Frederic Lord Leighton Part 10

CONCLUSION

In now bringing this record to a close, we will of set purpose remain true to the chronicler's function, pure and simple; attempting no profounder or more critical summing up of our subject, than consists with the plain record of a remarkable career.

After a year of indifferent health, during part of which time he was ordered abroad for rest and change, being thus unable to preside at the annual banquet in May, Leighton returned to England apparently convalescent. Although unable to deliver the biennial presidential address, which fell due in December, 1895, he met the students on that occasion, and apologized for not delivering the Discourse which was due, in these words: "The cloud which has hung over me hangs over me still."[14]

Early in 1896 a peerage was bestowed upon him, and all the world applauded the honour conferred on Art in his name. On January 13th, 1896, the news of his death came as a terrible surprise. The new peer, Baron Leighton of Stretton, was buried with much state at St. Paul's Cathedral, before men in general had wholly recognized that Lord Leighton was the popular "Sir Frederic," the President of the Royal Academy, and one of the most familiar figures at any important function--at court or elsewhere.

Except perhaps in the case of politicians, who live in some degree by the public recognition of their personal qualities, it is difficult to render tribute gracefully and well to a contemporary. But we cannot close these pages, now, without pausing to recall how fortunate it has been that English Art, for seventeen years, had as its t.i.tular head an artist whose affluent artistic faculty was but the open sign of a crowded life, loyal throughout to the great causes, high ideals, and, let us add, the early friends.h.i.+ps, chosen long ago in the mid century.

We are now at that century's end,--an end not without its reproach, as expressed by a decadence more self-conscious than dignified, more critical than creative; but in Lord Leighton's Art there was little diminution in his active energy, and of that finer health and spirit of life, which is behind all beauty! Like his distinguished friend and colleague, Mr. G. F. Watts (whose tribute to him as a man and as an artist has been expressed again and again in eloquent terms), Leighton remained, in his later period as in his youth, generously alive to all the things that count, devoted still to the Art, the current life, and the great national traditions, of his own country.

From another famous colleague, Sir E. J. Poynter, P.R.A., one may fitly add here the following further sentences of contemporary tribute, which were written by way of dedication to his "Ten Lectures on Art,"

published some years ago:--"I came to-day from the 'Varnis.h.i.+ng Day' at the Royal Academy Exhibition with a pleasant conviction that there is on all sides a more decided tendency towards a higher standard in Art, both as regards treatment of subject and execution, than I have before noticed; and I have no hesitation in attributing this sudden improvement in the main to the stimulus given to us all by the election of our new President, and to the influence of the energy, thoroughness and n.o.bility of aim which he displays in everything he undertakes. I was probably the first, when we were both young and in Rome together, to whom he had the opportunity of showing the disinterested kindness which he has invariably extended to beginners, and to him, as the friend and master who first directed my ambition, and whose precepts I never fail to recall when at work (as many another will recall them), I venture to dedicate this book with affection and respect."

"As we are, so our work is!" said Leighton in one of the most memorable of his Discourses; "and the moral effect of what we are will control the artist's work from the first touch of the brush or chisel to the last."

"Believe me," he concludes, in a striking pa.s.sage that may very fitly serve us, too, with a conclusion to these pa.s.sages, "believe me, whatever of dignity, whatever of strength we have within us, will dignify and will make strong the labours of our hands; whatever littleness degrades our spirit will lessen them and drag them down.

Whatever n.o.ble fire is in our hearts will burn also in our work, whatever purity is ours will also chasten and exalt it; for as we are, so our work is, and what we sow in our lives, that, beyond a doubt, we shall reap for good or for ill in the strengthening or defacing of whatever gifts have fallen to our lot."

It would be superfluous to quote from the elegiac tributes which appeared in the public press after Lord Leighton's death, and invidious to repeat certain unkind and unjust strictures which marred the otherwise unanimous note of appreciation. It is obvious that an artist with so strongly marked a personality must needs have been fettered by the very limits he himself had set. At one time, when a painter of eminence openly expressed his preference for Lord Leighton's unfinished work, and begged him to keep a certain picture as "a beautiful sketch,"

he replied: "No, I shall finish it, and probably, as you suggest, spoil it. To complete satisfactorily is what we painters live for. I am not a great painter, but I am always striving to finish my work up to my first conception."

There are many mansions in the city of Art, and if the one of Lord Leighton's building was not to the taste of all his contemporaries, the edifice can be left to await the final test of years. Fas.h.i.+ons in taste change rapidly, and much of his finish that finds disfavour to-day may in time charm once again. A career overburdened by official honour was destined to provoke a certain amount of envious protest; but as a man, no voice has urged a word against his ideally perfect performance, not merely of his official duties, but of others which indeed were laid upon him by his position. These he obeyed without ostentation--almost without men's knowledge. His kindly help, by commendation or by commission given to young artists; his broad and tolerant view of work conceived in direct opposition to all he valued himself, was not hidden from his friends. "It is with a sense of amazement," a critic writes in a private letter, "that one afternoon after a protest that nothing he said was to be published, I heard him discuss the prospects and the works of our ultra-modern painters. Even in fields beyond his sympathy he picked out the chaff from the wheat, and was judicially accurate in his verdicts of the difference between 'tweedle-dum' and 'tweedle-dee,' both one would have said, entirely unknown to him."

In Lord Leighton British artists lost a truer friend than many of them suspected, one who wielded his power justly to all, and was more often on the side of progress than not, a power for reform that can never be estimated at its actual value, working within a highly conservative body, full of vested interests and prejudice--as is the habit of academies of Art and Literature abroad no less than at home. That Leighton, who controlled its destinies so long, was loyal to its true interests, and never forgot the inst.i.tution with which he was a.s.sociated so many years is evident from his last words: "Give my love to all at the Academy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOOKPLATE OF LORD LEIGHTON. DESIGNED BY R. ANNING BELL.]

APPENDIX I

LIST OF PRINc.i.p.aL WORKS

_With date and place of exhibition_

1850 (_circa_). *CIMABUE FINDING GIOTTO IN THE FIELDS OF FLORENCE.[15]

(49-1/2 37 in.) Steinle Inst.i.tute (Frankfort).

1850. THE DUEL BETWEEN ROMEO AND TYBALT. (37 50 in.)

1851 (_circa_). THE DEATH OF BRUNELLESCHI. Steinle Inst.i.tute.

1851. [EARLY PORTRAIT OF LEIGHTON BY HIMSELF.]

1852. *A PERSIAN PEDLAR.

" [BUFFALMACCO, THE PAINTER. A humorous subject, taken from Vasari, was undertaken about this date.]

1853. PORTRAIT OF MISS LAING (Lady Nias).

1855. *CIMABUE'S CELEBRATED MADONNA IS CARRIED IN PROCESSION THROUGH THE STREETS OF FLORENCE. In front of the Madonna, and crowned with laurels, walks Cimabue himself, with his pupil Giotto; behind it, Arnolfo di Lapo, Gaddo Gaddi, Andrea Tafi, Nicola Pisano, Buffalmacco and Simone Memmi; in the corner, Dante.

(87-1/2 205 in.) R.A.[16]

" THE RECONCILIATION OF THE MONTAGUES AND CAPULETS over the dead bodies of Romeo and Juliet. Paris International Exhibition.[17]

1856. THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC. (80 110 in.) R.A.

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

1857. *SALOME, the daughter of Herodias. (44-1/2 25 in.)

1858. *THE MERMAID (THE FISHERMAN AND THE SYREN).

(From a ballad by Goethe.) (26-1/2 18-1/2 in.) R.A.

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

" "COUNT PARIS, accompanied by Friar Lawrence and a band of musicians, comes to the house of the Capulets, to claim his bride: he finds Juliet stretched apparently lifeless on her bed."--_Romeo and Juliet_, act IV., sc. 5. (26-1/2 18-1/2 in.) R.A.

" REMINISCENCE OF ALGIERS. S.S.

_These were_,

[A SUBJECT FROM KEATS'S HYMN TO PAN,] _in the first book of "Endymion," a figure of Pan under a fig-tree, with the inscription_,

"_O thou, to whom Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom Their ripen'd fruitage;_"

_and the other_,

[A PENDANT TO THE "PAN,"] _the figure of a nude nymph about to bathe, with a little Cupid loosening her sandal._

1859. SUNNY HOURS. R.A.

" *ROMAN LADY (La Nanna). R.A.

" *NANNA (Pavonia). R.A.

" SAMSON AND DELILAH. S.S.

1860. CAPRI--SUNRISE. R.A.

1861. *PORTRAIT OF MRS. SUTHERLAND ORR. [Mrs. S. O., a portrait.]

(28 18 in.) R.A.

" *PORTRAIT OF JOHN HANSON WALKER, ESQ. (23 17 in.)