The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume II Part 20

GEO. H. BOUGHTON.

GROVE LODGE, PALACE GARDENS TERRACE, KENSINGTON, _December 14, 1874_.

DEAR MR. LEIGHTON,--I don't know which to admire most--the "sketch," as _you_ call it (it seems "heroic" in size even now), or your great kindness in sending it to me. Now that I may enjoy it at my leisure--and I take my leisure very often--it seems finer even than I thought it was. Not merely the _spirit_ of the antique, but the antique _itself_, and the "antique" I mean is the everlasting, the best mortal may ever hope to make.

This is, as far as my capacity for judging is worth, _sincere_.

I know how perilous it is to say warmly what one feels, how it is put down as "gush" and "bad form"; but when in this very London fog of Art one sees a spark of pure light, there is some excuse for shouting with joy.

I should reproach myself with taking up overmuch of your time in this matter, but I know that you are very good-natured; besides you might have taken my poor little bronze tribute in as few words as I sent it, and there it might have ended--though for myself I am glad you did not, and shall be ever selfishly thankful that you acted as kindly as you did.

Pray don't bother to reply to this, I am too much your debtor already.--Yours very sincerely,

GEO. H. BOUGHTON.

78 CORNWALL GARDENS, QUEEN'S GATE, _May 11, 1877_.

DEAR LEIGHTON,--I follow my instinct and sincere desire in congratulating you on your magnificent statue in the Academy, which I have just seen. It is superb. I think it the best statue of modern days. I was riveted with admiration and astonishment; and whatever you may think of my judgment, pray take this as my humble and heartfelt tribute to a work of genius, which to my mind ranks nearer "zur Antiken" than anything I have seen, during my career, produced in any school or country.

Believe me, with sincere admiration, yours,

J.E. BOEHM.

In 1890 Leighton made a replica of the statue in marble for the Glyptothek in Copenhagen. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1891.

Many were the voices heard exclaiming that Leighton ought to give himself entirely to sculpture. His masterly power in understanding form, and giving expression to it in Art, was readily understood and appreciated when he worked in the round, whereas it had been but scantily appreciated in his painting; the fact being, that the public is unaccustomed to find that power developed in modern pictures, whereas in sculpture it is the princ.i.p.al and obvious aim in any statue. However, whatever the public thought or expressed, Leighton went on painting. In 1878 "Nausicaa" and "Winding the Skein" were exhibited, both among Leighton's happiest works. A reticent grace in the att.i.tude of the figure, and a tender yearning sadness in the face, makes this rendering of "Nausicaa" very attractive. "Winding the Skein" is the best example of those fair pictures which Leighton painted, and evidently delighted in painting, as records of Southern--and more particularly--Greek light and atmosphere. For the special charm in the tone and colouring to be understood, the picture itself must be seen; but the design and delightful feeling in the movement of the figures can be rendered in the reproduction. Again in this work the fascinating little figure of Cleobouline appears and also the teacher in the "Music Lesson." In all, Leighton painted thirty-six important pictures, twenty-six slighter works,[51] and executed his first statue, "Athlete Strangling a Python," in the ten years between 1869 and 1879.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "NAUSICAA." 1878]

During these years the Royal Academy Exhibition took place in Burlington House, it having previously been held in a suite of rooms at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

Leighton sent photographs of the cartoons for the "Industrial Arts of War" and of "Peace"[52] to Steinle, who wrote his criticisms on the designs. The following is Leighton's answer:--

_Translation._]

_February 3, 1874._

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--Your very welcome lines arrived auspiciously a few days ago. I need not say how delighted I am that you are not displeased with the two compositions of your old pupil, and that you recognise in them a not unworthy effort.

I am especially grateful to you that while giving your approbation you have enclosed a criticism, and only regret that you have blamed but one thing, where there are unfortunately so many faults. I shall endeavour, if these cartoons ever come to be carried out, as far as possible to repress the faults which you remark in "Peace"; for, as I am by all means pa.s.sionate for the true _h.e.l.lenic_ art, and am touched beyond everything by its n.o.ble simplicity and its unaffected directness, so the _Roman_ or Napoleonic at its highest is antipathetic to me--I had almost said disgusting. The two compositions are intended for a large court (where there are objects from all parts of the world and of all epochs); they will not, however, stand _near_, but opposite to one another. The figures will be life-size, the foremost ones almost colossal. The "Arts of Peace" I transported to Greece, partly out of sympathy, and partly on account of the special beauty of the Greek ceramic and jewel work; the conduct of arms seemed to me to find its highest expression in mediaeval Italy, and I gladly seized this opportunity to tread the old path again in which my feet now so seldom wander.

If you really believe that my old friends in Frankfurt will be interested in these works, I shall be extremely pleased if you will put them in the Gallery; I wish only one thing, namely, that it may be made quite clear to the spectator that they are merely _cartoons_; their entire lack of effect would otherwise be surprising.

But the Pinta, of which you write, haunts my mind! If I had only time to run over myself!--but it is impossible.

Once more heartiest greetings, from your devoted pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

The Prince Consort, I believe, first conceived the idea of decorating s.p.a.ces on the walls of the Victoria and Albert Museum with frescoes, as a memorial of the nation's grat.i.tude on the close of the Crimean War, and mentioned the subject to Leighton. It was not, however, till 1868 that Sir Henry Cole approached him officially on the subject in the following letter:--

_July 14, 1868._

SIR,--The Lords of the Committee of Council on Education having had under their consideration the subject of the permanent decoration of the lunettes at the ends of the South Court of the South Kensington Museum, have directed me to inquire if it would be agreeable to you to undertake to execute a picture for one of these lunettes, for which lunette their Lords.h.i.+ps would be prepared to authorise a payment of 1000, it being understood that all rights of copying the work belong to the Department.

When the court is completed, there will be four lunettes of a similar size. At the present time, however, there are only two s.p.a.ces actually ready; and should you be willing to accept the commission now offered to you, your picture would be placed in one of these two finished lunettes. Mr. Watts, R.A., has been asked to execute a similar commission for the second lunette; and, in order that the works may have a certain symmetry in respect of the scale of the figures, &c., it would be desirable that you should place yourself into communication with him.--I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

HENRY COLE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY FOR GROUP IN "THE ARTS OF PEACE,"

Victoria and Albert Museum. 1873 Leighton House Collection]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIRST SKETCH FOR FIGURE OF CIMABUE Carried out in Mosaic in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1868]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ORIGINAL SKETCH FOR THE FIGURE OF NICCOLA PISANO Carried out in Mosaic in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1868]

Watts was not prepared to accept the commission to execute one of the frescoes, being already immersed in work which absorbed his whole time and attention. He did, however, accept the commission to make a cartoon for the figure of t.i.tian to be worked in mosaic in one of the s.p.a.ces which form a kind of frieze along the side of the Southern Court. Leighton, besides agreeing finally to paint frescoes on the lunettes at each end of the court, made cartoons in 1868 for two of these side s.p.a.ces, one of the figure of Cimabue, the other of Niccolo Pisano. Sketches for these are in the Leighton House Collection. (See List of Ill.u.s.trations.)

A controversy took place between Leighton and Sir Henry Cole respecting the question whether these figures were to be treated pictorially or decoratively, whether the background was to be of plain gold mosaic or whether there were to be objects depicted in perspective behind the figures. The following part of a letter from Leighton concluded the agreement.

I submit that I have given reasons _why_ the figures under discussion should not be pictures, and that you, on the other hand, have not put forward a single reason why, a single principle on which they _should_ be pictures. You have contented yourself with adducing some precedents; as the question, however, is entirely one of principles, precedent alone means nothing, one way or another; if it were not so, I should have opposed to you cases in which the, to my mind, sounder principle is observed.

Raphael's ceiling in the Vatican, for instance--an example you will scarcely cavil at. There is not in the whole range of art a single aberration that cannot be endorsed with some good name.

To glance once more at the principle: whether the gold behind the figures be in effect the background of flat, or whether it be, as you hold, "essentially something round"; whether or not it be this, as I certainly a.s.sert, the wall throughout the decoration, it is unanswerably a conventional _abstraction_, it represents no concrete object, and as an _abstraction_ is incompatible with any perspective representations of solid objects, which presuppose s.p.a.ce and distance--everything that is on the _same_ plane as the figure is submitted to the same conditions, hence any accessory on the pedestal is admissible; everything _beyond_ the pedestal is part of the background, which may be abstract or concrete, as you please, but _cannot_ logically be _both_.

I am the first to admit and admire the intimate connection which existed formerly between architecture and painting: to say "architecture and pictures," is to beg the whole question. In condemning the loose practice of modern times, you cannot propose upholding for admiration the mere fact that in old times picture and wall were sometimes one, but no doubt allude with just admiration to the harmony existing between them, in the best examples, and to the wise adaptation of the one to the other. You, I submit, are attacking and attempting to subvert the very principles on which this harmony rests; my sole desire is to a.s.sert and defend them, and I earnestly desire that, actuated, as I am entirely convinced you are, more by the desire to forward the truth than to triumph in argument, the views I have put before you may eventually commend themselves to you, and deter you from further encouraging a practice which may be supported by precedent, but cannot be made tenable in theory.

In the autumn of 1873 Leighton visited Damascus, where he made studies for the picture exhibited in the 1874 Academy, "Old Damascus--Jews'

Quarter,"[53] and a fine sketch of the interior of the Grand Mosque which he enlarged into a picture 62 49 inches, and exhibited in 1875. He also made a remarkable moonlight study preserved in the Leighton House Collection.

"One afternoon, late in the autumn of 1872," wrote Dr. William Wright, "I was on the roof of my house trying to cool after a long ride in the sun, when there came a loud knock at my door; the latch was lifted, and presently a resplendent kava.s.s mounted to my platform. He explained to me that a n.o.ble Englishman was coming up to see me, and with that Frederic Leighton skipped gaily up the steps. After a courteous greeting and apology, he sat down and became silent, absolutely wrapped up in the pageantry of the sky. When I excused myself for the lapse of the time, he looked at me, and said quietly, 'No artist ever wasted time in accurately observing natural phenomena,' and added, 'That sunset will mix with my paint, and will tint your ink as long as either of us lives. It will never be over, it has dyed our spirits in colours which can never be washed out.'"

To his father he wrote:--

DAMASCUS, _October 18, 1873_.

DEAR PAPA,--I find that I am not as completely cut off from the western world here as I have been led to believe I was, and that boats leave Damascus for Alexandria weekly, and not fortnightly, as I told you in my hasty line of the other day; although, therefore, you are no longer uneasy about my health, I will not defer till the later boat thanking you for your welcome letter which reached me two or three days ago. I am much shocked and concerned to hear of the death of my poor friend Benson, for which I was in no way prepared, the last accounts I had received before leaving England being of a decidedly hopeful nature. A kinder heart never beat than his, and I felt really attached to him; he is a great loss to me. And now to tell you about myself.

Three tedious days on board a Russian boat which tossed and rolled like a cork over a sea on which a P. and O. would have been motionless, brought me to Beyrout, a cheery, picturesque, sunny port at the foot of Lebanon; gay and glad I was to land, and Andrea's cool, clean inn overlooking the sea was a delightful haven of rest, and my first meal at a steady table (or a real chair) was ambrosial. Being in a hurry to get to the end of my journey, I did not stay more than half a day, but started by diligence for Damascus, a journey of some thirteen hours, first over Lebanon itself (which is fine, but by no means grand as I had hoped), then across the Valley of Coelesyria, and lastly over Antilebanon, at the foot of which the town lies. At the last relay I found waiting for me a horse and dragoman, for which and whom I had telegraphed in order that I might get the famous view of Damascus about which travellers have told wonders from time immemorial, and which is only to be seen from a bridle path over the hill above the suburb of Sala'aijeh; unfortunately the days are getting short, and I did not reach the proper spot till just after sunset; not too late, however, to enjoy the marvellous prospect before me, and to feel that it is worthy of all that has been said in its praise. It is impossible to conceive anything more startling than the suddenness with which, emerging from a narrow and absolutely barren cleft in the rock, you see spread before your eyes and at your feet a dense ma.s.s of exuberant trees spreading for miles on to the plain which looks towards Palmyra, and, rising white in the midst of it, the Damascus of the thousand and one nights. It is a great and a rare thing for an old traveller not to be disappointed, and I am grateful that it has been so with me this time. About the town _itself_--as seen, I mean, _from within_--I have a mixed feeling. In some respects it equals all my hopes, or at least in one respect; in others it falls short of them. I have remarked that to be prepared for disappointment never in the slightest degree deadens the blow, and, accordingly, although I have both read and been told to my heart's content that I should find the streets unpicturesque and without character, relatively of course (relatively say, to Cairo, not to Baker Street), I was, nevertheless, depressed and in a way surprised to find them so.

Of course, there are, as in every Eastern town, numberless delightful bits, and those enn.o.bled as regularly as the day comes by a right royal sun and canopy of blue, yet in the main, Cairo and, in a very different way, Algiers, are far more brilliant, and by-the-bye although you see here an extraordinary variety of costumes from the remotest corners of the East (I have met Indians in the streets), a group of Algerine Bedouins in their stately white robes is worth a whole bazaar full of the peasants and pilgrims that throng Damascus. Then in architecture, Damascus falls far behind Cairo, both for abundance and beauty of its specimens. Its background, too, Antilebanon, is unsatisfactory, humpy and without power of character or beauty of line, such as makes the Red Mountains on the skirt of the Cairene desert so delightful. Here then are the shortcomings; but I have my compensation in the houses, the old houses of which some few are standing, though grey and peris.h.i.+ng, and which are still lovely to enchantment. I can't hope to convey to you in writing any idea of this loveliness, and it is not within the scope of sketching (though I am doing one or two little corners), but I am having three or four photographs made (for there are none!) from which you will be able to gather something of their charm. They cannot, however, give you the splendour of the light, and the fanciful delicacy of the colour in the open courts, or the intense and fantastic gorgeousness of the interior. Indeed I shall probably not attempt the latter, and though you will see lemon and myrtle trees rising tall and slim out of the marble floors and bending over tanks of running water, you will miss the vivid sparkling of the leaves, and you will not hear the unceasing song of the bubbling fountains. I wish I could report that I am doing much work. I am doing some, and think I see my way to one or two pot-boilers (the fatal, inevitable pot-boilers!); but distances here are great, and so is the heat, and there is not much that is within the compa.s.s of _sketching_, though there is endless paintable material. I am doing a bit in the great mosque, which is very delightful to me, in colour, and, if I can render it, may strike others in the same way. I am having the spot photographed in case I try to make a picture of it. The second p.-b. would probably be some unambitious corner of a court with a figure or two, _et voila_. It is late and I am sleepy, so good-night and good-bye. I wish you gave me a brighter account of Lina; give her too my best love. It was hardly worth while, by-the-bye, to have my letters forwarded. I shall only get them, if at all, just before leaving Damascus next week! I fear I can't get back to England till end of third week in November.--Your affectionate son,

FRED.

In the autumn of 1877 Leighton revisited Spain. A letter dated September 21, 1877, Madrid, in which Leighton answers certain questions asked by Mrs. Mark Pattison concerning art galleries and dealers, ends with the following sentence:--

Thank you for what you tell me about Puvis de Chavannes' work. I admire the designs for Ste. Genevieve hugely, and am altogether an _aficionado_ of that odd, incomplete, but refined and poetic painter; but for emptiness of modelling he seeks his peer in vain. I am seeing Velasquez again for the third time; this is the place in which to see him in all his splendour, and in all his nakedness--but that would be a chapter, and not a hasty note.--Very truly yours,

FRED LEIGHTON.

From Spain Leighton crossed to Tangiers, whence he wrote:--