: The Life Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton. Volume II by Barrington Russell Mrs - Leighton of Stretton Frederic Leighton Baron 1830-1896

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y 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, I return once more to my brown paper, re-copy the outline accurately from the picture, on a larger scale than before, and resume my 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 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 the 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 of 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 my compositions, being as completely drawn in monochrome as any other 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 my aim to equal in the big work, I have nothing to think of but colour, and with that I now proceed deliberately, but rapidly."

"God forgive me if I am intolerant," he wrote to Steinle, "but according to my view an artist must produce his art out of his own heart; or he is none."

"The chord that wakes in kindred hearts a tone, Must first be tuned and vibrate in your own"

were the words with which he ended his first address to the students of the Royal Academy.

In the world's estimate of things and people, classification plays at times a pernicious part. Classification in art matters may be tolerated as useful only in the education of the non-artistic. Invariably the most convincing touches escape the possibility of being reduced to so dull a process of reckoning. Art marked by individual spontaneity, emanating from the ego of the artificer, refuses to be levelled down into a class. Critics seem at times to be strongly tempted to fit an artist's achievements into certain classes, because they have previously made up their minds as to the class the work belongs to. Hence the perversion often of even an intelligent critic's estimate: certain squarenesses exist which will not fit into round holes, so, for the sake of classification, the corners must be shaved off. Surely no artist ever existed who evaded being comfortably fitted into either a square or a round hole more completely than did Leighton. Every serious work he undertook was an entirely separate performance from any previous invention--a new venture throughout--and, once decided on, carried through with absolute conformity to the original conception. Therefore any classification, beyond his mere method of working, is more sterile in producing a just estimate of Leighton's art than of those workers who are in the habit of painting pictures in which the same motive recurs. Essentially original in his conceptions as in his aims, and vibrating with receptiveness, he sounded nevertheless every impression he received by unchanging principles adhered to as implicit guides. He had within him at once the steadiest rock as a foundation, and the most fertile of serial growths on the surface. Abiding rock and surface flora alike had had their earliest nurture, it must be remembered, in foreign parts, under other skies than that of our veiled English light--under other influences of nature and of art than that of our English climate and schooling--and it is partly owing to this fact that it is not realised by those who have never seen nature under the aspects which most delighted him, that Leighton's conceptions were directly and invariably inspired by nature. Those who are conversant with Italy and other Southern countries will possess the key to much that is misjudged by others in Leighton's work. Scenes which entranced his sensibilities as a boy, and, lingering ever in his fancy, gave subjects for his paintings when his art was mature, may appear to one without special knowledge of the South as mere echoes of classic art. When he was thirty-one Leighton exhibited the picture "Lieder ohne Worte." It is no record, probably, of any particular place, nor of any particular fountain; but when strolling on a road in or near a southern town or village in Italy, a view which might originally have inspired the motive may be seen at any moment. Encased in a wall near Albano is a fountain which certainly recalled to me the picture as, in the bright light of a May morning, the song of nightingales in the grand foliage of overhanging magnolia trees echoed the sound of the water springing from the glistening lip, and flowing over the clean curve of the marble basin into the trough below. There was the same lion's head which served as spout, the same arrangement of ornament encircling it; also a finely shaped pitcher placed below to catch the water, and--more recalling than any detail--was the echo of the real motive of the picture--the dream-like poetry of the sunlit scene, with the musical accompaniment of trickling water. Had Leighton painted a Discobolus, it would probably never have occurred to most English critics that nature and living action had inspired the work. Above the lake of Albano is a road--"the Upper Gallery"--where every day are to be met men playing the game. Any one watching it may see repeated over and over again the action in the well-known statue. Nature inspired the creations of the great ancients, and it was also invariably first-hand impressions from nature that inspired Leighton's creations, whatever superstructure of learning he added in the course of their development. Living in Italy when his feelings were most sensitive to impressions, the origin of the suggestions he imbibed is to be found in her atmosphere, colouring, and the scenes which surrounded him when his imagination was most free and fertile. Later, when he lived in England, his travels in Italy and Greece supplied him with the subjects for the most beautiful sketches he made direct from nature. No one, I believe, has ever painted the luminous quality of white, as it is seen under heated sunlight in the South, with the same charm as Leighton. The sketches he made of buildings in Capri are quite marvellously true in their rendering of such effects. He made equally beautiful studies of mountains and sea, under the rarefied atmosphere of Greece. He seemed always happiest, I think, when the key of his pictures and sketches was light and sunlit; in such pictures, for instance, as "Winding the Skein," "Greek Girls Picking up Shells by the Seashore," "Bath of Psyche," "Invocation," and others remarkable for their fairness and their light, pure tone.

"No doubt the constant wear and tear occasioned by the perpetual strain of mental and physical watchfulness did much to shorten his life; I think it sometimes injured his own work as an artist, because, though a great artist can never be evolved except by years of patient work and strenuous effort to do his very best always, yet, on the other hand, it is often the happy, easy work and absolutely spontaneous effort of the moment by such a hand which is his very best. Such happy, easy work probably Leighton would seldom allow himself to do, and never would leave at the right moment, but would still strive to make better and more complete. He must still elaborate it and try to make it more perfect; and this it was that made his enthusiastic admirer Watts sometimes say, 'How much finer Leighton's work would be if he would admit the accidental into it.'"

A fact, little suspected by the public, certainly affected the element of strength in some of Leighton's works. Besides often suffering from a positive want of health, his normal physical condition was far from robust; and, as appears in his letters, he suffered much through weakness and irritation in the eyes from the time he was a boy. He did not wear his physical distress on his sleeve, and experienced many hindrances in his work never dreamt of, even by his intimate acquaintances. These might not have been so serious had he been willing to sacrifice all other duties in life to his own special vocation; but though he realised that Art, the language of beauty, was his main passion, his conscience would not allow him to make this passion an excuse for avoiding help to his generation on other lines, if he distinctly felt he could do so. In the happiest of surroundings, with his life unburdened by public responsibilities, he painted "Cimabue's Madonna"; and, for pure vigour in the manipulation, this painting has a robust quality which is scarcely to be found in any other of the larger works which followed, though these may possess many other virtues, and evince a more definite individuality, than does the early work.

Leighton's art appeals to the artists possessed of cosmopolitan culture--also to many who love beauty, a sense of refined distinction in feeling and in form and in the arrangement of line. Beyond these it appeals also to the great public outside the radius of specialists, a public which is impressed by a sense of beauty and achievement without possessing the knowledge of experts. It is not much cared for by the disciples of either of the latest schools in England, and in France, which have governed fashion in the matter of taste for the last twenty years. In the first place, it appeals but little to those to whom the highest province of art appears to consist in conveying didactic sentiments and poetic ideas through a language of form and colour--to suggest thought to the brain rather than beauty to the eye. Respecting this theory of the province of art, Leighton expresses himself clearly in his second address to the Royal Academy students in December 1881:--

"Now the language of Art is not the appointed vehicle of ethic truths; of these, as of all knowledge as distinct from emotion, though not necessarily separated from it, the obvious and only fitted vehicle is speech, written or spoken--words, the symbols of ideas. The simplest spoken homily, if sincere in spirit and lofty in tone, will have more direct didactic efficacy than all the works of all the most pious painters and sculptors from Giotto to Michael Angelo; more than the Passion music of Bach, more than a Requiem by Cherubini, more than an Oratorio of Handel.

"It is not, then, it cannot be the foremost duty of Art to seek to embody that which it cannot adequately present, and to enter into a competition in which it is doomed to inevitable defeat."

Mr. Arthur Symons, writing on "The Psychology of Watts," quotes a popular preacher who affirmed that "Critics who approach his work from the side of technical excellence do not interest him at all. His endeavour has been to make his pictures as good as works of art as was possible to him, for fear that they should fail altogether in their appeal; but, beyond that, their excellence as mere pictures is nothing to him." "Now," writes Mr. Symons, "it is quite possible that Watts may have really said or written something of the kind; he may even, when he set himself down to think, have thought it. The conscious mental processes of an artist have often little enough relation with his work as art; by no means is every artist a critic as well as an artist. But to take a great painter at his word, if he assures you that the excellence of his pictures 'as mere pictures' is nothing to him; to suppose seriously that at the root of his painting was not the desire to paint; to believe for a moment that great pictorial work has ever been done except by those who were painters first, and everything else afterwards, is to confuse the elementary notions of things, hopelessly and finally. And so, when we are told that the technical excellence of Watts' pictures is of little consequence, we can but answer that to the 'painter of earnest truths,' as to all painters, nothing can be of more consequence; for it is only through this technical excellence that 'Hope,' or 'The Happy Warrior,' or 'Love and Life,' is to be preferred to the picture leaflet which the district missionary distributes on his way through the streets."

All who knew Watts intimately and watched him working day by day can testify that he spared no labour, time, or patience, in working over and over on a picture in order to attain the finest quality in the actual surface which his material--paint--could possibly produce.

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