In 1892 a version of a panel of the proposed decoration for the dome of St. Paul's appeared with the title, And the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it; this, purchased by Mr. Henry Tate, is now among the pictures he gave to the Gallery at Millbank. The most important of Leighton's later works, The Garden of the Hesperides, in many respects the most sumptuous piece of decoration he ever achieved, was shown this year. It is a large circular picture, the centre occupied by a tree bearing golden apples; under its branches recline the three Hesperides, caressing the dragon who assists them to guard the treasure. A superbly brilliant sea is in the distance. The charm of this picture is mainly in its colour, but as an example of elaborately artificial composition it is hardly less noteworthy. Unfortunately, despite every effort of Lord Leighton, most kindly exerted on behalf of the editor of this volume, the owners of the copyright refused under any condition to allow it to be illustrated herein. A Bacchante, and At the Fountain, a girl in fawn-coloured and violet draperies, with a bunch of lemons overhanging the marble wall behind her, were shown this year; and also a Clytie, which must not be confused with another known by the same title, the last picture on which the artist was at work before his death. The 1892 version, shown in the retrospective exhibition, is thus described in its catalogue: "A small figure of Clytie is seen on the right, kneeling on a stone building with arms outstretched towards the sun, which is setting behind a range of moorland hills."

In 1893 Hit, The Frigidarium, Farewell, Corinna of Tanagra, and Rizpah were exhibited at the Academy. Of these the most important is the last named. It illustrates the story of the two sons of Rizpah, by Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, who were slain by the Gideonites. Rizpah, robed in dark blue, is seen in the act of fetching away their bodies, which are shrouded by dull lilac and blue draperies. Vultures circle above, and two leopards approach stealthily. Farewell is a single figure in olive green and plum-coloured peplis under a portico above the sea, where she pauses to take a last look at an outward-bound ship.

Atalanta depicts the bust only of a dark-haired girl in purple and white drapery, with a snake-like ornament twisted round her arm, which is bare to the shoulder. Corinna of Tanagra is a half-length figure crowned with leaves, in coloured drapery, resting her clasped hands upon her lyre. The Frigidarium is an upright figure in semi-transparent red drapery, which with the background of gold is reflected in the water beneath her feet.



In 1894 were shown The Spirit of the Summit, a white-robed figure with upturned face, sitting on a snowy peak, with starlit sky beyond; The Bracelet; Fatidica, a figure in green-white robes; At the Window, a dark-haired boy in blue, looking over the ledge of a window; and Summer Slumber. This last is a somewhat elaborate composition; a girl in salmon colour draperies is lying asleep on the broad rim of a marble fountain, masses of flowers are in the mid distance, and a vista of sunny landscape through the open window beyond.

In 1895, the last year of the artist's working life, he sent six pictures to the Academy, and completed the wall decoration at the Royal Exchange (here illustrated), Phoenicians Bartering with Britons. The paintings were entitled, Flaming June (a picture reproduced in colours for a Christmas number of the "Graphic"), in which the "broad" painting of the sea beyond was a notable exception to the artist's usual handling; Lachrymae, a standing figure in robes of black and blue green, resting her arm upon a Doric column; 'Twixt Hope and Fear, a seated figure of a black-haired Greek girl, robed in white and olive, with a sheep-skin thrown around her; The Maid with her Yellow Hair, a girlish figure in lemon-coloured drapery, reading from a red-backed book; Listener, a child seated with crossed legs on a fur rug; and a Study of a Girl's Head, with auburn, wavy hair.

In the 1896 Academy Clytie was the only picture. In Lord Leighton's studio in various stages of completion were a Bacchante, a half-length figure of a fair-haired girl crowned with leaves, and a leopard skin over her shoulder; The Fair Persian, a bust of a girl with flowing dark hair, crowned by a jewelled circlet; and The Vestal, a half-length figure of a girl in white drapery, these were all exhibited at the Winter Exhibition of 1897.

To Clytie, his last picture, a small monograph has been devoted by the Fine Art Society. In this we read: "'Thank goodness my ailment has not interfered with my capacity for work, for I have never had a better appetite for it, nor I believe done better. I was idle for five months in the summer, but since my return I have been working hard and have produced the pictures you see.' Thus he spoke to the present writer [of the monograph in question] as he led the way across his studio.... Turning to the Clytie he continued: 'This I have been at work upon all the morning. Orchardson has been so good as to say I have never done anything finer than the sky. You know the story. I have shown the goddess in adoration before the setting sun, whose last rays are permeating her whole being. With upraised arms she is entreating her beloved one not to forsake her. A flood of golden light saturates the scene, and to carry out my intention, I have changed my model's hair from black to auburn. To the right is a small altar, upon which is an offering of fruit, and upon a pillar beyond I shall show the feet of a statue of Apollo.'

"But a few days after this occurrence the dead President lay in semi-state in his coffin, before the picture. A drawing in the 'Graphic' (January 26th, 1896) shows the interior of the studio, with the figure of Clytie, in her attitude of despair, stretching her arms above the body of her creator."

Here the record, year by year, is closed. A few pictures seem to have escaped the honours of exhibition. One,[8] A Noble Lady of Venice, in possession of Lord Armstrong, does not appear to have been exhibited. It is probably the picture which was sold at Christie's in 1875 for 950 guineas. A Lady with Pomegranates, which sold for 765 guineas at the sale of Baron Grant's pictures in 1877, does not appear in our list of exhibited works; nor, it may be, are all the early pictures included therein. But the official catalogues of the Royal Academy May Exhibitions, and of the special Winter Exhibition devoted to the artist's works, have been freely drawn upon for description, and to the list of his life's work, as it appeared in the first edition of this work, many additions have been made.



CHAPTER VI

HIS METHOD OF PAINTING

For particulars of the wonderfully thorough "method," which Leighton used in preparing his pictures, we cannot do better than quote the following admirable account by Mr. M. H. Spielmann (published during the painter's life), which he has allowed us to reprint here.[9]

"I have said that the sense of line in composition, in figure and drapery, is one of the chief qualities of the artist; and the conviction that the method in which he places them upon canvas with such unerring success—for it may be said that the President rarely, if ever, produces an ugly form in a picture—would be both interesting and instructive, prompted me to learn in what manner his effects are produced. This I have done, having special regard to one of his Academy pictures, The Sibyl, which, being a single figure, simplifies greatly the explanation of the mode of procedure. This explanation holds good in every case, be the composition great or small, elaborate or simple; the modus operandi is always the same.



"Having by good fortune observed in a model an extraordinarily fine and 'Michelangelesque' formation of the hand and wrist—an articulation as rare to find as it is anatomically beautiful and desirable—he bethought him of a subject that would enable him to introduce his trouvaille. As but one attitude could display the special formation to advantage, the idea of a Sibyl, sitting brooding beside her oracular tripod, was soon evolved, but not so soon was its form determined and fixed. Like Mr. Watts, Sir Frederic Leighton thinks out the whole picture before he puts brush to canvas, or chalk to paper; but, unlike Mr. Watts, once he is decided upon his scheme of colour, the arrangement of line, the disposition of the folds, down to the minutest details, he seldom, if ever, alters a single line. And the reason is evident. In Sir Frederic's pictures—which are, above all, decorations in the real sense of the word—the design is a pattern in which every line has its place and its proper relation to other lines, so that the disturbing of one of them, outside of certain limits, would throw the whole out of gear. Having thus determined his picture in his mind's eye, he in the majority of cases makes a sketch in black and white chalk upon brown paper to fix it. In the first sketch, the care with which the folds have been broadly arranged will be evident, and, if it be compared with the finished picture, the very slight degree in which the general scheme has been departed from will convince the reader of the almost scientific precision of the artist's line of action. But there is a good reason for this determining of the draperies before the model is called in; and it is this. The nude model, no matter how practised he or she may be, never moves or stands or sits, in these degenerate days, with exactly the same freedom as when draped; action or pose is always different—not so much from a sense of mental constraint as from the unusual liberty experienced by the limbs, to which the muscular action invariably responds when the body is released from the discipline and confinement of clothing.

"The picture having been thus determined, the model is called in, and is posed as nearly as possible in the attitude desired. As nearly as possible I say, for, as no two faces are exactly alike, no two models ever entirely resemble one another in body or muscular action, and cannot, therefore, pose in such a manner as exactly to correspond with either another model or another figure—no matter how correctly the latter may be drawn. From the model the artist makes the careful outline, in brown paper, a true transcript from life, which may entail some slight corrections of the original design in the direction of modifying the attitude and general appearance of the figure. This would be rendered necessary, probably by the bulk and material of the drapery. So far, of course, the artist's attention is engaged exclusively by 'form,' 'colour' being always treated more or less ideally. The figure is now placed in its surroundings, and established in exact relation to the canvas. The result is the first true sketch of the entire design, figure and background, and is built up of the two previous ones. It must be absolutely accurate in the distribution of spaces, for it has subsequently to be 'squared off' on to the canvas, which is ordered to the exact scale of the sketch. At this moment, the design being finally determined, the sketch in oil colours is made. It has been deferred till now, because the placing of the colours is, of course, of as much importance as the harmony. This done, the canvas is for the first time produced, and thereon is enlarged the design, the painter re-drawing the outline—never departing a hair's breadth from the outlines and forms already obtained—and then highly finishing the whole figure in warm monochrome from the life. Every muscle, every joint, every crease is there, although all this careful painting is shortly to be hidden with the draperies; such, however, is the only method of insuring absolute correctness of drawing. The fourth stage completed, the artist returns once more to his brown paper, re-copies the outline accurately from the picture, on a larger scale than before, and resumes his studies of draperies in greater detail and with still greater precision, dealing with them in sections, as parts of a homogeneous whole. The draperies are now laid with infinite care on to the living model, and are made to approximate as closely as possible to the arrangement given in the first sketch, which, as it was not haphazard, but most carefully worked out, must of necessity be adhered to. They have often to be drawn piecemeal, as a model cannot by any means always retain the attitude sufficiently long for the design to be wholly carried out at one cast. This arrangement is effected with special reference to painting—that is to say, giving not only form and light and shade, but also the relation and 'values' of tones. The draperies are drawn over, and are made to conform exactly to the forms copied from the nudes of the underpainted picture. This is a cardinal point, because in carrying out the picture the folds are found fitting mathematically on to the nude, or nudes, first established on the canvas. The next step then is to transfer these draperies to the canvas on which the design has been squared off, and this is done with flowing colour in the same monochrome as before over the nudes, to which they are intelligently applied, and which nudes must never—mentally at least—be lost sight of. The canvas has been prepared with a grey tone, lighter or darker, according to the subject in hand, and the effect to be produced. The background and accessories being now added, the whole picture presents a more or less completed aspect—resembling that, say, of a print of any warm tone. In the case of draperies of very vigorous tone, a rich flat local colour is probably rubbed over them, the modelling underneath being, though thin, so sharp and definite as to assert itself through this wash. Certain portions of the picture might probably be prepared with a wash or flat tinting of a colour the opposite of that which it is eventually to receive. A blue sky, for instance, would possibly have a soft, ruddy tone spread over the canvas—the sky, which is a very definite and important part of the President's compositions, being as completely drawn in monochrome as any other portion of the design; or for rich blue mountains a strong orange wash or tint might be used as a bed. The structure of the picture being thus absolutely complete, and the effect distinctly determined by a sketch which it is the painter's aim to equal in the big work, he has nothing to think of but colour, and with that he now proceeds deliberately, but rapidly.



"Such is the method by which Sir Frederic Leighton finds it convenient to build up his pictures. The labour entailed by such a system as this is, of course, enormous, more especially when the composition to be worked out is of so complex a character as the Captive Andromache of last year, every figure and group of which were treated with the same completeness and detail as we have seen to attend the production of so simple a picture as The Sibyl. Deliberateness of workmanship and calculation of effect, into which inspiration of the moment is never allowed to enter, are the chief characteristics of the painter's craftsmanship. The inspiration stage was practically passed when he took the crayon in his hand; and to this circumstance probably is to be assigned the absence of realism which arrests the attention of the beholder."

Mr. Spielmann has instanced, in the above account, the tragic and lovely Captive Andromache, exhibited in 1888; and we may further add that exquisite painting of Greek Girls playing at Ball, of 1889; or the still more exquisite Bath of Psyche, of the year following. All three are full of technical delicacy and finesse. For other qualities take that radiantly pictured myth, the Perseus and Andromeda, or the Return of Persephone (both of 1891); or the lovely Clytie of 1892, whose sunset background was painted at Malinmore, on the west coast of Donegal; or the Atalanta or the Rizpah of 1893.



The memorable picture, first named of these, which shows Andromache at the Well, is in particular a most characteristic example of the artist's larger style. In it, true to his classic predilections, he gives a new setting to the touching old story of Andromache's captivity. Following up the earlier scene in the "Iliad," where Andromache begs her husband Hector not to sally forth to battle, but to stay and defend the city, and where, finding her prayers in vain, and weeping, she bids Hector farewell, the picture shows the fulfilment of Andromache's fears and the dire prophecy which Hector had recalled to his wife.

By way of contrast to this sombre canvas, take the glowing and brilliant colours of the Perseus and Andromeda, one of the three pictures shown at the Academy in 1891. The painting of the surroundings of Andromeda, the deep blue water in the sea lagoon beneath, and these radiant elemental people of air and light, provides such a glow of colour, as haunts the eye for long after one has gazed one's fill upon it. Something of the same feeling for the spirit that is in the forces of the earth, lurks behind many of Leighton's representments of the classic myths. It is certainly to be found, with a difference, in the Return of Persephone, exhibited with the Perseus, which becomes in the artist's hands a profound allegory of the return of Spring, with all kind of symbolical meanings in the three figures of Proserpine, Ceres, and Hermes, that are seen meeting before the mouth of Hades. The Spirit of the Summit, one of the latest of these embodiments of the relation of Man to Nature, may be read to mean Man's finer spirit of aspiration, and the mountainous imagination of Art itself. It is characteristic of the artist that, in the later years of his career, at a time when most artists and men are apt to give up something of their earlier pursuit of ideals, he retained undiminished a feeling for the unaccomplished heights of the imagination. The Spirit of the Summit may serve, then, as the symbol, not so much of things attained, and Art victorious, as of things that are always to be attained, and of Art striving and undeterred. In this way it may serve, too, as in some sort the emblem of Leighton's own ideals, and of his whole career. His artistic temper was throughout, one of endless energy, endless determination; with a dash of that finer dissatisfaction which is always seeking out new embodiments, under all difficulties, of Man's pursuit, in a difficult, and often an unbeautiful world, of Truth and Beauty. Above all, he was a consummate draughtsman, and as Francisco Pacheco, the father-in-law of Velasquez, wrote in his "Arte de la Pintura" (1649): "Drawing is the life and soul of painting; drawing, especially outline, is the hardest; nay, the Art has, strictly speaking, no other difficulty. Without drawing painting is nothing but a vulgar craft; those who neglect it are bastards of the Art, mere daubers and blotchers."



CHAPTER VII

MURAL DECORATION, SCULPTURE, AND ILLUSTRATION

The drawings of Lord Leighton deserve special consideration. The famous Lemon Tree was made at Capri in the Spring of 1859; it is work that no Pre-Raphaelite could have finished more minutely, yet it has nothing "niggling" in its treatment. In a conversation[10] Lord Leighton is said to have referred to the many days spent upon the production of this study—dwelling specially on the difficulty he experienced in finding again and again each separate leaf in the perspective of the confused branches, as morning after morning he returned at sunrise to continue the work. The drawing of each leaf reveals the close observation which ultimately recorded its particular individuality. You feel that as a shepherd knows his sheep to call each by its name, so the artist must have become familiar with every separate leaf and twig before he had completed his task. The whole is broad and simple, and scarcely suggests the enormous patience which must have been needed to carry out the self-imposed toil. Nothing is shirked, nothing is scamped; from the stem to the outermost leaf, every part in succession reveals equal interest, and yet the whole is not without that larger quality which brings it together in a harmonious whole, so that it is as much the study of a tree as the study of each separate item that composes it.

The Byzantine Well-head is another notable instance of similar labour devoted to an architectural subject; this was evidently a favourite with its author; for during his life it hung close by his bed in the simple chamber of his otherwise sumptuous home, a room devoid of luxury and almost ascetic in its appointments.[11]

The great mass of studies, on brown paper chiefly, which he had carefully preserved, were purchased by the Fine Art Society, and some two hundred and fifty were exhibited at their gallery in December, 1896, and a selection in facsimile has been published in sumptuous form. In a prefatory note to the catalogue of these studies Mr. S. Pepys Cockerell says: "It is seldom that we are privileged to watch at ease the workings of another's mind, but these drawings, the intimate record of a long life-time, offer an unusually good opportunity. One might call them the confessions of an artist; and anyone who wants to know what Leighton was really like, has only to use his eyes. One thing, at any rate, no one can fail to see, viz., that he had the qualities which result in industry. Whatever success he achieved was only gained after desperate labour. It is curious that while he had the reputation for working with ease, he considered himself to have no facility for anything, whether for art, for writing, or for speaking. I recollect his once saying: 'Thank Heaven, I was never clever at anything,' for he believed with Sir Joshua, that everything is granted to well-deserved labour."

The landscape studies in oil (of which a list almost complete will be found in Appendix II.), show equal observation and sympathetic perception of the beauty of colour, as well as of the beauty of form. The truth of these carefully recorded impressions of scenery was no less patent than the masterly "selection" which had set itself to depict all that seemed of value, and escaped at once the photographic imitation of one school, and the evasion of detail of another. They all preserve a certain classic repose, without violence to topographical accuracy, or painter-like intention.



We have had occasion to refer frequently, in passing, to Leighton's decorative works, but we have purposely deferred any description of them, preferring to treat them separately. To know how present was his feeling for decorative effect at all times, it is sufficient to glance never so casually at his own house, about which we hope presently to say something,—genuine expression as it is of his Art. Now we wish rather to touch on his more public performances. Of these, the famous frescoes which fill large lunettes in the central court at South Kensington, The Industrial Arts of War and The Industrial Arts of Peace, are the best known, as they are among the most characteristic of all the artist's productions.

The fresco of The Arts of War is a very complex piece of work. It is crowded with figures, full of that orderly disorder which one must expect to find, on the hurried morning of a day of battle, in these delightfully decorative warriors. "In the centre"—we quote here Mrs. Lang's description—"is a white marble staircase, leading from the quadrangle to an archway, beyond which is another courtyard. Seen through the archway, knights are riding by.... The busy scene in the courtyard suggests an immediate departure to the seat of war. In the corner to the right crossbows are being chosen and tested; a man is kneeling by a pile of swords, and descanting on their various merits to an undecided customer, while those weapons that he has already disposed of are having their blades tried and felt. A little way off, to the left of the archway, some men-at-arms are trying on the armour of a youth who has still to win his spurs.... The whole is distinguished by the extreme naturalness and simplicity of all the actions, and by soft, glowing colours, chiefly dark olive green and splendid saffrons."

In The Arts of Peace, its companion, the central portion of the fresco is devised as the interior of a Greek house, where within a semicircular alcove we see a number of Greek maidens and older women, delightfully grouped, mainly occupied in the art of personal adornment. Before this house is the waterside, with a very decorative boat, confined by a gracefully-looped chain, whose curve, as it hangs, is very subtly designed to complete the salient lines of the whole composition. On either side of this interior we have groups of men, more vigorously treated,—drawing water, bearing burdens, pushing a boat from land. The total effect of these finely posed contrasted groups, of the admirably architectured walls, piers, and pavements, and of the striking background, as of another hill-crowned Athens, is most complete and satisfying. The colouring throughout, diversified with extreme art as it is, is full of that southern radiance, and clear, sunlit glamour, so often found in the artist's pictures. To realize this fully, South Kensington must be visited, for word-painting at its best but poorly reproduces the art that it doubtfully imitates.



But these were by no means the first attempts of the artist to acclimatize the noblest form of mural decoration, which cannot even at this date be regarded as fully naturalized amongst us. In 1866 he commenced work on a fresco of The Wise and Foolish Virgins, which forms the altarpiece of the beautiful modern church at Lyndhurst, erected on the site of the older building commemorated in Charles Kingsley's ballad. This painting still remains a lasting attraction to visitors in the New Forest village. In the centre, the Bridegroom, clad in white, bearing lilies in His left hand, extends His right to the foremost of the five wise virgins. Angels at each side of the central figure welcome the one group, and repel the other. On the extreme right is a kneeling figure, "Ora;" on the left, "Vigila," a figure trimming a lamp. The scale of the figures is over life-size, and the unfortunate position of the work, immediately under a large east window, so that the figures appear standing on the altar, has provoked adverse criticism; but the painting itself, as a triumphant accomplishment of a peculiarly difficult undertaking, and a superb scheme of line and colour, has won favourable comments at all times. It was painted in the medium, a mixture of copal, wax, resin, and oil, previously employed with success by Mr. Gambier Parry in his decorations for Ely Cathedral.

It is interesting to read the account of the execution of this work, which is said to have been carried out chiefly on Saturday afternoons, the artist catching a mid-day train from town, and working on it from the moment of his arrival until dusk. Experience of the London and South Western Railway Company thirty years ago makes one doubt whether leaving town at mid-day should not be taken as arriving at Lyndhurst Road at that time, for otherwise it would have been a miracle to accomplish the task by daylight. It is, however, exhilarating to find that the sustained enthusiasm of the young artist was equal to the effort involved in mastering so many obstacles; for the result, despite the increased attention given to decoration in these later years, may even now be considered, so far as modern ecclesiastical painting is concerned, to be without a rival in England.

The beautiful Cupid with Doves, is also said to be from a fresco; whether a genuine painting on the wall itself (after the true fresco manner) or not, it has the larger qualities peculiar to the method which distinguishes several other works that were certainly not executed in this medium,—the latest of Leighton's mural decorations, for example, a painting of Phoenicians Bartering with Britons, which the President of the Royal Academy in 1895 presented as the first of a series of panels in the Royal Exchange. Although, as this was painted on canvas, it cannot be ranked as a legitimate successor in the direct line of the Lyndhurst and South Kensington frescoes, it is marked by many of the architectural qualities which distinguish a painting designed to be in true relation to the planes of its surroundings, and employs a convention which makes it appear an integral part of the wall surface, not a mere panel accidentally placed within a frame supplied by the features of the building itself.

The South Kensington frescoes, as we have before stated, were painted in 1872-3. Some ten years later Sir Frederic collaborated with Sir Edward (then Mr.) Poynter in the decoration of the dome of St. Paul's. His share was to have filled eight medallions, so called, in the compartments into which his colleague divided the dome. The design for one of these, The Sea gave up the Dead which were in it, was exhibited at the Academy of 1892, and is now among the works presented by Mr. Tate to the National Gallery of British Art. This is another treatment of a great subject, in which the problem of reconciling the dramatic with the decorative has been seriously attempted. The dome of St. Paul's, had it been completed according to this scheme, might have been a worthy if a somewhat academic presentation of the tremendous visions of the Apocalypse.



Certain others of Leighton's decorative works we have already mentioned, such as the design for a ceiling, now in New York. Not so well known is his frieze delineating a dance, for an English drawing-room; or the small frieze with a design of Dolphins, also in England. A scheme in water-colours for a mural decoration, entitled The Departure for the War, was never carried out; the sketch for it was sold with the remaining works at Christie's, July, 1896. The single figures in mosaic of Cimabue and Pisano, at the South Kensington Museum, must not be forgotten.

To the public—or at least that portion which limits its art to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy—Leighton, as we have seen, made his debut as a sculptor with the group, An Athlete struggling with a Python (known also as An Athlete strangling a Python), which in the bronze version is now among works purchased under the terms of the Chantrey bequest in the Tate Gallery. But long before that date he had successfully essayed plastic art; his first effort being for the medallion of a monument to Mrs. Browning in the Protestant cemetery at Florence. Two other monuments, to the memory of Major Sutherland Orr (his sister's husband), and Lady Charlotte Greville, must also be mentioned. We have already spoken of The Athlete, The Sluggard, and Needless Alarms. But it would be unfair to omit mention of many small works—small, that is to say, in scale, for they are distinguished by great breadth of handling—which were prepared as auxiliary studies for his paintings. Visitors to the studio in Holland Park Road, were always impressed by several of these models, which stood on a large chest in the bay of a great studio window. Especially noteworthy was a group of three singing maidens, who figure in The Daphnephoria, and another of the "choragus" for the same picture; for later works, the mounted Perseus, and Andromeda with the monster, both designed for the picture of that legend. Others belonging to a slightly earlier period included—the sleeping Iphigenia, a crouching figure of her attendant, and a nude figure of Cymon, all, of course, for Cymon and Iphigenia. These models were made to be clad in wet drapery of exquisitely fine texture, and were prepared only for ten minutes' drawing of the first idea of the figures; all serious study being made from the draped model, or the lay figure. Such help as they have rendered must all be referred to the period before the finished cartoon was ready to be traced on the canvas. Since Lord Leighton's decease most of these have been successfully cast in bronze, and are the property of the Royal Academy. In the studio were also the first sketches in clay for The Sluggard, and also for The Athlete, which was not originally intended to be carried further. Indeed, several people mistook it for a genuine antique, and admired it accordingly; Dalou, the great French sculptor, was especially so struck by it, that he advised its author to work out the idea in full size. The three years' labour devoted to the task, the failures by the way, and its ultimate triumphant success, both here and in Paris, are too well known to need recapitulation. A replica was commissioned for the Copenhagen Gallery, and probably no work of its accomplished author did more to win him the appreciation of French and German artists.



In this brief mention of Lord Leighton's achievements in sculpture, the medal commemorating the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, a study for which is reproduced at p. 130, must not be overlooked.

Although to those who have not followed closely the splendid period of English illustration which may be said to have reached its zenith at the time when Dalziel's "Bible Gallery" was published, it may be a surprise to find "Frederic Leighton" figuring as an illustrator, yet the nine compositions in that book are by no means his sole contribution to the art of black and white.

For each instalment of "Romola," as it ran through the pages of the "Cornhill Magazine," the artist contributed a full page drawing, and an initial letter. The twenty-four full pages were afterwards reprinted in "The Cornhill Gallery" (Smith and Elder, 1865). These are most notable works, even when measured by the standard of their contemporaries. The same magazine contains two other works from his pen, one illustrating a poem, "The great God Pan," by Mrs. Browning, and another illustrating a story by Mrs. Sartoris, entitled "A Week in a French Country House." These, and the nine compositions in the "Bible Gallery" (the pictures from which have lately been re-issued in a popular form by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) exhaust the list of those which can be traced. As four of the magnificent designs are reproduced here, it would be superfluous to describe them; the titles of the five others are: Abram and the Angel, Eliezer and Rebekah, Death of the First Born, The Spies' Escape, and Samson at the Mill.

One of the original drawings on wood is now on view at the South Kensington Museum, and, by comparison with impressions from the engraved blocks, we see how small has been the loss in translation, so admirably has the artist mastered the limitation of the technique that was to represent his work in another medium. The reproductions here given are considerably reduced, and necessarily lose something, but they retain enough to prove that had the artist cared to rest his reputation upon such works, he might have done so with a light heart, for whenever the golden period of English illustration is recalled, these comparatively few drawings will inevitably be recalled with it.

A photographic silver-print from a drawing which forms the frontispiece to a little book of fairy tales is of hardly sufficient importance—charming though its original must have been—to be included among the book illustrations. The drawing, A Contrast, reproduced at p. 72, is undated; the idea it is intended to suggest, a model who once stood for some youthful god, revisiting the adolescent portrait of himself when old age has him gripped fast with rheumatism and failing vigour.

To-day, when one has heard sculptors claim that Lord Leighton's finest work was in their own craft, one has also heard many illustrators not merely extol these drawings—notably the Bible subjects—as his masterpieces, but jealously refuse to consider him entitled to serious regard as an artist in any other medium. This attitude, so curiously unlike the usual welcome from experts which awaits an artist who ventures into fresh mediums for expressing himself, should be put on record as a unique tribute; the more worthy of attention, because in each instance it was advanced not wholly as praise, but to some extent as a reproach on Leighton's painting. No intended compliment could carry more genuine appreciation than this warm approval from fellow experts in the special subjects of which they are masters.



CHAPTER VIII

DISCOURSES ON ART

We must next speak of the late President's Addresses and Discourses on Art, and of that other art of oratory, which, we shall find, as he conceived it, had something of the same monumental quality he imparted to his painting. His presidential speeches at the annual banquet of the Academy would alone be sufficient to show this; but it is of course to his Addresses and Discourses that we must turn if we would understand his feeling for the two unallied arts.

His success in the one is to be explained, we shall find, in very much the same way as his success in the other. Like most speakers of any distinction, Lord Leighton left nothing to chance. In his speeches and Discourses, as in his pictures, the most careful and exact preparation was made for every effect, however apparently casual it may have seemed. His Discourses were obviously based upon classic models; for their full periods, sonorously and deliberately arranged, have a rhythm that attends to the whole period, and not merely, as is often the way with English speakers, to each sentence in turn.

In quoting from these Discourses, we do so, however, with an eye to his own proper art as a painter, and to his whole theory and sentiment of that art and its functions, and its allied plastic arts, even more than to his art as a speaker. Indeed, the Discourses form a unique contribution to the art criticism of our time; they cover the most interesting and various periods in the history of the Art of Europe; and although the cycle he had mapped out was interrupted before he had completed it—first by illness which postponed the biennial discourse, and then by death—the portions already delivered touch incidentally on the theory and philosophy of all Art in a highly suggestive and eloquent way.

In his first Discourse, delivered to the Academy students on the 10th of December, 1879, the new President took occasion to estimate the modern predicament and general position of Art, as a prelude to the consideration of its special developments, in later Discourses. "I wish in so doing," he said, "to seek the solution of certain perplexities and doubts which will often, in these days of restless self-questioning in which we live, arise in the minds and weigh on the hearts of students who think as well as work."

In answering the question of questions in Art for us to-day—that is, what are its chances in the present, compared with the glory and splendour of its achievement in the past?—Leighton provides us with some memorable passages in his first Discourse. Speaking of the "Evolution of Painting in Italy," he turned it to notable account in his argument, as in this reference to the Florentine school:

"It is, perhaps," he said, "in Tuscany, and notably in Florence, that we see the national temperament most clearly declared in its art, as indeed in all its intellectual productions; here we see that strange mixture of Attic subtlety and exquisiteness of taste, with a sombre fervour and a rude Pelasgic strength which marks the Tuscans, sending forth a Dante, a Brunelleschi, and a Michael Angelo,—a Fiesole, a Boccaccio, and a Botticelli, and we find that eagerness in the pursuit of the knowledge of men and things, which was so characteristic of them, summed up in a Macchiavelli and a Lionardi da Vinci."



How different the conditions when we turn to consider English Art, as it stands to-day: "The whole current of human life setting resolutely in a direction opposed to artistic production; no love of beauty, no sense of the outward dignity and comeliness of things, calling on the part of the public for expression at the artist's hands; and, as a corollary, no dignity, no comeliness for the most part, in their outward aspect; everywhere a narrow utilitarianism which does not include the gratification of the artistic sense amongst things useful; the works of artists sought for indeed, but too often as a profitable merchandise, or a vehicle of speculation, too often on grounds wholly foreign to their intrinsic worth as productions of a distinctive form of human genius, with laws and conditions of its own."

The modern student may well question, whether the great artists of the past, if they lived now under our different conditions, would achieve all that they did then. For further bewilderment, the differences to be seen in the past itself, between school and school, and one age and another, may lead him to doubt "whether Art be not indeed an ephemeral thing, a mere efflorescence of the human intelligence, an isolated development, incapable of organic growth." To such doubts, comes the reassuring answer: "That Art is fed by forces that lie in the depth of our nature, and which are as old as man himself; of which therefore we need not doubt the durability; and to the question whether Art with all its blossoms has but one root, the answer we shall see to be: Assuredly it has; for its outward modes of expression are many and various, but its underlying vital motives are the same."

The new President concluded his first Discourse with an eloquent plea for sincerity in Art: "Without sincerity of emotion no gift, however facile and specious, will avail you to win the lasting sympathies of men"—a truth which perhaps needs more repeating to-day than ever it did!

In the second Discourse (December 10th, 1881), we are called upon to consider that other question which has so often perplexed the artist, especially the English artist, in whom the moral sentiment is apt to take a threatening form on occasion: "What is the relation in which Art stands to Morals and to Religion?"

For his reply, Leighton took in turn the two contentions: one, that the first duty of all artistic productions is the inculcation of a moral lesson, if not indeed of a Christian truth; the other, that Art is altogether independent of ethics. His conclusion is the only sagacious and sane one: that whilst Art in itself is indeed independent of ethics, yet is there no error so deadly as to deny that "the moral complexion, the ethos, of the artist does in truth tinge every work of his hand, and fashion, in silence, but with the certainty of fate, the course and current of his whole career." The steps that lead irresistibly to this conclusion, are very clearly indicated in the course of this Discourse; and the more convincingly, because the speaker is himself so sympathetic to the religious inspiration of Italian art, on the one hand, and to its merely natural aesthetic growth on the other.



"The language of Art," he said then, "is not the appointed vehicle of ethic truths;... On the other hand, there is a field in which she has no rival. We have within us the faculty for a range of emotion, of exquisite subtlety and of irresistible force, to which Art, and Art alone amongst human forms of expression, has a key; these then, and no others, are the chords which it is her appointed duty to strike; and form, colour, and the contrasts of light and shade are the agents through which it is given to her to set them in motion. Her duty is, therefore, to awaken those sensations directly emotional and indirectly intellectual, which can be communicated only through the sense of sight, to the delight of which she has primarily to minister. And the dignity of these sensations lies in this, that they are inseparably connected by association of ideas with a range of perception and feelings of infinite variety and scope. They come fraught with dim complex memories of all the evershifting spectacle of inanimate creation and of the more deeply stirring phenomena of life; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the outer world; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the changeful and the transitory lives of men."

In his third Discourse, which was delivered on the 10th December, 1883, the President entered on his exhaustive discussion, continued in many subsequent Discourses, of "The relation of Artistic Production to the conditions of time and place under which it is evolved, and to the characteristics of the races to which it is due." In this Discourse he briefly and suggestively reviews the Art of Egypt, Assyria, and Greece, endeavouring to account for the main characteristics of each. In Egypt he shows how a nation securely established in a peace and pre-eminence lasting for ages, blessed beyond measure in a fertile and prospering climate, a nation beyond all things pious and occupied in reverential care of the dead, should give birth to an art serene, magnificent, and vast. "Those whose fortune it has been," he eloquently said, "to stand by the base of the Great Pyramid of Khoofoo, and look up at its far summit flaming in the violet sky, or to gaze on the wreck of that solemn watcher of the rising sun, the giant Sphinx of Gizeh, erect, still, after sixty centuries in the desert's slowly rising tide; or who have rested in the shade of the huge shafts which tell of the pomp and splendour of hundred-gated Thebes; must, I think, have received impressions of majesty and of enduring strength which will not fade within their memory."

After old Egypt, and the account of Chaldaean and Assyrian Art, with its warlike expression, we are led on in turn to the consideration of Greek Art, and the causes of its development. "Nothing that I am aware of in the history of the human intelligence," he said, "is for a moment comparable to the dazzling swiftness of the ripening of Greek Art in the fifth century before Christ." After speaking of the fortunate balance and interaction of races which resulted in the Greek Art of that era, he goes on to speak of the exceptionally favouring circumstances of the people: "Here are no vast alluvial plains, such as those along which, in the East, whole empires surged to and fro in battle; no mighty flood of rivers, no towering mountain walls: instead, a tract of moderate size; a fretted promontory thrust out into the sea—far out, and flinging across the blue a multitude of purple isles and islets towards the Ionian, kindred, shores." Such a fortunate environment, joined to the extraordinarily high ideal formed by the Greeks of citizenship, had much to do with the fostering of Greek Art, in all "its nobility and its serenity, its exquisite balance, its searching after truth, and its thirst for the ideal."



In his fourth Discourse Lord Leighton carried on his inquiry upon the origins and conditions of Art into the difficult region of the Etruscans; whose plastic work, like their speech, he considers, was at best an uncouth, vigorous imitation, or re-shaping, of Greek models. As examples of Etruscan Art, we are referred to "the two lovely bronze mirrors, preserved at Perugia and Berlin, representing,—one, Helen between Castor and Pollux,—the other, Bacchus, Semele, and Apollo.... In either case, the design is distinctly Greek; nevertheless a certain ruggedness of form and handling is felt in both, betraying a temper less subtle than the Hellenic; and we read without surprise on the one 'Pultuke,' and 'Phluphluus' on the other." Lest it should be thought that something less than justice is done to Etruscan Art, take this fine description of the tomb of Volumnus Violens:

"The recumbent effigy of the Volumnian is, indeed, rude and of little merit; rude also in execution is the monument on which it rests, but in conception and design of a dignity almost Dantesque. Facing the visitor, as he enters the sepulchral chamber, this small sarcophagus—small in dimensions, but in impressiveness how great!—rivets him at once under the taper's fitful light. Raised on a rude basement, the body of the monument figures the entrance to a vault; in the centre, painted in colours that have nearly faded, appears a doorway, within the threshold of which four female figures gaze wistfully upon the outer world; on either side two winged genii, their brows girt with the never-failing Etruscan serpents, but wholly free from the quaintness of early Etruscan treatment, sit cross-legged, watching, torch in hand, the gate from which no living man returns. Roughly as they are hewn, it would be difficult to surpass the stateliness of their aspect or the art with which they are designed; Roman gravity, but quickened with Etruscan fire, invests them: ... and our thoughts are irresistibly carried forward to the supreme sculptor whom the Tuscan land was one day to bear."

From Etruria, we pass naturally on to Rome; for, as we are significantly reminded, "The Romans lay, until the tide of Greek Art broke on them after the fall of Syracuse, wholly under the influence of the Etruscans.... Etruria gave them kings, augurs, doctors, mimes, musicians, boxers, runners; the royal purple, the royal sceptre, the fasces, the curule chair, the Lydian flute, the straight trumpet, and the curved trumpet. The education of a Roman youth received its finishing touches in Etruria: Tuscan engineers had girt Rome with walls; Tuscan engineers had built the great conduit through which the swamp, which was one day to be the Forum, was drained into the Tiber. What wonder, then, that in architecture, also in painting, in sculpture, in jewellery, and in all the things of taste, Etruscans gave the law to the ruder and less cultured race?"

This influence lasted, until the counter-current of Greece found an inlet to Roman life, filtering "through Campania into Rome from the opposite end of the peninsula." And then, from the fall of Syracuse, and the bringing of its spoils to Rome, we find a perfect craze for Grecian marbles, bronzes, pictures, gems, inflaming the magnates, nobles, and nouveaux riches of Rome. How fortunate that influence was in another field, that of literature, we know. In plastic art, by reason of the essentially inartistic spirit of the Roman race, the result was practically small; save indeed in one department, that of portraiture, to which the essential impulse was, as Leighton very suggestively shows, "ethic, not aesthetic." Even in Roman architecture, our critic finds little to weaken his view of the Roman aesthetic inefficiency. "It was not," he said, "the spontaneous utterance of an aesthetic instinct, but the outcome of material needs and of patriotic pride," and hence only an incomplete expression of Roman civilization. "To them, in brief, art was not vernacular: their purest taste, their brightest gifts of mind, found no utterance in it."



"We have seen Art," he concluded, "such Art as it was given to Rome to achieve—rise and fall with the virtues of the Roman people. From the lips of the most seeing of its sons we know the solvent in which those virtues perished: that solvent was the greed, the insatiate greed, of gold—'auri sacra fames'—the rot of luxury. 'More deadly than arms,' Juvenal magnificently exclaims, 'luxury has swept down upon us, and avenges the conquered world.'

...... 'Saevior armis Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.'"

From Rome we are taken, in the fifth Discourse, delivered on the 10th December, 1887, to the making and the racial re-shaping of Italy, that began with the fifth century. All through these Discourses the speaker laid great stress upon the ethnological history of the European races, as he turned to one after another, and essayed to trace their artistic idiosyncracy and their artistic evolution. Italy is, to the ethnologist as well as to the art student, one of the most interesting countries in Europe. Rome almost alone, among the Italian provinces, retained her racial and aesthetic peculiarities, unaffected to the end of the chapter; and even when she wielded "the sceptre of the Christian world," still she produced no one flower of native genius, we are reminded, unless Giulio Romano, that "brawny and prolific plagiarist of Raphael," as Leighton well stigmatizes him, be thought a genius; which criticism forbid!

It was different with Tuscany, where the introduction of new racial elements had a distinct effect. This "new amalgam" produced in the field of Art, we are told, an infinitely nobler and more exquisite result than had grown out of the old conditions. Still, however, the old Etruscan allied grace and harsh strength lingered on in the art of Christian Etruria. "Of the subtle graces which breathe in that art, from Giotto to Lionardo, it is needless to speak; and surely in the rugged angularities of a Verocchio, a Signorelli, or a Donatello, and in the shadow of sadness which broods over so much of the finest Florentine work, the more sombre phase of the Etruscan temper still lives on."

In the end, if we try to account for the artistic power and mastery of one people in Italy, and the lack of that power in another, we are driven to the conclusion that the source of the artistic gift is hidden and obscure. One may cite the opposite examples of Venice and of Genoa,—the one so masterfully artistic; the other so impotent. And yet the same favouring conditions, a priori, might have seemed to exist for both.

With the intermingling of the peoples, and the rejuvenescence of the physical life, came the spiritual outburst of Christianity. And the influence, again, of Christianity upon Italian Art was immense. In place of joy in the ideals of bodily perfection, "loathing of the body and its beauty, as of the vehicle of all temptation, a yearning for a life in which the flesh should be shaken off, a spirit of awe, of pity, and of love, became the moving forces that shaped its creations."

After great religious periods, we often find that great scientific periods follow. The ethical impulse that religion gives, is converted into other forms of energy, by reason of man's awakened consciousness of the meaning of things, physical and material as well as spiritual.



In Italy a reaction against the Christian doctrine of the degradation of the flesh led to a new recognition of the beauty of man and of his physical environment. Anatomy and perspective were studied, accordingly, with a new sense of their significance in Art. The spirit of science led to "such amazing studies of leaf and flower as Lionardo loved to draw. Thus to Tuscan artists the new movement brought the love of nature, and the light of science."

We come upon Dante and Petrarch in this Discourse, in tracing the history of Italian Art during the centuries of transition: "With Dante we reach the threshold of the Renaissance. He stands on the verge of the middle ages; in him the old order ends. With Petrarch the new order begins." It is not so much as a poet, however, that Petrarch counts in this process from one period to another; but rather as an intellectual pioneer, leading the way into the great pagan world. Petrarch "was the first Humanist," in short.

We cannot stay to dwell upon the effect of the Humanists and all they stood for, good and evil, in Italian Art and Letters. We pass on, now, from Petrarch and the influence the movement had on Italian literature, to its effect on Italian Art. The Renaissance did not affect Art in the same way, as Botticelli may serve to show. "But perhaps," said the lecturer, "the various operations in the province of Art of the two main motive forces of the Renaissance—the impulse towards the scientific study of nature, and the impulse to reinstate the classic spirit—may be best illustrated by reference to Lionardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo." The passages in which Leighton characterised these three masters are among the most striking of all those uttered by him within the walls of the Academy. Lionardo's scientific "avidity of research," Raphael's "classic serenity," and Angelo's "mediaeval ardour," are turned to admirable effect in the pages of this Discourse; and the tribute paid to them on the part of an English painter who has zealously sought to live and work in the light of their great examples, has indeed an interest that is personal, in a sense, as well as general and critical.

Take this concluding sentence upon Raphael:

"Whatever was best in the classic spirit was absorbed and eagerly assimilated by him, and imparted to the work of his best day that rhythm, that gentle gravity, and that noble plenitude of form, which are its stamp, and proclaim him the brother of Mozart and of Sophocles."

Or this, again, on Michael Angelo, as distinguishing him from Raphael:

"The type of human form which he lifted to the fullest expressional force is the last development of a purely indigenous conception of human beauty, whereas the type which we know as Raphaelesque is a classic ideal warmed with Christian feeling. Sublimely alone as Buonarotti's genius stands, towering and unapproached, ... it does but mark the highest summit reached in the magnificent continuity of its evolution, by the purely native genius of Tuscan Art."

Having arrived at Tuscan Art, and at Michael Angelo, in whom it reaches its consummate development, we leave Italy, and turn now to the description of Art in Spain, given by Lord Leighton in his Discourse of December, 1889. And first we have some account of the extraordinarily various racial strains which were contributed to form the significant figure of the fifteenth-century Spaniard. On the ancient Iberian stock was grafted Celtic, Greek, Phoenician, and Carthaginian blood; and to these infusions succeeded the great invasion of the Visigoths of the fifth century.



"The Art of Spain," he said, "was, at the outset, wholly borrowed, and from various sources; we shall see heterogeneous, imported elements, assimilated sometimes in a greater or less degree, frequently flung together in illogical confusion, seldom, if ever, fused into a new, harmonious whole by that inner welding fire which is genius; and we shall see in the sixteenth century a foreign influence received and borne as a yoke"—(that of the Italian Renaissance) "because no living generative force was there to throw it off—with results too often dreary beyond measure; and, finally, we shall meet this strange freak of nature, a soil without artistic initiative bringing forth the greatest initiator—observe, I do not say the greatest artist—the greatest initiator perhaps since Lionardo in modern art—except it be his contemporary Rembrandt—Diego Velasquez."

In his Discourse of December, 1891, we have, rapidly sketched, the Evolution of Art in France. Touching again on the question of race, the lecturer adduced the great race of Gauls, submitting first to Roman, and afterwards to Frankish, or Teutonic, domination and admixture. The main characteristics of the Gaulish people he judges to be, "a love of fighting and a magnificent bravery, great impatience of control, a passion for new things, a swift, brilliant, logical intelligence, a gay and mocking spirit—for 'to laugh,' says Rabelais, 'is the proper mark of man,'—an inextinguishable self-confidence." With the reign of Charlemagne began the development of the architecture of France, but not until the tenth and eleventh centuries did the "movement reach its full force; and its development was due mainly to the great monastic community, which, founded by St. Benedict early in the sixth century, had poured from the heights of Monte Cassino its beneficent influence over Western Europe."

Here we have it explained how the principle of Gothic architecture, "the substitution of a balance of active forces for the principle of inert resistance," was gradually evolved. This principle once found, Gothic architecture reached its most splendid period in a wonderfully short space of time; cathedrals and churches were built everywhere, and before the end of the thirteenth century, the most splendid Gothic buildings were begun or completed. With the end of the thirteenth century Gothic architecture began to decline, lured by the "fascination of the statical tour de force, the craving to bring down to an irreducible minimum the amount of material that would suffice to the stability of a building extravagantly lofty."

Many more extracts we would gladly make, whether from the account of the French sculpture of this period, marked as it was by "sincerity and freshness, often by great beauty and stateliness;" or from the criticism of such artists as Jean Cousin, who painted windows which were "limpid with hues of amethyst, sapphire, and topaz, and fair as a May morning;" or again, of Watteau, of whom we are told that "in the vivacity and grace of his drawing, in the fascination of his harmonies, rich and suave at once, in the fidelity with which he reflected his times without hinting at their coarseness, this wizard of the brush remains one of the most interesting, as he is one of the most fascinating, masters of his country's art."

In the Discourse of 1893 the History of Gothic Architecture was pursued, from its native France to its adopted home in Germany. At the end of last century Goethe declared that not only was the Gothic style native to Germany, but no other nation had a peculiar style of its own; "for," he said, "the Italians have none, and still less the Frenchmen"! According to Leighton, "the Germans, as a race, were, speaking broadly, never at one in spirit with ogival architecture. The result was such as you would expect; in the use of a form of architecture which was not of spontaneous growth in their midst, and unrestrained, moreover, as they were, by a sound innate instinct of special fitness, German builders were often led into solecisms, incongruities, and excesses, from which in the practice of their native style they have been largely free." Of this style, which may be called the German-Romanesque, the best examples are to be found among the churches of the Rhineland. In the thirteenth century this style, admirably as it expressed the genius of the Teuton, succumbed to invading French influence. "I have often wondered," he continued, "at the strange contrast between the reticent and grave sobriety of the architecture of Germany before the fall of the Hohenstaufens, and its erratic self-indulgence in the Gothic period." There is much, however, to be said in praise of the Gothic churches of Germany, their fine colouring, suggestiveness, and variety. Take the description of the Church of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg. "Nothing could well be more delightful than the impression which you receive on entering it; the beauty of the dark brown stone, the rich hues of the stained glass, the right relation of tone value, to use a painter's term, between the structure and the lights—the sombre blazoned shields which cluster along the walls, the succession on pier beyond pier of pictures powerful in colour and enhanced by the gleaming gold of fantastic carven frames, above all the succession of picturesque objects in mid-air above you, a large chandelier, a stately rood-cross, and to crown all, Veit Stoss's masterpiece, the Annunciation, rich with gold and colour; all these things conspire to produce a whole, delightful and poetic, in spite of much that invites criticism in the architectural forms themselves." Still more interesting is the word-picture of the great Cathedral of Cologne, "a monument of indomitable will, of science, and of stylistic orthodoxy ... its beautiful rhythm, its noble consistency and unity, its soaring height, rivet the beholder's gaze"; and yet, the building, in spite of all, does not entirely convince: "the kindling touch of genius" seems to be wanting.

Take, finally, this description of Albert Duerer: "He was a man of a strong and upright nature, bent on pure and high ideals, a man ever seeking, if I may use his own characteristic expression, to make known through his work the mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart; he was a thinker, a theorist, and as you know, a writer; like many of the great artists of the Renaissance, he was steeped also in the love of science.... Superbly inexhaustible as a designer, as a draughtsman he was powerful, thorough, and minute to a marvel, but never without a certain almost caligraphic mannerism of hand, wanting in spontaneous simplicity—never broadly serene. In his colour he was rich and vivid, not always unerring in his harmonies, not alluring in his execution—withal a giant."

With this tribute to a great predecessor we must leave these Discourses, which need, to be properly appreciated, to be studied as a whole; as indeed they form Leighton's deliberate exposition of his whole principles of Aesthetics. In working this out, Discourse by Discourse, he was not content to rely upon convenient literary sources, or previously acquired knowledge of his subject; but undertook special journeys, and spent long periods, abroad, to procure his own evidence at first hand. This gives his Discourses all the value of original research, based on new materials, to add to their purely critical value. Had they been completed, they would have formed an invaluable contribution to the history and the philosophy of Art.



CHAPTER IX

LORD LEIGHTON'S HOME

If we seek for practical expression of Leighton's sympathy for decorative art, we may find it most satisfactorily in his own home as it appeared during his life. Mr. George Aitchison, R.A., designed the whole house;—even the Arab Hall being largely built from drawings made specially by him in Moorish Spain. Although the exterior of No. 2, Holland Park Road has individuality, rather than distinction, it was within that its special charms were found. One of the first things seen on entering was a striking bronze statue, "Icarus," by Mr. Alfred Gilbert; a typical instance of Leighton's generous recognition of artistic contemporaries.

In earlier pages we spoke of the Arab Hall and its Oriental enchantment. No attempt to paint the effects of such an interior in words can call it up half as clearly as the slightest actual drawing. There is a dim dome above, and a fountain falling into a great black marble basin below; there are eight little arched windows of stained glass in the dome; and there are white marble columns, whose bases are green, whose capitals are carved with rare and curious birds, supporting the arches of the alcoves. The Cairo lattice-work in the lower arched recesses lets in only so much of the hot light of midsummer (for it is in summer that one should see it to appreciate its last charm), as consists with the coolness, and the quiet, and the perfect Oriental repose, which give the chamber its spell.



More in what we may call the highway of the house, from entrance hall to studios, is the large hall, out of which the Arab Hall leads, and from which the dark oak staircase ascends with walls tiled in blue and white. Here, on every side, one saw all manner of lovely paintings and exquisite bric-a-brac: a drawing of The Fontana della Tartarughe in Rome by Leighton's old mentor, Steinle; other bronzes and paintings, and in full view a huge stuffed peacock, which seemed to have shed some of its brilliant hues upon its surroundings.

In the drawing-room hung many Corots and Constables, with a superb Daubigny, and a most tempting example of George Mason,—a picture of a girl driving calves on a windy hill, amid a perfect embarrassment of such artistic riches. The famous Corots, a sequence of panels, representing Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night, which cost Lord Leighton less than 1,000 francs each, were sold for 6,000 guineas for the four, at Christie's, in July, 1896. Still another small Corot, a picture of a boat afloat on a still lake, was also in this room. One of the Constables that hung there is literally historic—for it is the sketch for that famous Hay Wain which, exhibited in Paris, at once upset the classical tradition, and gave impetus to the whole modern school of French landscape. Near it was one of Constable's many pictures of Hampstead Heath,—simply a bit of dark heath against a sympathetic sky; but so painted as to be a masterpiece of its kind. These pictures were but a few of the many artfully disposed things of beauty, born in older Italy, or newer France, or in our new-old London.

Upon the staircase there were pictures at every turn to make one pause, step by step, on the way. Sir Joshua Reynolds was represented by an unfinished canvas of Lord Rockingham, in which the great Burke, in his minor function of secretary, also figures. Then came G. F. Watts's earlier portrait of Leighton himself; and here a genuine Tintoretto. There was the P.R.A.'s famous Portrait of Captain Burton; and over a doorway his early painting of The Plague at Florence, with another early work, Romeo and Juliet, one of his very few Shakespearean pictures.

From the landing whence most of these things were visible, you entered at once the great studio. Round the upper wall ran a cast of the Parthenon frieze, and beneath this the wall on one side was riddled and windowed, as it were, with innumerable framed pictures, small studies of foreign scenes; so that one looked out in turn upon Italy and the South, Egypt and the East, or upon an Irish sunset, or a Scottish mountain-side.

Opposite these, below the great window, were many of the artist's miniature wax models and studies. Else, the ordinary not unpicturesque lumber of an artist's studio was conspicuously absent. The secret of Leighton's despatch and careful ordering of his days, was to be read, indeed, in every detail of his work-a-day surroundings. Even in a dim antechamber, with a trellised niche most mysteriously overlooking the Arab Hall, at one end of the studio, in which the curious visitor might have expected to find dusty studies, discarded canvases, and other such aesthetic remnants,—even that was found to contain not lumber, but a Sebastian del Piombo, a sketch of Sappho by Delacroix, a landscape by Costa, a Madonna and Child of Sano di Pietro del Piombo.

At the extreme other end of the main studio was the working studio of glass, built to combat the fogs by procuring whatever vestige of light Kensington may accord in its most November moods. The last addition to the building, not long before Lord Leighton's death, was a gallery, known as "The Music Room," expressly designed to receive his pictures—mostly gifts from contemporary artists; or, to speak more accurately, works that had been exchanged for others in a wholly non-commercial spirit. These included, Shelling Peas, by Sir J. E. Millais, The Corner of the Studio, by Sir L. Alma-Tadema, The Haystacks, and Venus, by G. F. Watts, and Chaucer's Dream of Good Women, by Sir E. Burne-Jones.

Such was the daily environment of that hard, unceasing, indefatigable labour which, natural faculty taken for granted, is always the secret of an artist's extraordinary production. And it was an environment, as one felt on leaving it for the gray London without, that well accorded with the radiant painted procession of the figures, classic and other, that file through Lord Leighton's pictures.



CHAPTER X

LORD LEIGHTON'S HOUSE IN 1900

In the preceding chapter a picture is drawn of the "House Beautiful," as it was in Lord Leighton's lifetime. It was then full to overflowing with all manner of treasures; but now all that were removable have been dispersed. Only the shell, the house itself, remains. Yet denuded as it is, that is still well worth looking at. The architectural features to which Mr. Rhys, dazzled by other things, hardly did justice, are now all the more apparent.

One of the rarest of all accomplishments, at any rate in England, is a cultivated taste in architecture; but it so happened that amongst his many acquirements Lord Leighton possessed it in a remarkable degree. In fact he received, although a painter by profession, the gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in virtue of the intimate knowledge of architecture he had displayed in some of his backgrounds—for instance, those of the frescoes at South Kensington. It is a great honour, and one by no means lightly bestowed. At any rate, when there was a question of building himself a house, though he might not have been able to build it himself, he was thoroughly qualified to choose an architect. His choice fell upon Professor Aitchison, now R.A., and he probably hit upon the only man of his generation able to put his feeling into bricks and mortar, viz., the feeling for a beauty sedate, delicate, and dignified.

We must remember the condition of things architectural in the sixties to do justice to the independence of employer and architect. It was a time when the Albert Memorial was possible, and when men tried to guide their steps by the light of "The Seven Lamps of Architecture." A sentimental fancy for Gothic based on irrational grounds was all but universal, and it needed courage to avow a preference for the classical. The compromise in favour of quaintness and capricious prettiness which began under the name of the "Queen Anne style," and has contributed so many picturesque and pleasing buildings to our modern London, had not yet budded. Nor would it ever at any time of his life have thoroughly responded to Leighton's taste. So long as he could detect a defect he was dissatisfied, and extreme nicety is not what the Dutch style pretends to. It depends upon a picturesque combination of forms of no great refinement in themselves, but which give a varied skyline and a pretty play of light and shade. It amuses at the first glance, and as it rarely demands a second, it is well suited to turbid atmospheres, which blur outlines, and a chilly climate in which people cannot loiter out of doors. Moreover, the old-world memories it evokes, although in a minor degree than was the case with the Gothic, contribute to its facile popularity. But the classical taste is a love for form and delicate beauty of line as such, quite irrespective of any associations which may accompany them, or lamps, be they seven or seventy times seven. And to build his house in this style was the natural thing for a sculptor and fastidious seeker after the ideal in form. He found the man he wanted in Professor Aitchison.

We must go over the outside and inside of the house, but rapidly; for to do more than just indicate the points worth attention would be waste of effort. To convey an idea of the feelings produced by architecture is perhaps possible, but it is perfectly vain to hope to picture it or reproduce in words the actual beauties of proportion or of colour. Those who wish to verify them must see for themselves and examine the building carefully.

The aspect of the house as seen from the street is, it must be admitted, hardly symmetrical; but it is evident also that the first design has been much altered and added to. At one end the Arab Hall, with its dome and "bearded" battlements, is an obvious afterthought, in great contrast with the serious simplicity of the rest. And at the other end the glass studio, which was added later still, is also clearly an excrescence. The centre part was the original house, and the studio was the chief feature of it, and very much as it is now. It is, of course, on the north side, and the street, the south side, is occupied by small rooms which, with their repeated small openings, offer no great scope for designing. Still, the whole has that look of dignity which always accompanies high finish; and the entrance, far from being commonplace, because it has nothing quaint or surprising about it, has a certain ample serenity which it is rare to find. The mouldings of stonework and woodwork, few and simple as they are, are not taken out of a pattern-book, as is usually the case, but are specially designed each for its own position. All the refinement of a building consists in its mouldings, and no one has designed mouldings better than Professor Aitchison. A vast improvement has been made in this respect in the last twenty years or so, and it is largely due to his influence. At any rate he was one of the first and he remains the best of modern designers of mouldings. There are some fine examples of his work in the house.

On the north the house looks into a fair-sized garden, skilfully planted, so that it looks much larger than it is. In the mind of the writer this aspect is intimately bound up with the recollection of delightful Sunday mornings in summer, when he sat chatting on random subjects with the President, who, in slippers, a so-called "land and water hat," and a smock frock, leant back in a garden-chair and talked as no one else could. The quiet, the sun overhead, the grass under our feet, the green trees around us, and the house visible between them, form an ineffaceable picture of aesthetic contentment it is a delight to recall. It recurred every Sunday whenever the weather was fine and warm. Then it was that there was leisure to appreciate the admirable symmetry of the architecture; for in England it is so rare to sit out of doors where one may look at architecture that even if architects were to design exteriors with all the subtlety of a Brunelleschi or a Bramante, they would seldom get anyone to notice their work.

The studio occupies the whole of the upper story, and the architect had a good opportunity, as there was no need to cut it up as is the case when several rooms have to be provided for, by numerous uniform lights. Here, in the centre, is one great light between wide spaces of wall judiciously divided by string courses, and in the upper part on either side of the great window is a row of three small windows. At the east end is a small door leading into a pretty little Venetian balcony with stone parapet. The whole makes a very beautiful building, and the details and proportions are all worth examining.

This central part was what one saw through the trees as one sat in the garden. Less visible were the glass studio on its iron columns, an excellent piece of work, considering its few possibilities, and the Arab Hall at the other end. Of course the latter looks a little incongruous. It is a professed reproduction of Arab architecture, but carried out, like the rest of the house, with unstinted expense, care, and finish.

We will now go inside by the front door. The cornice of the ceiling of the vestibule first entered is singularly fine. Like every other good artist Professor Aitchison improved as he went on, and this is one of his latest designs in mouldings. When the entrance was altered some years before the President's death, an opportunity occurred for putting in a new ceiling.

Passing on into the hall one comes upon a very picturesque arrangement of staircase. It is lit from above by a broad skylight. The stairs begin to rise against the wall of the dining-room which is recessed; while on the first floor the wall of the studio is projected and carried on columns, beyond which the stairs rise. So that figures coming through the hall in the light, begin mounting the stairs in the shadow, and re-emerge into the light, as the stairs turn, with a very varied and striking effect. By the first short flight of steps, and between the two columns, is a seat made of a Persian chest or cassone, beautiful and unusual in shape, and richly inlaid. Lord Leighton bought it in Rhodes or Lindos, and was very proud of it. It could not be removed and sold with the rest of the treasures at Christie's as it was a "fixture." The floor of the hall is of marble mosaic, mostly black and white. Only one small piece by the dining-room door, a very agreeable design, is in pinkish marbles.



On the left, down a short passage, is the Arab Hall. It is so unlike anything else in Europe that its reputation has withdrawn all attention from the rest of the house. It certainly is a most sumptuous piece of work. Elsewhere Leighton satisfied his love of chastened form; in this room and its approach he gave full scope to his delight in rich colours. The general scheme is a peacock blue, known technically as Egyptian green, and gold, with plentiful black and white. Here and there tiny spots of red occur, but they are rare. The harmony begins in the staircase hall. The walls, except in the recessed part, where there are genuine oriental tiles, are lined to the level of the first floor with tiles of a fine blue, from the kilns of Mr. De Morgan, and the soffitt of the stairs is coloured buff, with gold spots. In the passage the tone increases in richness. The ceiling is silver and the cornice gold, while the walls, except for a fine panel of oriental tiles over the drawing-room door, are lined with the same tiles as the staircase. Then between two grand columns of red Caserta marble, with gilt capitals modelled by Randolph Caldecott, we pass into the Arab Hall itself, and we come upon the full magnificence of the effect. It is made up of polished marbles of many colours, gilt and sculptured capitals, alabaster, shining tiles, glistening mosaic of gold and colours, brass and copper in the hanging corona, and coloured glass in the little pierced windows, in fact, of every form of enrichment yet devised by Eastern or Western Art. From the floor, which is black and white, the tone rises through blue to lose itself in the gloom of a golden dome, sparsely lit by jewel-like coloured lights.

In the centre a jet of water springs up, to fall back into a basin of black marble. The form of the basin which deepens towards the centre in successive steps, is an adaptation of the pattern of a well-known oriental fountain. All is equally black in this pool, and the border unfortunately is barely distinguishable from the water. After a dinner party at which Sir E. Burne-Jones, Mr. Whistler, Mr. Albert Moore, and many others were present, I recollect how, when we were smoking and drinking coffee in this hall, somebody, excitedly discoursing, stepped unaware right into the fountain. Two large Japanese gold tench, whose somnolent existence was now for the first time made interesting, dashed about looking for an exit, and there was a general noise of splashing and laughter. The dark, apparently fathomless pool was rather a mistake. Mishaps like that just mentioned occurred, I believe, more than once. There had been at first a white marble basin, but it did not give satisfaction, because, being in several pieces, it leaked, whereas the black one is all cut out of one block, at great expense, of course. But the white had the advantage of lightness where light is none too plentiful. In our winter, when days are dark and cold, black pools, with marble columns and floors, tiled walls, and dim domes about them do not fall in with English notions of cosy woollen comfort. The season to do justice to this hall is when summer comes round. When the sun breaks through the lattice work of the musharabiyehs, and the light is thrown up on the storied tiles, and up the polished columns to the glinting mosaic, to die away in the golden cupola, the effect is indeed superb, and to sit on the divan, by the splash of the fountain, and look from the glories within to the green trees without, is to live not in London but in the veritable Arabian nights.