House Mr. Watts wrote that it was one of his possessions which he prized the most. Though the collection in Lord Leighton's House is mainly formed of his drawings, the few finished paintings and the several oil sketches of landscape belonging to it are sufficient to show how exquisite was his native sense of colour. The colour in "Clytemnestra" (No. 212) is both true to nature as a presentiment of the moonlight effect and to the dramatic feeling of the subject. The study (No. 110), for one of the heads in "Summer Moon" (No. 272), presented by Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, R.A., and executed actually by the light of the moon in Rome, is notably fine in texture and gives us the origin of that curiously happy note of colour in "Clytemnestra"--the bar of dull red cooled by moonlight. The model wore a scarlet ribbon, or might be, a row of coral beads round her neck while sitting to Leighton for the study, and this evidently gave him what he wanted, and suggested, when he was painting the "Clytemnestra" two years later, the contrast to the greys and blues in the red bar in this picture. Mr. A.G. Temple in his valuable work, "The Art of Painting in the Queen's Reign," alludes to this effect: "A picture _low in key_, but curiously strengthened by the massive bar of dark red that runs from the bottom to the top of the picture." Very fine colour and texture is seen in the sketch for a design of "St. George and the Dragon" made for some arched space (No. 115), and also in the small oil sketch for "Golden Hours" (No. 5-A), the study for the background of the picture "David" (No. 111), "A pool, Findhorn River" (No. 120), "Rocks in the Findhorn" (No. 123a), "Kynance Cove" (No. 125), "A View in Spain" (No. 122), "Simaetha, the Sorceress" (No. 124), "Bay of Naples by Moonlight" (No. 112), are rapid though eminently careful sketches which prove, perhaps even more convincingly than highly-finished works, that in the very grain of his native art instinct was Leighton's delight in beauty of colour. In the sketch (No. 109), "The Entrance of a House," is one of many examples among his paintings which show what a master he was in the art of painting white; really true white, such as we see in marble and whitewashed walls in Greece, Sicily, and Italy. Surely no artist has ever painted more truly or poetically the quality of Southern light as it falls on white walls and columns. "Lieder ohne Worte" is one of several examples of a successful treatment of white marble as a background painted as Leighton could paint it.

It is indeed to be hoped that Leighton's friends who possess any of those oil paintings of landscape, sea, and architecture which lined the walls of the great studio during his life may help in aiding to make his gifts as a colourist more adequately represented in this permanent collection. The above-named works are, one and all, good specimens for the purpose. Whatever key of colour was struck, each of these studies from nature is a faithful and beautiful record of a scene in some lovely part of the world; whether the scene was fair and bathed in southern sunlight, or glowing in rich depths of shadow as in the paintings of the golden-lined interior of St. Mark's, Venice, further enriched by the scintillating texture of mosaic surface.

Leighton's early education, however, especially when he was in Germany, tended more to the development of his gifts as a draughtsman than to his gifts as a colourist; still it is evident that as soon as he began working independently of any master, his love of colour at once asserted itself. At the age of twenty-five his first picture, "The Cimabue Procession" (No. 42), was exhibited at the Royal Academy and purchased by the Queen. Mr. Ruskin criticised it at the time as the work of a _colourist_. "This is a very important and very beautiful picture," he writes. "It has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of Venetian art.... The great secret of the Venetians was their simplicity. They were great colourists." (See Catalogue for full quotation.) A lengthy description of Leighton's complete pictures would not find an appropriate place in this preface. Those who had the good fortune to see the wonderful collection of his works in 1897 will hardly need to be reminded of the rich and glowing feast of colour enjoyed before such pictures as "Helios and Rhodos," painted 1869 (studies in Collections No. 218), nor the depth and beauty in "Weaving the Wreath"(No. 144), "Antique Juggling Girl" (No. 359), "Moorish Garden: a Dream of Granada" (No. 280), not to mention the splendour and harmony in many of the larger and more intricate compositions. No less beautiful, it will be remembered, was the colouring of pictures in which the scheme was light and fair rather than rich and glowing. In "Winding the Skein" (No. 198), for instance, there is a feeling of morning freshness in its lovely sea and mountain background and white-marble terrace foreground. Though cool and pale the picture is full of colour. Again, in the slightly-turning figure of Psyche, now in the Tate Gallery (No. 59), the exquisite, pearly fairness of flesh tint must ever make this picture a standard of colour as well as of modelling. In its own line it is an achievement in painting that has surely never been surpassed. Almost equally beautiful is the passage in "Venus Disrobing for the Bath" (No. 151), where the line of the figure comes against the sea background. Leighton's native genius might perhaps be most truly described as one allied closely to, and echoing, that of the Greeks in Art, though trained, during a few important years of study, in Germany. The work of his great contemporaries, Rossetti, Millais, and Burne-Jones, might be described as revealing Italian, English, and Celtic sentiment, influenced by the fervour of pre-Raphaelite feeling. Leighton's genius as a colourist will probably be ever more and more appreciated as a partial allegiance to those three great colourists subsides as a fashion merely.

It is quite clear, from the evidence of the earliest studies, that the extraordinary facility evinced in Lord Leighton's drawings was the outcome of natural gifts. No one can study his art without realising very conclusively that he spared neither time nor trouble in order to make it as perfect as it was in his power to make it; but equally evident is it to those who examine his work with artistic and intelligent insight that the great power that he possessed for taking pains was inspired by a joyous, sensitive delight in beauty. The untiring industry which alone could have produced the unparalleled amount of work which he has left was clearly never weighted by any feeling that the toil of study was irksome. On the contrary there is, in every stroke, evidence that a fine delicate sense of beauty, a fervent, spontaneous "sincerity of emotion" (to use Leighton's own expression) was ever present, instigating and propelling the conscientious persistency of his efforts. Whether it be a flower, a face, a figure, a landscape, or but a piece of drapery--there is in every sketch in this collection that convincing stamp on the work which proves that the doing of it interested and delighted the artist; the test, in other words, that the work has in it the true fibre of the most genuine art. It is well to draw attention to this fact, because his abnormal industry has apparently been considered by some to be a sign of his having been deficient in rare and native art instincts. Some there are who hold that the most notable characteristic in Leighton's nature was an extraordinary power of will. That he exercised such a power is undoubtedly true. In no other manner could he have achieved the main purposes of his life, but surely those who knew him best, and who were in the position best to appreciate his art, would say rather that such an exercise of will was used in the service of a still more powerful ingredient, in the truly leading passion of his life, the moving motive of all his labours, _i.e._ a reverent worship of beauty. Much has been said and written,--even, strange to say, with respect to the great exhibition of his works exhibited at Burlington House in the winter of 1897,--which implies that the scholarly element outweighed the qualities resulting from natural gifts. Happily, the unprejudiced mind of the widest public was not deluded into sparing its praise by unappreciative or unintelligent criticism. Those who had not the opportunity at the Burlington House Exhibition of judging for themselves of the very great qualities Lord Leighton's art possesses, have but to study the collection of drawings in his house in order to realise that his gifts as an artist were as rare and native as was the intellect and splendour of nature which made his personality one of the most striking of his era.

A strong dramatic power is shown in many of Leighton's early designs, and the best examples of these have been secured for this national collection. Of the "Plague in Florence" (project for a picture), a notable example, there is a photograph by Mr. Fred Hollyer (No. 175), taken for Lord Leighton, the original sketch being in South Kensington Museum. The evidence of this power recurs at intervals in the later work in such pictures as "Heracles struggling with Death for the Body of Alcestis" (No. 54), "Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon" (No. 7), (in this picture the colour carries out the imaginative and truly-felt dramatic instinct with singular power and beauty), "Orpheus and Eurydice" (No. 236), "St. Jerome," "The Last Watch of Hero" (No. 28), "Rizpah" (No. 193), and in the last work exhibited in the Royal Academy after Lord Leighton's death, "Clytie" (No. 27), the sun-loving soul bidding farewell to this world. But in many of the later works, as the artist grew older, as the drama of real life became more absorbing and intricate, as the struggle to sustain the interests of the art of his country fell more and more directly on him individually, he seemed to turn with a sense of relief to the more serene, passive sentiment of such pictures as "Idyll," "Winding the Skein" (No. 198), "Summer Slumber" (No. 94), "The Bath of Psyche," as a contrast to the pressure and restless fever of his active life. The tenderness of feeling, such as is invariably united with the highest manly qualities, finds expression throughout every stage of Leighton's art development, most notably in the drawing and painting of children. (Children had the greatest fascination for him.) In "Elisha and the Shunammite's Son" (No. 207), the tenderness is as touching as it is unobtrusive. "Sister's Kiss" (No. 275), and "Return of Persephone" (No. 53), are both examples in which wholesome, loving, human feeling is depicted with exquisite tenderness. In "Captive Andromache" (No. 21), such feeling in the group of the caressing parents and child is used as a contrast to enforce the loneliness of the captive widow. In "Ariadne abandoned by Theseus: Artemis releases her by Death" (many studies for which are in the collection still unframed), the whole picture breathes a feeling of tenderness which is in a high sense pathetic. In the sketches for "Michael Angelo nursing his Dying Servant" (No. 192), even more than in the completed picture, is seen evidence of the manly tender-heartedness which was a notable characteristic in Leighton's nature.

The hundreds of sketches and drawings now hung on the walls of the Leighton House form a diary of the artist's working life.

Here are records of the earliest student days in Florence in 1842. When twelve years old he studied at the Academy there under Bezzuoli and Servolini. Professor Costa writes of these two masters: "They were celebrated Florentines, excellent good men, but they could give but little light to this star, which was to become one of the first magnitude. Leighton, from his innate kindness, loved and esteemed his old masters much, though not agreeing in the judgment of his fellow-students, that they should be considered on the same level as the ancient Florentines. 'And who have you,' said Leighton one day to a certain Bettino (who is still living), 'who resembles your ancient masters?' And Bettino answered, 'We have still to-day our great Michael Angelos, and Raffaels, in Bezzuoli, in Servolini, in Ciseri.' But this boy of twelve years old could not believe this, and one fine day got into the diligence and left the Academy of Florence to return to England. Although the diligence went at a great pace, his fellow-students followed it on foot, running behind it, crying, 'Come back, Inglesino! come back, Inglesino! come back!' so much was he loved and respected. He did come back, in fact, many times to Italy, which he considered as his second fatherland."

There are also many records of the studies in Germany when Leighton was working under Steinle, of all his masters the one for whom he felt the greatest enthusiasm. The drawing in the collection which shows most clearly the influence of Steinle's teaching, was made on the journey from Frankfort to Rome in 1852. The subject is a monk leading a man away from his enemy and teaching him a lesson in forgiveness. It is signed, "_Ulm, F.L., /52_" (No. 251).

There is the sketch for the picture which Leighton and one of his fellow-students, Signor Gamba, on that same journey, took it into their heads to paint on the walls of an old ruined castle near Darmstadt. "The schloss," writes Mrs. Andrew Lang, "where this piece was painted is still in ruins, but the Grand Duke has lately erected a wooden roof over the painting to preserve it from destruction." While still at Frankfort, Leighton had begun the design for the "Cimabue's Procession" (No. 42). In the collection we find the drawing of the first design. For extraordinary precision of outline and graceful arrangement of moving figures, this is one of the most remarkable on the walls. We have also the study of the head in pencil for the figure of Dante in the right-hand corner of the picture (No. 42-B), (given by Canon Rawnsley), and a large study in water-colour and pencil of the woman seated at the window (given by Mr. J.A. Fuller Maitland) (No. 42-C). Hanging near these is a very finely pencilled head of that boy whom Leighton called "The prettiest and the wickedest boy in Rome." On it is written "_Vincenzo--Roma, 1854, F.L._" Another, on which is written "_Venezia, 1856, F.L._," is, for strength of character and beauty combined, one of the most powerful in the collection (purchased by a donation given by Lord Rosebery). These are a few out of fifty drawings of heads in the House, executed for the main part, between the years 1852 and 1856. There are many records in landscape and street scenes of Leighton's journeying to Capri, Athens, Rhodes, Damascus, and Algeria. Of the drawings made during his stay in Algeria (presented to the House by Mr. Walter Derham) (Nos. 284 and 285), Mr. Pepys Cockerell wrote in his interesting article which appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_, "The finest of all, except the famous 'Lemon Tree,' which is in silver point, and was done in 1859, are the products of a visit to Algeria in 1857. I do not believe that more perfect drawings, better defined or more entirely realised, than these studies of Moors, of camels, &c., were ever executed by the hand of man.... They are not particularly summary, nor do they look as if they had been done in a moment, or without trouble. The drawings in question are as complete as if they came from the hand of Lionardo or Holbein."

Among the most perfect drawings Lord Leighton has left, are also the studies from flowers and foliage. Professor Aitchison writes: "One day I found him (Leighton) drawing the flower of the pumpkin, and he said flowers were quite as hard to draw as human heads, if you drew them conscientiously, but doing that rested with yourself, for there could be no critics. He said of drawing that the great thing was to thoroughly understand the structure, and that then, by patience and labour, you could express the outline and the modelling. In 1859, while at Capri, he drew the celebrated 'Lemon Tree,' working from daylight to dusk for a week or two, and giving large details in the margin of the snails on the tree." Mr. Ruskin writes: "Two perfect early drawings are of 'A Lemon Tree,' and another of the same date, of 'A Byzantine Well,' which determine for you without appeal the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. Of all our present masters, Sir Frederic Leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any since Correggio's time. But you see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained and exalted his gift of beautiful _vaghezza_."

Of this drawing of "A Lemon Tree," now in the Oxford Museum, lent by Mr. Ruskin, Sir Henry Acland has given a singularly fine photograph, very nearly the size of the original. Lord Leighton gave Mr. Ruskin for his life this wonderful drawing of "A Lemon Tree" to hang in his Oxford Museum, that it might serve to impede, if possible, the increasing wrong-headedness in study--the careless conceit, the irreverent dash, the incompetent confidence of many modern students.

How Leighton's theories as to the manner in which flowers should be drawn were carried out, is exemplified by two wonderful studies of the said pumpkin flower (Nos. 97 and 104), and fifty other studies from flowers and plants in this collection. This artist in his early twenties, brilliant in society, full of intellectual and every other kind of vitality, could nevertheless sit for hours perfecting the study of a flower or a plant. One who knew him well in 1854 and 1855, wrote in the _Times_ of 28th January 1896, three days after Leighton's death: "I remember hearing a relative of his, a clergyman, deplore in 1854, the persistency with which Leighton was throwing away his chances in life to become a mere artist." Five years previously, Leighton had embodied in a design, now in his house, the longing, the home sickness, the _Sehnsucht_ he felt for his own true much-loved vocation. It is in the drawing of Giotto as a boy lying among his sheep upon a bank (No. 227). Below the sketch, in Leighton's handwriting, are the words "_Giotto, Sehnsucht_." The same writer continues: "I enjoyed constant intercourse with him during the whole of 1854 and to the middle of 1855. The summer of the former year we passed at the Baths of Lucca, dining together every day for three months. Finding the solitary splendour of the hotel at 'Villa' irksome, he suggested that we should mess together in my lodgings, which happened to be close to a little restaurant. In after years, meeting in London houses, we always referred with pleasure to the modest, but always wholesome and cleanly feasts that Lucrezia, landlady, chef, and waitress, supplied us with at an almost nominal cost. To me, at least, that period was one of great value and interest, for it gave me the opportunity of studying the character of one whose personality was attractive in no small degree. He was the most brilliant man I ever met.... He longed for and desired success: but only in so far as he deserved it. When he was sharply checked in his upward career, he accepted the rebuke with humility, for he was a modest man.[91] I had not met him for years when, coming into contact with him, I told him how keen the interest had been with which I had watched his progress. 'I am not satisfied,' he answered; 'I alone know how far I have fallen short of my ideal.'" In his House are two records of this visit to the Bagni di Lucca. One has been presented by Mr. J. MacWhirter, R.A. (No. 249). It is a highly finished drawing of a wreath of leaves exquisitely executed. On the same sheet is a drawing of a vine in fruit, and in Leighton's own writing "_Pomegranate Lucca Bagni Villa_."

* * * * *

No work in the collection evinces the precision and exact truthfulness of Leighton's drawing better than the outline copies from pictures and frescoes by V. Carpaccio, Giorgione, Simone Memmi and Signorelli made in 1852-53. In the copy from the fresco in the Capella Spagnuola, Sta. Maria Novella, Florence (No. 292), we have the portraits of Cimabue, Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi and Simone Memmi whose work it is.[92] The accuracy of the copy and the difficulty of making a copy at all, can hardly fully be realised, save by one who has attempted also to repeat the fading outlines of these dim frescoes in the only half-lighted chapel. Slight and ineffective as Leighton's drawing may appear at a first glance, it is, on further acquaintance, found to be an exquisite piece of work. The absolute truth and precision with which in pencil lines, on a small scale, he has unravelled the outlines of the dim forms, and has depicted the quaint seriousness of these old-world Italian countenances, makes this copy an extraordinary feat of eye and hand. From this drawing he designed the dress of Cimabue for the figure in his large picture, and also for the Cimabue in the South Kensington Mosaic. Written by Leighton above the pencil drawing are the words: "_Simone Memmi Capella Spagnoli (St. Maria Novella, Florence), Taddeo Gaddi white and gold cap, Giotto gold and sea green, Cimabue gold flowers on white ground, Sim. Memmi with grey beard, head dress, yellow hood with black lining, Florence, 1853, F.L._"

A study in brown (water-colour) (No. 91) signed "_Florence, 1854, F.L._," was used by Leighton forty years after it was made in his background for "Lachrymae" (No. 147), an engraving of which was given to the collection by Messrs. A. Tooth. The same study was also used for a charming design, highly finished in pencil and Chinese white, apparently executed for a book illustration, which is now in the House. One of the most beautiful of the foliage studies tells of a happy day "_Near Bellosguardo, Sept./56._" (No. 171). It is a perfect and highly-finished study of a vine. What joy Leighton must have had while looking at this exquisite thing in the September sunshine on that delicious Bellosguardo height! A butterfly and a bee were minutely pencilled on the paper as they flew round the vine-leaves as he drew them. "_Cyclamen Tivoli, Oct./56._" is written on another of these tiny treasures. "_Aloes Pampl. Doria,_" "_Pyrte Roma_," "_Thistle Rhodes_," "_Lindos/67 Asphodel_," "_Thistle Banks of Tiber, stalk light warm brown, leaf dark cld. brown, flow. dsk. warm brown, Roma/56_," are notes on some of these pages of studies, which can only be said to compare with the work of a Leonardo or an Albert Duerer. There is absolutely no mannerism traceable; there is Nature's own quality of style. There is nothing slovenly in Nature, there is as surely nothing slovenly in Lord Leighton's art. The gift which in these modern days is perhaps most rare is a sense of style. Leighton's feeling for style was as much a part of his individual and native taste as was his delight in any other quality of beauty in Nature. Indeed what we call style in art is but the reflection of the same quality in Nature herself, the love which adds to the more oblivious facts of Nature a further quality of truth, a completer insight into her. Leighton possessed a sculptor's feeling for form. It was his subtle grasp of truth in structure which gives a special value to his outline drawings. The keen sensitiveness to the right character of the form, to which his pencil outline was the limit, influenced the quality of his touch as he portrayed that limit. He felt things "in the round" as solid projections in various planes, advancing or receding from the eye. As in the best sculpture, to every aspect of the solid form you get a fine, subtle, absolutely clear outline; so in Leighton's drawing of a contour, never is there any vague or undecided passage. This insures to his work the quality of distinction. These studies have, one and all, that quality. They are _distinguished_, as are fragments of the best Greek sculpture. Every born artist falls in love specially with one class of sentiment in Nature. Whether his special gifts guide his passion, or his passion his gifts, who can say? Probably each urges the other. The special note of beauty in Nature which excited Leighton's deepest enthusiasm was the quality which is most like that in a shell. In the pumpkin flowers in the study given by Mr. Hamo Thornycroft of "_Kalmia Califolia_," and in many others, is recalled notably the fine, pure, carved distinctness of the forms in a shell--the shell that contains the form and colour that at once delights the sense both of the painter and the sculptor. In the oil sketches by Leighton, those poems of Southern sunlight and colour, records of voyages in the AEgean seas, and off the coasts and islands of Greece and Asia Minor, we again recall the special beauty in the quality and colour of a shell, the rainbow tints in mother-of-pearl, the faint translucence trembling in a sheen of light.

In gauging the exceptional quality of the gifts which all these studies evince it will be well to remember that Leighton, at the time they were made, was under no influence but that of his own high standard, and led by no lights save those of his own exquisitely delicate perceptions. For the last twenty or thirty years detail in Nature--vegetation and Nature which is called "still life"--has been truthfully popularised by photography, so that now all students have it in their power to study from such detail treated on a flat surface. Beauty of natural structure and grace of line rendered with right perspective on a sheet of paper can be enjoyed and made use of by every artist. Many do avail themselves of photographs to carry out and complete the details of their pictures. But when Leighton made these wonderful drawings no such standards of elaborate finish of detail had been diffused. Nor had he joined, nor in any way come under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, nor received any inspiration from the teaching of Mr. Ruskin. Though we may truly liken these studies from "still life" to those by Leonardo as regards the truthful perfection of copies from Nature, there is no evidence in Leighton's drawings that the work, even of the great, much-revered-by-him Italian masters had influenced him when drawing from Nature. On the contrary, there is the strong stamp of his own peculiar genius on all of them, the stamp that proves rather that he saw and loved Nature as a Greek would have seen and loved her. Essentially Greek-like was the attitude in which Leighton approached Nature, _i.e._ with an emotion ever ardent in its intensity; but as ever restrained by the rare gift--the sense of _style_ and of the right balance and proportion necessary in treating worthily the beauties of Nature in the language of art. Indeed, it may truly be affirmed that Leighton was made more like a Greek than like an Englishman as regarded his artistic powers, English though he was to the backbone in feeling and sentiment. The effect produced by that collected exhibition of his works in 1897 was, beyond all other effects, that of _achievement_; and achievement which was the result of a perfect mastery and grasp of aims meant to be achieved from the first to the last touch on the canvas. Leighton was far too great an artist ever to be satisfied with the results of his labour. Those who knew him best can testify to his terrible depressions and disappointments. Still, there was no "_muddling through_," to use Lord Rosebery's expression, such as so many English artists confess to in reaching the final result. Greek-like, Leighton saw everything in a definite, clearly outlined view, and, from the beginning to the end, his work was one direct forwarding of his purpose.

In 1860, Leighton migrated to his studio in Orme Square, Bayswater. The collection possesses several drawings made about that time, notably the studies for "Lieder ohne Worte" (No. 36). His young friend, now the well-known portrait-painter, Mr. Hanson Walker, sat for the head in the picture: "A Crowded Scene in Florence" (No. 198), a design full of interest and movement, was the gift to the House of this friend of Leighton's, who, at his instigation, took up art as a profession. In 1866 Leighton moved from Orme Square to the House he had built in Holland Park Road, and there we can now follow his yearly labours by studying the sketches and drawings made for all the well-known famous pictures of the last thirty years, till we come to the last--to that passionate appealing figure of Clytie (No. 27), drawn after the fatal warning had been given. The motive is the same as that of the first design--the early design of the "Giotto" (No. 227), (made very nearly fifty years before), _i.e._ "Sehnsucht"--not the dreamy half-conscious Sehnsucht of the awakening artist-nature as is seen in the boy Giotto--but the passionate longing to remain in the rich existence that rare gifts and noble affections had secured for that artist-nature. After the studies for "Clytie" there but remain those made for pictures never to be painted, till we reach at last the drawings made on the 22nd of January 1896 (No. 268), the last day on which Leighton worked. Three days after, on the following Saturday, he died.

The object of the Committee is to make this House and its treasures a centre for Art in the Parish of Kensington, where Lord Leighton lived for thirty years. During seventeen of these years he was the President of the Royal Academy, and, by common consent, the greatest President that institution has ever had. The South Kensington Museum is not in the parish, and, though this is one of the richest in London, Kensington proper has no centre of Art, and is sufficiently far removed from the centre of the metropolis to make it important that it should possess such a centre. Since October 1898, the Committee has arranged for Concerts, Lectures, and Readings to take place in the Studios, and the public is now enlightened as to the exceptional acoustic qualities the Studios possess, a fact for long recognised by Leighton's personal friends at the yearly concerts he gave to them when his pictures were ready for the Royal Academy. It is proposed to add to the contents of the House an Art Library, and for this many valuable volumes are waiting to be presented for the book-shelves to contain them. The present proprietors are prepared to hand over the house and all it contains to any public body who will engage to maintain it and to meet the views of the Committee as to the use of the House. As a memorial to Lord Leighton, the most suitable use will be, they feel, to devote it to the furtherance of the interests of Art of the best in all lines and among all classes; in fact to continue in his own home the culture of that "sweetness and light" which emanated so notably from his own nature. To conclude with words written by his old and very intimate friend, Professor Costa, with whom he spent his last holiday in the autumn before he died: "Leighton solved certain problems which appeared insoluble. For instance, he combined a life at high pressure with the most exquisite politeness--truth with poetry, an iron will with the tenderness of a mother's heart, high aims with a practical life and with the worship of beauty, the ardour of which was only equalled by its purity."

E.I.B.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] The greater portion of this preface appeared as an article in the _Magazine of Art_, October 1899. It is with the kind permission of the proprietors that it is reprinted.

[90] Mr. De Morgan is at present engaged in making two jars in pottery, which he intends to present to the House, to fill the niches in the Arab Hall.

[91] "Leighton has been cut up unmercifully by the critics, but bears on, Robert says, not without courage. That you should say his picture looked well, was comfort in the general gloom."--_Letter from Mrs. Browning to Mrs. Jameson, May 6th, 1856, Paris._

[92] Nineteen years later, I happened to copy the same group in water-colour; but it was only after Leighton's death that I saw this extraordinarily beautiful drawing.

LIST OF DIGNITIES AND HONOURS CONFERRED ON FREDERIC LEIGHTON

Knighted, 1878; created a Baronet, 1886; created Baron Leighton of Stretton, 1896; elected Associate of the Royal Academy, 1864; Royal Academician, 1869; President of the Royal Academy, 1878; Hon. Member, Royal Scottish Academy, and Royal Hibernian Academy, Associate of the Institute of France, President of the International Jury of Painting, Paris Exhibition, 1878; Hon. Member, Berlin Academy, 1886; also Member of the Royal Academy of Vienna, 1888; Belgium, 1886; of the Academy of St. Luke, Rome, and the Academies of Florence (1882), Turin, Genoa, Perugia, and Antwerp (1885); Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, 1879; Hon. LL.D., Cambridge, 1879; Hon. LL.D., Edinburgh, 1884; Hon. D. Lit., Dublin, 1892; Hon. D.C.L., Durham, 1894; Hon. Fellow of Trinity College, London, 1876; Lieut.-Colonel of the 20th Middlesex (Artist's) Rifle Volunteers, 1876 to 1883 (resigned); then Hon. Colonel and Holder of the Volunteer Decoration; Commander of the Legion of Honour, 1889; Commander of the Order of Leopold; Knight of the Prussian Order "pour le Merite," and of the Coburg Order Dem Verdienste.

LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS

_With Date and Place of Exhibition.[93] Corrected and amplified from "Frederic, Lord Leighton, His Life and Work," by Ernest Rhys._

1850 (_circa_). *Cimabue finding Giotto in the fields of Florence. (49-1/2 x 37 inches.) Steinle Institute (Frankfort).

1850. The Duel between Romeo and Tybalt. (37 x 50 inches.)

1851 (_circa_). The Death of Brunelleschi. Steinle Institute.

1851. [Early Portrait of Leighton by Himself.]

1852. *A Persian Pedlar.

1852. [Buffalmacco, the Painter. A humorous subject, from Vasari, was undertaken about this date.] See Sketch in water-colour, Leighton House Collection.

1853. Portrait of Miss Laing (Lady Nias).

1855. Cimabue's celebrated Madonna is carried in procession through the streets of Florence. In front of the Madonna, and crowned with laurels, walks Cimabue himself, with his pupil Giotto; behind it, Arnolfo di Lappo, Taddeo Gaddi, Andrea Tafi, Niccola Pisano, Buffalmacco, and Simone Memmi; in the corner, Dante. (87-1/2 x 205 inches.) R.A.[94] Purchased by H.M. Queen Victoria, Buckingham Palace. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1855. The Reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets over the dead bodies of Romeo and Juliet. Paris International Exhibition.[95]

1856. The Triumph of Music. (80 x 110 inches.) R.A. Painted in Paris.

"Orpheus, by the power of his art, redeems his wife from Hades."

1856. Pan. [A subject from Keats' _Hymn to Pan_, in the first book of "Endymion."] Painted in Paris. A figure of Pan under a fig-tree, with this inscription:--

"O thou, to whom Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom Their ripen'd fruitage."

1856. Venus. [A pendant to the Pan.] The figure of a nude nymph about to bathe, with a little Cupid loosening her sandal. Exhibited at the Manchester Exhibition and sent to America after. Painted in Paris.

1857. *Salome, the daughter of Herodias. (44-1/2 x 25 inches.) See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1858. *The Mermaid (the fisherman and the syren). (From a ballad by Goethe.) (26-1/2 x 18-1/2 inches.) R.A.

"Half drew she him, Half sunk he in, And never more was seen."

1858. "Count Paris, accompanied by Friar Lawrence and a band of musicians, comes to the house of the Capulets to claim his bride: he finds Juliet stretched apparently lifeless on the bed."--_Romeo and Juliet_, Act iv. sc. 5. (26-1/2 x 18-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1858. Reminiscence of Algiers: A Negro Dance. (Water-colour.) Suffolk Street Gallery.

1859. Sunny Hours. R.A.

1859. *Roman Lady (La Nanna). R.A.

1859. *Nanna (Pavonia). R.A.

1859. Samson and Delilah. S.S. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1860. Capri--Sunrise. R.A.

1861. *Portrait of Mrs. Sutherland Orr [Mrs. S.O., a Portrait]. (28 x 18 inches.) R.A.

1861. *Portrait of John Hanson Walker, Esq. (23 x 17 inches.) Owner, H.M. The King. R.A.

1861. Paolo e Francesca. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

"Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse Quando legemmo il disiato riso Esser baciato da cotanto amante, Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante: Galeotto fu 'l libro e chi lo scrisse: Quel giorno piu non vi legemmo avante."

1861. A Dream.

"...Not yet--not yet-- Still there is trial for thee, still the lot To bear (the Father wills it) strife and care; With this sweet consciousness in balance set Against the world, to soothe thy suffering there The Lord rejects thee not. Such tender words awoke me hopeful, shriven To life on earth again from dream of heaven."

1861. Lieder ohne Worte. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1861. J.A. A Study. R.A.

1861. Capri--Paganos. R.A.

1862. Odalisque. R.A.

1862. *The Star of Bethlehem. (60 x 23-1/2 inches.) One of the Magi, from the terrace of his house, stands looking at the star in the East; the lower part of the picture indicates a road, which he may be supposed just to have left. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1862. Sisters. R.A.

1862. *Michael Angelo Nursing his Dying Servant. (43 x 36 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1862. Duett. R.A.

1862. Sea Echoes. R.A.

1862. Rustic Music. R.A.

1863. Jezebel and Ahab, having caused Naboth to be put to death, go down to take possession of his vineyard; they are met at the entrance by Elijah the Tishbite. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

"Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?"

1863. *Eucharis. (A Girl with a Basket of Fruit.) (32-1/2 x 22 inches.) R.A.

1863. A Girl Feeding Peacocks. R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1863. An Italian Crossbowman. (51 x 24-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1864. Dante at Verona. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1864. *Orpheus and Eurydice. (49 x 42 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

"But give them--the mouth, the eyes,--the brow-- Let them once more absorb me! One look now Will lap me round for ever, not to pass Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond! Hold me but safe again within the bond Of one immortal look! All woe that was, Forgotten, and all terror that may be, Defied--no past is mine, no future! look at me!"

--ROBERT BROWNING: _A Fragment._

1864. *Golden Hours. (36 x 48 inches.) R.A. See Sketches in oil and chalk, Leighton House Collection.

1864. *Portrait of the late Miss Lavinia I'Anson. (Circular, 12-1/2 inches.)

1865. *David. (37 x 47 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

"Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest."--_Psalm_ lv.

1865. Mother and Child. R.A.

1865. Widow's Prayer. R.A.

1865. Helen of Troy. R.A.

"Thus as she spoke, in Helen's breast arose Fond recollections of her former lord, Her home, and parents; o'er her head she threw A snowy veil; and shedding tender tears She issued forth not unaccompanied; For with her went fair AEthra, Pittheus' child, And stag-eyed Clymene, her maidens twain. They quickly at the Scaean gate arrived."

1865. In St. Mark's. R.A.

1866. Painter's Honeymoon. R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1866. Portrait of Mrs. James Guthrie. R.A.

1866. Syracusan Bride leading wild beasts in procession to the Temple of Diana. (Suggested by a passage in the second Idyll of Theocritus.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

"And for her, then, many other wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a lioness."

1866. A Noble Lady of Venice. (Not exhibited till 1897.)

1866. The Wise and Foolish Virgins. (Fresco in Lyndhurst Church, finished 1864.) See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1867. *Pastoral. (51-1/2 x 26 inches.) R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1867. *Greek Girl Dancing. (Spanish Dancing Girl; Cadiz in the old times.) (34 x 45 inches.) R.A.

1867. Knuckle-Bone Player. R.A.

1867. *Roman Mother. (24 x 19 inches.) R.A.

1867. *Venus disrobing for the Bath. (79 x 35-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1867. *Portrait of Mrs. John Hanson Walker. (18 x 16 inches.)

1868. Jonathan's Token to David. R.A.

"And it came to pass in the morning, that Jonathan went out into the field at the time appointed by David, and a little lad with him."

1868. *Portrait of Mrs. Frederick P. Cockerell. (23-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1868. *Portrait of John Martineau, Esq. (23-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1868. *Ariadne abandoned by Theseus; Ariadne watches for his return; Artemis releases her by death. (45 x 62 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1868. *Acme and Septimius. (Circular, 37-1/2 inches.) R.A.

"Then bending gently back her head With that sweet mouth, so rosy red, Upon his eyes she dropped a kiss, Intoxicating him with bliss."

--CATULLUS (Theodore Martin's translation).

1868. *Actaea, the Nymph of the Shore. (22 x 40 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1869. *S. Jerome. (Diploma work, deposited in the Academy on his election as an Academician.) (72 x 55 inches.) R.A.

1869. *Daedalus and Icarus. (53-1/2 x 40-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1869. *Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon. (59-1/2 x 29 inches.) R.A.

1869. *Helios and Rhodos. (65-1/2 x 42 inches) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1870. A Nile Woman. (21-1/2 x 11-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1870. Study. S.S.

1871. *Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis. (54 x 104-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1871. Greek Girls picking up Pebbles by the shore of the Sea. R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1871. *Cleoboulos instructing his daughter Cleobouline. (24 x 37-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1871. View of Assiout (?). (A sketch.) S.S.

1871. Sunrise at Lougsor. (A sketch.) S.S.

1871. View of the Red Mountains near Cairo. (A sketch) S.S.

1872. *After Vespers. (43 x 27-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1872. *Summer Moon. (Guildhall, 1890.) (39-1/2 x 50-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1872. Portrait of the Right Hon. Edward Ryan, Secretary of the Dilettante Society, for which the picture was painted. (S.P.P., 1893.) R.A.

1872. A Condottiere. R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1872. *The Industrial Arts of War, at the International Exhibition at South Kensington. (Monochrome, 76 x 177 inches.) Carried out in fresco on the wall of the Victoria and Albert Museum. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1872. The Captive. S.S.

1872. An Arab Cafe, Algiers. S.S.

1873. *Weaving the Wreath. (Guildhall, 1895.) R.A.

1873. Moretta. (Guildhall, 1894.) (20-1/2 x 14-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1873. The Industrial Arts of Peace. (Monochrome, 76 x 177 inches.) Carried out in fresco on the wall of the Victoria and Albert Museum. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1873. A Roman. S.S.

1873. Vittoria. S.S.

1874. *Moorish Garden: A Dream of Granada. (Guildhall 1895.) (41 x 40 inches.) R.A.

1874. Old Damascus: Jews' Quarter. R.A.

1874. *Antique Juggling Girl. (Guildhall, 1892.) (41-1/2 x 24 inches.) R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1874. Clytemnestra from the battlements of Argos watches for the Beacon Fires which are to announce the return of Agamemnon. R.A. Leighton House Collection. See also Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1874. Annarella, Ana Capri. D.G.

1874. Rubinella, Capri. D.G.

1874. Lemon Tree, Capri. D.G.

1874. West Court of Palazzo, Venice. D.G.

1875. *Portion of the Interior of the Grand Mosque of Damascus. (62 x 47 inches.) R.A.

1875. *Portrait of Mrs. H.E. Gordon. (35-1/2 x 37 inches.) R.A.

1875. *Little Fatima. (15-1/2 x 9-1/4 inches.) R.A.

1875. Venetian Girl. R.A.

1875. *Egyptian Slinger. (Eastern slinger scaring birds in harvest time: Moonrise.) (Guildhall, 1890.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1875. Florentine Youth. S.S.

1875. Ruined Mosque in Damascus. S.S.

1876. *Portrait of Sir Richard Francis Burton, K.C.M.G. (Portrait of Captain Richard Burton, H.M. Consul at Trieste.) (23-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches.) (Paris, 1878; Melbourne, 1888; S.P.P., 1892.) R.A. National Portrait Gallery.

1876. *The Daphnephoria. (89 x 204 inches.) A triumphal procession held every ninth year at Thebes, in honour of Apollo and to commemorate a victory of the Thebans over the Aeolians of Arne. (See Proclus, "Chrestomath," p. 11.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1876. Teresina. R.A.

1876. Paolo. R.A.

1877. *Music Lesson. (36-1/2 x 37-1/8 inches.) (Paris, 1878.) R.A.

1877. *Portrait of Miss Mabel Mills (The Hon. Mrs. Grenfell). (23 x 19 inches.) R.A.

1877. *An Athlete Strangling a Python.[96] Bronze. (Paris, 1878.) R.A. See Sketch in plaster, Leighton House Collection, presented by G.F. Watts, O.M.

1877. *Portrait of H.E. Gordon. (23-1/2 x 19 inches.) G.G.

1877. An Italian Girl. G.G.

1877. *Study. (A little girl with fair hair, in a pink robe.) (24 x 28 inches.) R.A.

1877. A Study. G.G.

1878. *Nausicaa. (57-1/2 x 26-1/2 inches.) (Guildhall, 1896.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1878. Serafina. R.A.

1878. *Winding the Skein. (39-1/2 x 63-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1878. A Study. R.A.

1878. *Portrait of Miss Ruth Stewart Hodgson. (50-1/2 x 35-1/2 inches.) G.G.

1878. Study of a Girl's Head. G.G.

1878. Sierra: Elviza in the distance, Granada. S.S.

1878. The Sierra Alhama, Granada. S.S.

1879. Biondina. R.A.

1879. Catarina. R.A.

1879. *Elijah in the Wilderness. (91 x 81-1/2 inches.) R.A. (Paris, 1878.) Corporation of Liverpool. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1879. Portrait of Signor G. Costa. R.A.

1879. Amarilla. R.A.

1879. A Study. R.A.

1879. Portrait of the Countess Brownlow. R.A.

1879. *Neruccia. (19 x 16 inches.) R.A.

1879. A Study. S.S.

1879. The Carrara Hills. S.S.

1879. A Street in Lerici. S.S.

1879. Via Bianca, Capri. G.G.

1879. Archway in Algiers. G.G.

1879. Ruins of a Mosque, Damascus. G.G.

1879. Study of a Donkey. G.G.

1879. On the Terrace, Capri. G.G.

1879. Sketch near Damascus. G.G.

1879. View in Granada. G.G.

1879. Study of a Donkey, Egypt. G.G.

1879. Study of a Head. G.G.

1879. Nicandra. G.G.

1880. *Sister's Kiss. (48 x 21-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1880. *Iostephane. (37 x 19 inches.) R.A.

1880. The Light of the Harem. (60 x 33 inches.) R.A.

1880. Psamathe. (36 x 24 inches.) R.A.

1880. *The Nymph of the Dargle (Crenaia). (29-1/2 x 10 inches.) R.A.

1880. Rubinella. G.G.

1880. The Pozzo Corner, Venice. Winter Exhibition. G.G.

1880. Jack and his Cider Can. Winter Exhibition. G.G.

1880. The Painter's Honeymoon. Winter Exhibition. G.G.

1880. Winding of the Skein (with sketch). Winter Exhibition. G.G.

1880. Head of Urbino. Winter Exhibition. G.G.

1880. Steps of the Bargello, Florence. Winter Exhibition. G.G.

1880. A Contrast. Winter Exhibition. G.G.

1880. Garden at Capri. Winter Exhibition. G.G.

1880. Twenty-nine Studies of Heads, Flowers, and Draperies. Winter Exhibition. G.G.

1881. Elisha raising the son of the Shunammite. (32 x 54 inches.) (Guildhall, 1895.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1881. Portrait of the Painter.[97] R.A.

1881. *Idyll. (41-1/2 x 84 inches.) R.A. See Sketches in oil and chalk, Leighton House Collection.

1881. *Portrait of Mrs. Stephen Ralli. (48 x 33 inches.) R.A.

1881. *Whispers. (48 x 30 inches.) R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1881. Viola. R.A.

1881. *Bianca. (18 x 12-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1881. Portrait of Mrs. Algernon Sartoris. G.G.

1882. *Day-Dreams. (47-1/2 x 35-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1882. Wedded. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1882. Phryne at Eleusis. (86 x 48 inches.) (Melbourne, 1888.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1882. Antigone. R.A.

1882. "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it"--Rev. xx. 13. (Design for a portion of a decoration in St. Paul's.) R.A. The Tate Gallery. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1882. Melittion. R.A.

1882. *Portrait of Mrs. Mocatta. (23-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches.)

1882. Zeyra. G.G.

1883. The Dance: decorative frieze for a drawing-room in a private house. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1883. *Vestal. (24-1/2 x 17 inches.) R.A.

1883. *Kittens. (48 x 31-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1883. Memories. R.A.

1883. Portrait of Miss Nina Joachim. (16 x 13 inches.)

1884. *Letty. (18 x 15-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1884. *Cymon and Iphigenia. (64 x 129 inches.) (Berlin, 1885.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1884. A Nap. R.A.

1884. Sun Gleams. R.A.

1885. ..."Serenely wandering in a trance of sober thought." ... (46 x 27 inches.) R.A.

1885. Portrait of the Lady Sybil Primrose. R.A.

1885. *Portrait of Mrs. A. Hichens. (26-1/2 x 20-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1885. Music: a frieze. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1885. Phoebe. (Manchester, 1887.) R.A.

1885. A Study. G.G.

1885. Tombs of Muslim Saints. S.S.

1885. Mountains near Ronda Puerta de los Vientos. S.S.

1886. Painted decoration for the ceiling of a music-room.[98] (7 x 20 feet.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1886. Gulnihal. R.A.

1886. *The Sluggard. Statue, bronze. R.A. Presented to the Tate Gallery by Sir Henry Tate. See Statuette, Leighton House Collection.

1886. *Needless Alarms. Statuette. R.A. See Bronze, Leighton House Collection.

1887. *The Jealousy of Simoetha, the Sorceress. (35 x 55-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

1887. *The Last Watch of Hero. (62-1/2 x 35-1/2 inches, with predella 12-1/2 x 29-1/2 inches.) R.A. Corporation of Manchester. See Sketch, Leighton House Collection.

"With aching heart she scanned the sea-face dim. . . . . . . . . . Lo! at the turret's foot his body lay, Rolled on the stones, and washed with breaking spray."

--_Hero and Leander: Musaeus_ (translated by Edwin Arnold).

1887. [Picture of a little girl with golden hair, and pale blue eyes.]

"Yellow and pale as ripened corn Which Autumn's kiss frees--grain from sheath-- Such was her hair, while her eyes beneath, Showed Spring's faint violets freshly born."

--ROBERT BROWNING.

1887. *Design for the reverse of the Jubilee Medallion. (Executed for Her Majesty Queen Victoria's Government.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

Empire, enthroned in the centre, rests her right hand on the sword of Justice, and holds in her left the symbol of victorious rule. At her feet, on one side, Commerce proffers wealth; on the other, a winged figure holds emblems of Electricity and Steam-power. Flanking the throne to the right of the spectator are Agriculture and Industry; on the opposite side, Science, Literature, and the Arts. Above, interlocking wreaths, held by winged genii representing respectively the years 1837 and 1887, inclose the initials V.R.I.

1888. *Captive Andromache. (77 x 160 inches.) R.A. Corporation of Manchester. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

..."Some standing by, Marking thy tears fall, shall say, 'This is she, The wife of that same Hector that fought best Of all the Trojans, when all fought for Troy.'"

--_Iliad_, vi. (E.B. Browning's translation).

1888. *Portrait of Amy, Lady Coleridge. (42 x 39-1/2 inches.) (S.P.P., 1891.) R.A.

1888. *Portraits of the Misses Stewart Hodgson. (47 x 39-1/2 inches.)

1888. Four Studies. R.W.S.

1888. Five Studies. S.S.

1889. *Sibyl. (59 x 34 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1889. *Invocation. (54 x 33-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1889. Elegy. R.A.

1889. Greek Girls playing at Ball. (45 x 78 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1889. *Portrait of Mrs. Francis A. Lucas. (23-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1890. Solitude. R.A.

1890. *The Bath of Psyche.[99] (75 x 24-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1890. *Tragic Poetess. (63 x 34 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1890. *The Arab Hall. (33 x 16 inches.) (Guildhall, 1890.) R.A.

1891. *Perseus and Andromeda. (91-1/2 x 50 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1891. *Portrait of A.B. Freeman-Mitford, Esq., C.B. (46-1/4 x 38-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1891. *Return of Persephone. (79 x 59-1/2 inches.) R.A. Corporation of Leeds. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1891. Athlete Struggling with a Python. Group, marble. R.A.

1892. *"And the sea gave up the dead which were in it." (Circular, 93 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1892. At the Fountain. (49 x 37 inches.) R.A.

1891. *The Garden of the Hesperides. (Circular, 66 inches.) (Chicago, 1893; Guildhall, 1895.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1892. Bacchante. R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1892. *Clytie. (32-1/2 x 53-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1892. Phryne at the Bath. (24 x 12 inches.) S.S. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1892. Malin Head, Donegal. S.S.

1892. St. Mark's, Venice. S.S.

1892. Interior of St. Mark's, Venice. S.S.

1892. The Doorway, North Aisle, Venice. S.S.

1892. Rizpah (the small study in oils). (7 x 7 inches.) S.S.

1893. *Farewell! (63 x 26-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1893. *Hit! (29 x 22 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1893. Atalanta. (26-1/2 x 19 inches.) R.A.

1893. Rizpah. (36 x 52 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1893. Corinna of Tanagra. (47-1/2 x 21 inches.) R.A.

1894. *The Spirit of the Summit. (77-1/2 x 39-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1894. *The Bracelet. (59-1/2 x 23 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1894. *Fatidica. (59-1/2 x 43 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1894. *Summer Slumber. (45-1/2 x 62 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection, one presented by H.M. The King.

1894. At the Window. R.A.

1894. Wide, Wondering Eyes. (20 x 15-1/2 inches.) Manchester.

1894. The Roman Campagna, Monte Soracte in the distance. S.S.

1894. The Acropolis of Lindos. S.S.

1894. Fiume Morto, Gombo, Pisa. S.S.

1894. Gibraltar from San Rocque. S.S.

1895. Lachrymae. (60 x 24 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1895. The Maid with the Yellow Hair. R.A.

1895. *'Twixt Hope and Fear. (43-1/2 x 38-1/2 inches.) R.A.

1895. *Flaming June. (46 x 46 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1895. Listener. R.A.

1895. A Study. R.A.

1895. Phoenicians bartering with Britons. Presented to the Royal Exchange by Lord Leighton. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1895. Boy with Pomegranate. Grafton Gallery.

1895. Miss Dene.

1895. Aqua Certosa, Rome. S.S.

1895. Chain of Hills seen from Ronda. S.S.

1895. Rocks, Malin Head, Donegal. S.S.

1895. Tlemcen, Algeria. S.S.

1896. *Clytie. (61-1/2 x 53-1/2 inches.) R.A. See Sketches, Leighton House Collection.

1896. Candida. (21 x 41-1/2 inches.) Antwerp, 1896.

1896. *The Vestal. (27 x 20-1/2 inches.) Unfinished.

1896. *A Bacchante. (26-1/2 x 21 inches.)

1896. *The Fair Persian. (25-1/2 x 19-1/2 inches.) Unfinished.

FOOTNOTES:

[93] The asterisk denotes works exhibited at the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, 1897.

[94] R.A., Royal Academy; G.G., Grosvenor Gallery; R.W.S., Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours; S.S., Royal Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street; D.G., Dudley Gallery; S.P.P., Society of Portrait Painters.

[95] Exhibited in the Roman section by some blunder of the Committee, the picture having been painted in Rome.

[96] Purchased for L2000 by the President and Council of the Royal Academy, under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest.

[97] Painted by invitation for the collection of Portraits of Artists painted by themselves, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

[98] Painted for the house of Mr. Marquand, New York.

[99] Purchased for 1000 guineas by the President and Council of the Royal Academy, under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest.

INDEX

Abercorn, Lady, i. 256; ii. 338

Aberdeen, Lord, i. 256

Abydos, ii. 180

Academy, _see_ Royal Academy

Acland, Sir Henry, ii. 364, 373

Acton, Lord, quoted, ii. 33-34

AEsthetics, i. 103-104

Afreet, ii. 168

Agnew, ii. 286

Aide, Hamilton, i. 195; ii. 60, 105, 110, 111; letter from, ii. 126 _note_ [40]; quoted, i. 154 _note_ [28]

Aitchison, George, i. 164; ii. 7, 116, 117, 221, 363; letter from, to Prof. Church, ii. 222 _note_ [57]; quoted, ii. 118-119, 217 _note_ [55], 365, 372

Albert, Prince Consort, i. 1, 261, 262; ii. 202; death of, ii. 85

Alexandra, Queen (Princess of Wales), lines by, on Leighton, i. 33;