The Plague in Florence
SCHEME FOR A PICTURE: THE PLAGUE IN FLORENCE
We have seen how the spirit and sentiment of Italy continually remained by the artist in his German studio, and how in Frankfort his artistic imagination returned again and again to Florence, and to the early Florentines of his particular adoration—Cimabue and Giotto. The recall to Italy came inevitably, as Steinle's teaching at last had fully worked its purpose. Steinle himself counselled the move, and gave his favourite pupil an introduction to Cornelius in Rome. It was to Rome, therefore, and not to Florence, that the young artist went—to Rome where sooner or later the steps of all men who work for art or for religion tend, and where so few stay. This was in 1852, the year which was represented in the Commemorative Exhibition at Burlington House byA Persian Pedlar, a small full-length figure of a man in Oriental costume, seated cross-legged on a divan, with a long pipe in his hand. To 1853 belongs aPortrait of Miss Laing(Lady Nias), which was shown again at the same time.
The Rome of the mid-century was Rome at its best, with much artistic stimulus of the present, as well as of the past. The English colony was particularly strong. Thackeray was there, moving about after his wont in the studios and salons; the Brownings were there, and in their prime. The young painter and his work, including theCimabue's Madonnain its earlier stages, made a great impression on Thackeray, who turned prophet for once on the strength of it. On returning to London and meeting Millais, he prophesied gaily to that ardent Pre-Raphaelite, then marching on from success to success: "Millais! my boy, I have met in Rome a versatile young dog called Leighton, who will one of these days run you hard for the presidentship!" This was early days for such a rumour to reach the Academy, who knew an olderschool, represented by Landseer and Eastlake, and a younger school, represented by Millais and Rossetti, but as yet knew not Leighton.
Among the leading artists in Rome at this time, beside Cornelius, were the two French painters, Bouguereau and Gerome. To these, especially to Bouguereau, who was a great believer in "scientific composition," Leighton was, on his own testimony, largely indebted for his fine sense of form. Yet another famous Frenchman, Robert Fleury, whom he afterwards met in Paris, may be mentioned here, since from him he learnt much in the way of colouring, and the technique of his art.
Turning from the painters to the poets, it was at Rome that Robert Browning, who was at this time writing his "Men and Women," formed close acquaintance with the young artist. Something of the atmosphere which permeates such poems as "Bishop Blougram's Apology," "Andrea del Sarto," and others of the same series, seems to linger yet in the record of those early meetings of poets and painters, with all their associations:
"The Vatican,Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls,And English books."
One easily supposes Browning speaking through his Bishop Blougram, as, it is said, he was heard to speak in those days in praise of Correggio, to whose qualities, Ruskin tells us, Sir Frederic Leighton curiously approximates:
"'Twere pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glowHang full in face of one where'er one roams,Since he more than the others brings with himItaly's self—the marvellous Modenese!"
Italy's self, in truth, Frederic Leighton, like Browning inpoetry, did not fail to bring with him, and revived for us for many years, by his art and southern glow of colour, in the gray heart of London.
Madonna Carried in Procession
CIMABUE'S MADONNA CARRIED IN PROCESSION THROUGH THE STREETS OF FLORENCE (1855)
Among other people whom Leighton met in Rome were George Sand, Mrs. Kemble, George Mason the painter, ofHarvest Moonfame, Gibson the sculptor, and Lord Lyons. Like Robert Browning, let us add, he was readily responsive to the quickening of his contemporaries, and vigorously studied the present in order that he might the better paint the past, and put live souls into the archaic raiment of Cimabue and old Florence.
He was working hard all this while, with a devotion and concentration that impressed other friends beside Thackeray, upon his picture ofCimabue's Madonna, which was exhibited in the Academy of 1855, and as the work of an unknown hand made a distinct sensation. It was discussed, angrily by some, delightedly by others. The criticism which Rossetti, Mr. Ruskin, and other critics bestowed upon it in the press or in private correspondence[1]will come more fitly into our later pages, when we turn to deal with contemporary opinions upon Leighton's work. Enough to say here that it won fame for the artist at a stroke. The Queen bought it for £600, having bespoken it, I believe, before it left his studio, and hung it eventually in Buckingham Palace. With this encouraging first great success, the probationary stage of our artist's history may be said to close.
TheAcademy of forty years ago was very different from that we know to-day. It was held in the left wing of the National Gallery, and had not nearly so much space at its disposal as it has in its present quarters at Burlington House. The exhibition of 1855 contained few pictures, compared with the multitudinous items of the present shows.
Generally speaking, the exhibition was of a heavier, more Georgian aspect, in spite of certain Pre-Raphaelite experiments and other signs of the coming of a younger generation. Sir Charles Eastlake was President. Professor Hart was delivering lectures to its students, full of academic, respectable intelligence, if little more; lectures which those who are curious may find reported in full in the "Athenæum" of that time.
More interesting was the appearance of Mr. Ruskin as commentator on the pictures of the Academy in this year, the first in which he issued his characteristic "Academy Notes." His long, and, all things considered, remarkably appreciative criticism of theCimabue's Madonnawe discuss elsewhere (p.103). Of another picture of Italy by a very different painter, which was considered a masterpiece by some critics, we find him speaking in terms of monition: "Is it altogether too late to warn him that he is fast becoming nothing more than an Academician?"The one picture of the year, according to Mr. Ruskin, was theRescue, by Millais. "It is the only great picture exhibited this year," he writes, "but this is very great." For the rest,A Scene from As You Like It, by Maclise; another Shakespearean subject, the inevitableLear and Cordelia, by Herbert; and aBeatriceby the then President, and we have recalled everything that served to give the Academy of that year its distinction in the eyes of contemporary critics. Sir Edwin Landseer, who to the outer world was the one great fact in the art of the time, does not appear to have exhibited in 1855.
Looking back now to that date, what one discerns chiefly is the emergence of the Pre-Raphaelites from the more conventional multitude that were taking up the artistic traditions of the first half of the century. Millais, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and their associates, count to us, to-day, as the representatives of an earlier generation; in 1855 they still stood for all that was daring, unprecedented, and adventurous in their art.
This newcomer, with hisCimabue's Madonnain a new style, puzzled the critics considerably. They did not know quite how to allot him in their casual division of contemporary schools. "Landseer and Maclise we know; and Millais and Holman Hunt; but who is Leighton?" was the tenor of their commentary.
Meanwhile an event of great significance to English Art in this year was happening—an exhibition of English pictures in Paris, the first of its kind. This beginning of such international exchanges was important; it has led up to many striking modifications of both English and French schools since that date. It is curious that it should coincide with the awakening to certain other foreign influences: that of the early Italian school upon the Pre-Raphaelites, and that of the later Italian, popularlyknown as "the classic school," upon Leighton and Mr. G. F. Watts.
Of this exhibition of English pictures, which was held in the Avenue Montaigne, M. Ernest Chesneau, a critic very sympathetic to English art, tells us, in his admirable book on the "English School of Painting," that "for the French it was a revelation of a style and a school of the very existence of which they had hitherto had no idea; and whether owing to its novelty, or the surprise it occasioned, or, indeed, to its real merit, whatever may have been the true cause, most certain it is that the English, until then little thought of and almost unknown abroad, obtained in France a great success."
M. Chesneau, in going on to account further for the great impression made by the English painters in Paris, attributes it largely to thesingularitywhich, for foreign eyes, marks their work. It is curious, indeed, that French critics, and M. Chesneau among them, really admire this singularity, which they count distinctively British. They look for it in our pictures, and if they do not find it—as in the work of Leighton—they feel aggrieved.
British eccentricity, whether thinking its way with the aid of genius into "Pre-Raphaelitism," or now again, with the aid of extreme cleverness and talent, into certain cruder forms of "impressionism," is sure of its effect. But an art like Leighton's, whose aim is beauty and not eccentricity, is apt to be slighted by both French and English critics, with some notable exceptions. Not all its grace, its classic quality, its beauty of line and distinction of treatment, avail it, when it comes into conflict with doctrinaire theories on the one hand, and a love for mere sensationalism on the other.
The Dead Romeo
THE DEAD ROMEOA PENCIL STUDY
The success of his picture at the Academy, and theincidental lionizing of a season, did not tempt the artist to stay long in London, and he went to Paris, where he settled himself in a studio and proceeded to complete hisTriumph of Music, and other pictures begun in Rome.
By this time the painter's method might seem assured, but Paris was still able to add something to his style, with the aid of such masters as Fleury. English critics, who expectedThe Triumph of Musicto sustain the reputation won byCimabue's Madonna, were disappointed—partly because Orpheus was represented as playing a violin, in place of the traditional lyre. To those who will examine and compare them more carefully, there is no such discrepancy.The Triumph of Music: Orpheus by the power of his Art redeems his wife from Hades, which is every whit as distinctive a performance as theCimabue's Madonna(as indeed it was conceived and painted largely under the same conditions), was nevertheless not a popular success. Certainly, it marks, as clearly as anything can, the sense of colour, the sense of form, the draughtsmanship, the immensely cultured eye and hand, first discovered to the English critics by its predecessor. It was sold after the painter's death.
Of certain other works painted in 1856, 1857, and 1858, some of which never found their way to the Academy, little need be said. To this period belong two pictures painted in Paris, the one,Panunder a fig-tree, with a quotation from Keats's "Endymion":
"O thou, to whomBroad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoomTheir ripened heritage,"
and the other, a pendant to it,A Nymph and Cupid.
Salome, the Daughter of Herodias, painted in 1857,but apparently not exhibited at the Academy, represents a small full-length figure in white drapery, with her arms above her head, which is crowned with flowers; behind her stands a female musician. Another, shown in 1858 at the Royal Academy, and again in the 1897 retrospective exhibition, was first entitledThe Fisherman and Syren, and afterwardsThe Mermaid; it is a composition of two small full-length figures, a mermaid clasping a fisherman round the neck. The subject is taken from a ballad by Goethe:
"Half drew she him,Half sunk he in,And never more was seen."
In the same year was a painting inspired by "Romeo and Juliet," entitledCount Paris, accompanied by Friar Laurence, comes to the house of the Capulets to claim his bride; he finds Juliet stretched, apparently lifeless, on the bed. The picture shows, in addition to the figures named in its former title, the father and mother of Juliet bending over their daughter's body, and through an opening beyond numerous figures at the foot of the staircase.
The latter year marked the painter's return to London, where he entered more actively into its artistic life than he had done hitherto, and made closer acquaintance with the Pre-Raphaelites, who were already entering upon their second and maturer stage. To take Rossetti: it was in 1856 that he made those five notable designs to illustrate "Poems by Alfred Tennyson," which Moxon and Co. published in the following year; an event that, for the first time, really introduced him to the public at large. To 1857, again, belongs Rossetti'sBlue ClosetandDamsel of the Sangrael, both painted for Mr. W.Morris. And in 1857 and 1858, the famous and hapless distemper pictures on the walls of the Union Debating Society's room at Oxford, were engaging Rossetti and his associates, including Burne-Jones, William Morris, Mr. Val. Prinsep, Mr. Arthur Hughes, and Mr. Spencer Stanhope.
A Pencil Study
A PENCIL STUDY
It was in the summer of 1858, Mr. F. G. Stephens tells us, that the original Hogarth Club was founded, of which the two Rossettis were prominent instigators,—one of the most notable of the many protestant societies that have sprung up at different times from a slightly anti-Academic bias. It is interesting to find that Leighton's famousLemon Treedrawing in silverpoint was exhibited here. The Hogarth Club held its meetings at 178, Piccadilly, in the first instance; removed afterwards to 6, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, and finally dissolved, in 1861, after existing for four seasons.
To speak of other painters more or less associated with Rossetti and his school, Mr. Holman Hunt, whoseLight of the Worldhad greatly struck Paris in 1855, exhibited hisScapegoatat the Academy of 1856, a picture which called from Mr. Ruskin immense praise, and a characteristic protest: "I pray him to paint a few pictures with less feeling in them, and more handling." Of Millais we have already spoken. In 1856 he exhibitedThe Child of the Regiment,Peace Concluded, andAutumn Leaves.
In 1859 Leighton showed three pictures at the Academy. One,A Roman Lady(then calledLa Nanna), a half-length black-haired figure, facing the spectator, in Italian costume; another, now calledNanna, then entitledPavonia, a half-length figure of a girl in Italian costume, with peacock's feathers in the background; andSunny Hours, which seems to have escaped record so far. Thesame year saw another of his pictures,Samson and Delilah, exhibited at Suffolk Street.
We must not pass by the famousStudy of a Lemon Tree(now at Oxford), mentioned above, without quoting the praise by Mr. Ruskin, which made it famous. Mr. Ruskin couples it with another drawing, both of which we have been fortunately able to reproduce in our pages. These "two perfect early drawings," he writes, "are ofA Lemon Tree, and another of the same date, ofA Byzantine Well, which determine for you without appeal, the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. Of all our present masters Sir Frederic Leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any seen since Correggio's time. But you see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained, and exalted, his gift of beautifulvaghezza." TheLemon Treestudy, let us add, was drawn at Capri in the spring of 1859. Here, and elsewhere in the South of Europe, whither the artist returned, escaping from London at every opportunity, many other notable studies and drawings were made during this period. Some of these were employed long since for the backgrounds of pictures familiar to us all. Others, faithful studies of nature, small oil and water-colour drawings, chiefly landscape, were scarce known to the general public during the painter's life, but were eagerly competed for at the sale of his pictures in July, 1896.
The little picture ofCapri at Sunrisewas hung in the Academy of 1860, the painter's only contribution of that year. In the year following, we find another small picture of Capri, together with five others, some of which played their part in winning for the artist his wider recognition.
A Lemon Tree
A LEMON TREEA PENCIL STUDY
Byzantine Well Head
BYZANTINE WELL HEADA PENCIL STUDY
Meanwhile, the artist was drawing his London ties closer. In 1860 he took up his abode at 2, Orme Square, where he continued to reside until he built his famous house in Holland Park Road, some years later. His art did not for this reason become more like London, or more infected with that British singularity which some critics would seem to demand. On the contrary, Italy and the South, the glow of colour, the perfection of form, the plastic exquisiteness, which mark for us his mature performances, and which follow after classic ideals, were more and more clearly to be discerned in the remarkable cycle of pictures associated with this part of his career.
In 1861 he painted portraits of his sister,Mrs. Sutherland Orr, and ofMr. John Hanson Walker, the former shown at the Academy, where also hungPaolo e Francesca,A Dream,Lieder ohne Worte,J. A.—a Study, andCapri—Paganos. Rossetti, writing of this exhibition, says: "Leighton might, as you say, have made a burst had not his pictures been ill-placed mostly—indeed, one of them (the only very good one,Lieder ohne Worte) is the only instance of very striking unfairness in the place."[2]In 1862 there were no fewer than six of the artist's pictures at the May exhibition of the Academy: theOdalisque, a very popular work, shows a draped female figure, in a very Leightonesque pose, with her arm above her head, leaning against a wall by the water. She holds a peacock's feather screen in her left hand, while a swan in the water at her feet cranes its head upwards towards her;Michael Angelo nursing his dying Servant, a group of two three-quarter length figures; the servant reclining in an armchair with his head resting against the shoulder of Michael Angelo—a fairly powerful but somewhatacademic version of the incident—which looks at first glance like the work of a not very important "old master;"The Star of Bethlehem, showing one of the Magi on the terrace of his house looking at the strange star in the East, while below are indications of a revel he has just left.Duett,Sisters,Sea Echoes, andRustic Music, also belong to this year.
In 1863 he showedEucharis, a half-length figure of a white-robed girl, with a basket of fruit on her head;Jezebel and Ahab;A Cross-bow Man; andA Girl Feeding Peacocks; with these we complete the list of his work as an outsider.
Golden Hours
GOLDEN HOURS (1864)
In1864 Leighton was made an Associate of the Royal Academy. To its summer exhibition he contributed three pictures, showing great and various power in their composition.Dante at Verona,Orpheus and Eurydice, andGolden Hours. The first of these, one of the most remarkable pictures of our modern English school, in which "Dante" appears, is a large work, with figures something less than life-size. It illustrates the verses in the "Paradiso":
"Thou shalt proveHow salt the savour is of others' bread;How hard the passage, to descend and climbBy others' stairs. But that shall gall thee mostWill be the worthless and vile companyWith whom thou must be thrown into the straits,For all ungrateful, impious all and madShall turn against thee."
"Dante, in fulfilment of this prophecy, is seen descending the palace stairs of the Can Grande, at Verona, during his exile. He is dressed in sober grey and drab clothes, and contrasts strongly in his ascetic and suffering aspect with the gay revellers about him. The people are preparing for a festival, and splendidly and fantastically robed, some bringing wreaths of flowers. Bowing with mock reverence, a jester gibes at Dante. An indolentsentinel is seated at the porch, and looks on unconcernedly, his spear lying across his breast. A young man, probably acquainted with the writing of Dante, sympathises with him. In the centre and just before the feet of Dante, is a beautiful child, brilliantly dressed and crowned with flowers, and dragging along the floor a garland of bay leaves and flowers, while looking earnestly and innocently in the poet's face. Next come a pair of lovers, the lady looking at Dante with attention, the man heedless. The last wears a vest embroidered with eyes like those in a peacock's tail. A priest and a noble descend the stairs behind, jeering at Dante."[3]
It was theGolden Hourswhich, though perhaps less memorable and imaginative than the others, won the greatest popular success of the three, a success beyond anything that the artist had so far painted. As this picture is here reproduced, description is needless, except so far as regards the colour of the background, which is literally golden. The dress of the lady who leans upon the spinet is white, embroidered with flowers. TheOrpheus and Eurydiceshowed that the old friendship, formed originally in Rome, between the painter and Robert Browning, was maintained. Some of the poet's lines served as a text for the picture; and as they are little known we repeat them here:
"But give them me—the mouth, the eyes, the brow—Let them once more absorb me! One look nowWill lap me round for ever, not to passOut of its light, though darkness lie beyond.Hold me but safe again within the bondOf one immortal look! All woe that was,Forgotten, and all terror that may be,Defied,—no past is mine, no future! look at me!"
Helen of Troy
HELEN OF TROY (1865)By permission of Messrs. Henry Graves and Co.
Orpheus and Eurydice
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE (1864)
To this year, also, belongs a portrait ofThe late Miss Lavinia I'Anson, a circular panel showing the sky for background. This was exhibited again in the winter Academy of 1897.
In 1865 the artist showed once again his eclectic sympathies, by the variety of the subject-pictures that he sent to the Academy, ranging fromDavidtoHelen of Troy.
In his tenderly conceivedDavid, the Psalmist is seen gazing at two doves in the sky above; he, sunk in a profound reverie, is seated upon a house-top overlooking some neighbouring hills. The whole is large in its handling and treatment, and in the simplicity of its drapery recalls several of the famous illustrations the artist contributed to Dalziel's Bible Gallery. It was exhibited with the quotation, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest." With the delightfulHelen of Troywe are recalled to the third book of the Iliad, when Iris bids Helen go and see the general truce made pending the duel between Paris and Menelaus, of which she is to be the prize. So Helen, having summoned her maids and "shadowed her graces with white veils," rose and passed along the ramparts of Troy. In the picture the light falls on her shoulders and her hair, while her face and the whole of the front of her form are shadowed over, with somewhat mystical effect.
To the same year belongsIn St. Mark's, a picture of a lady with a child in her arms leaving the church, a lovely and finished study of colour;The Widow's Prayer; andMother and Child, a graceful reminder of a gentler world than Helen's.
In 1866 the critics had at last a work which seemed to them to follow the lines of theCimabue's Madonna. This was the radiant and lovely picture of theSyracusanBride leading Wild Beasts in Procession to the Temple of Diana. The composition of this remarkable painting deserves to be closely studied, for it is very characteristic of Sir Frederic Leighton's theories of art, and his conviction of the necessarily decorative effect of such works. A terrace of white marble, whose line is reflected and repeated by the line of white clouds in the sky painting above, affords the figures of the procession a delightful setting. The Syracusan bride leads a lioness, and these are followed by a train of maidens and wild beasts, the last reduced to a pictorial seemliness and decorative calm, very fortunate under the circumstances. The procession is seen approaching the door of the temple, and a statue of Diana serves as a last note in the ideal harmonies of form and colour to which the whole is attuned. As compared with theCimabue's Madonna, it is a more finished piece of work, and the handling throughout is more assured. It was as much an advance, technically, upon that, as theDaphnephoria, which crowned the artist's third decade, was upon this. According to popular report, it was this picture of theSyracusan Bridewhich decided his future election as a full member of the Academy; but as a matter of fact, it was in 1869 that this election took place. The picture, let us add, was suggested to the painter by a passage in the second Idyll of Theocritus: "And for her then many other wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a lioness."The Painter's Honeymoonand aPortrait of Mrs. James Guthriewere also exhibited this year; and the wall-painting ofThe Wise and Foolish Virgins, at Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, was executed during the summer.
Venus Disrobing for the Bath
VENUS DISROBING FOR THE BATH (1867)
Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon
ELECTRA AT THE TOMB OF AGAMEMNON (1869)
In its next exhibition, that of 1867, the Academy held five pictures by the artist, including the delightfulPastoral, two small full-length figures standing in a landscape of a shepherd and a girl—whom he is teaching to play the pipes. This again might be considered a painter's translation from Theocritus, and theVenus Disrobing for the Bath, one of the most debated of all the artist's paintings of the nude. The paleness of the flesh-tint of this Venus aroused a criticism which has often been urged against his pictures—that such a hue was not in nature. In imparting an ideal effect to an ideal subject, Leighton always, however, followed his own conviction—that art has a law of its own, and a harmony of colour and form, derived and selected no doubt from natural loveliness, but not to be referred too closely to the natural, or to the average, in these things.
To the 1868 Academy Leighton contributed another biblical theme,Jonathan's Token to David. With this were four others, as widely varying in subject and conception as need be desired. One was a very charming portrait of a very pretty woman,Mrs.FrederickP. Cockerell. Then follow three more in that cycle of classic subjects, of which the painter never tired. The full title of the first runs,Ariadne abandoned by Theseus: Ariadne watches for his return: Artemis releases her by death. In it the figure of Ariadne, clothed in white drapery, is seen lying on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea.Acme and Septimiusis a circular picture, with two small full-length figures reclining on a marble bench. This extract from Sir Theodore Martin's translation of Catullus was appended to its title in the catalogue:
"Then bending gently back her head,With that sweet mouth so rosy red,Upon his eyes she dropped a kiss,Intoxicating him with bliss."
A love song on canvas, a pictorial transcript from Catullus, it was perhaps the most popular picture of the year. The last of the three wasActæa, the Nymph of the Shore. It represents a small full-length nude figure lying on white drapery by the sea-shore. Actæa is a lovely figure, full of that grace which Leighton so well knew how to impart to his idealized figures.
After this year, at any rate, there could be no longer any doubt but that the artist's power really lay in the creation of ideal forms; whether presented in monomime or combined in poetic and decorative groups, called up from the wonderful limbo of classic myth and history.
With 1869 cameElectra at the Tomb of Agamemnon, a memorable picture, full of characteristic effects of colour and composition, and a notable exercise in the grand style. This work, considered from any side, must be seen to be the outcome of a unique faculty, so unprecedented in English art as to run every risk of misconception that native predilections could impose upon those who stopped to criticise it. The figure of Electra clad in black drapery offered a problem of peculiar difficulty.
Another painting shown this year wasDædalus and Icarus, a strikingly conceived picture. The two figures are singularly noble conceptions of the idealized nude; the drapery at the back of Icarus is typical of the painter in every fold, while the landscape seen far below the stone platform on which the figures stand, shows a bay of the blue Ægean sea in full sidelight, with a lovely glimpse of the white walls of a distant town.
The same exhibition of 1869 saw, also, the vigorously painted diploma picture,St. Jerome, which marked his election as R.A. In it the saint, nude to the waist, kneels with uplifted arms at the foot of a crucifix, hislion seen in the background.Helios and Rhodos, another painting exhibited at the same time, shows Helios descending from his chariot, which is in a cloud above, to embrace the nymph Rhodos, who has risen from the sea.
Daedalus and Icarus
DÆDALUS AND ICARUS (1869)
St. Jerome
ST. JEROME (1869)
Sundryjourneys into the East during this period of Leighton's career, gave him new subject-matter, new tints to his palette, and added something of an oriental fantasy to the classic sentiment of his art. The sketches of Damascus and other time-honoured eastern cities, mosques, gardens, and courtyards, which figured largely among Sir Frederic's studies, were made for the most part in the autumn of 1873.
Previously, as early as 1867, the East had cast its spell upon him. In 1868, he went into Egypt, and made a voyage up the Nile with M. de Lesseps, then at the flood of good-fortune. The Khedive himself provided the steamer for this adventure. "It was during this voyage," we are told, "that Sir Frederic came across a small child with the strangest and most limited idea of full dress that probably ever occurred to mortal—a tiny coin strung on to one of her strong coarse hairs." Of the studies made during the journey, one is a woman's head, draped so as to have a singularly archaic and Sphinx-like effect, Another is the fine profile of a young peasant; and yet another, the head of an old man, simple-minded and philosophical.
Garden at Generalife
GARDEN AT GENERALIFE, GRANADA
Mimbar of the Great Mosque at Damascus
MIMBAR OF THE GREAT MOSQUE AT DAMASCUS(Since destroyed by fire)
In 1869 theHelios and Rhodos, already mentioned, served as the first sign to the public of the new R.A.'s interest in things oriental. To the 1870 exhibition, his only contribution was the picture,A Nile Woman, whichis now owned by the Princess of Wales. It is a small full-length figure of a girl, balancing an empty pitcher upon her head, at the time of moonrise. Anticipating the Eastern subjects which future years produced, we may note a picture ofOld Damascus, showing the Jews' quarter in that fabled city, in all its motley picturesqueness, and the delightfulMoorish Garden,—A Dream of Granada, which were exhibited in 1874. A powerful picture, shown in 1875, of theEgyptian Slinger,[4]is illustrated later in this volume, but no reproduction can quite suggest the striking colouring of the original, and the masterly treatment of its light and shade, in the presentment of this lonely figure posed high on its platform against the clear evening sky. The delightfulLittle Fatima, and theGrand Mosque, Damascus, enlarged from the sketch previously alluded to, were also exhibited in 1875.
But perhaps the most picturesque memorial of the East due to the artist's wanderings of these years, is an architectural, and not a pictorial one. The fame of the Arab Hall in Lord Leighton's house has reached even further than that ofLittle Fatima, or his painting of theGrand Mosque at Damascus. Built originally to provide a setting for some exquisite blue tiles, brought by the owner from Damascus itself, it remains the most perfect representation of an oriental interior to be found in London; but this again belongs to a later period, and we must return to the date whence this chronicle was interrupted. Before doing so, however, it may be noted that in 1870 began the famous Winter Exhibitions of Old Masters and Deceased British Artists, of which Leighton was one of the most active supporters.
In the May exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1871, was hung a notable canvas,Greek Girls picking up Pebbles by the Sea, described at the time as "a delightful composition, comprising figures of almost exhaustless grace, and wealth of beauty in design and colour."
Another painting, also shown there,Cleoboulos instructing his daughter Cleobouline, is a charming example of its kind. The philosopher, with a scroll on his lap, sits on a cushioned bench with his young daughter by his side, his earnest action in delightful contrast with her girlish grace.
But his great work in 1871 wasHercules wrestling with Death for the body of Alcestis. The scene of this profound tragedy is on the sea-shore, where the body of Alcestis, robed in white, lies under the branches of trees in the centre of the picture. On the left is a group of mourners, a seated girl and a woman prostrate in grief. On the right are the two struggling figures; Hercules' superb form and tossing lion-skin contrasting finely, both in action and colouring, with the tall and coldly grey-robed spectre of Death, who presses forward to the bed where Alcestis lies, whence he is thrust back by the mighty Hercules. The exquisite figure of Alcestis with her statuesquely draped robes and their pure and delicate colouring, forms a wonderful contrast to the two strenuous figures on the right, while the figures of the mourners on the left are delightfully posed and full of grace.
In July of this year, it is interesting to remember, appeared Browning's "Balaustion's Adventure," which contained the following tribute to the above picture and its painter:
"I know, too, a great Kaunian painter, strongAs Herakles, though rosy with a robeOf grace that softens down the sinewy strength:And he has made a picture of it all.There lies Alkestis dead, beneath the sun,She longed to look her last upon, besideThe sea, which somehow tempts the life in usTo come trip over its white waste of waves,And try escape from earth, and fleet as free.Behind the body I suppose there bendsOld Pheres in his hoary impotence;And women-wailers, in a corner crouch—Four, beautiful as you four,—yes, indeed!Close, each to other, agonizing all,As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy,To two contending opposite. There strainsThe might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match,—Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but likeThe envenomed substance that exudes some dew,Whereby the merely honest flesh and bloodWill fester up and run to ruin straight,Ere they can close with, clasp and overcome,The poisonous impalpabilityThat simulates a form beneath the flowOf those grey garments; I pronounce that pieceWorthy to set up in our Poikilé!"
Hercules Wrestling with Death
HERCULES WRESTLING WITH DEATH FOR THE BODY OF ALCESTIS (1871)
Summer Moon
SUMMER MOON (1872)By permission of Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi and Co.
To 1872 belongs theSummer Moon, one of the loveliest things ever shown at the Academy, a picture full of that rarer feeling for light and colour, which the artist achieved again and again in his treatment of sunset, twilight, and night effects.After Vespers, exhibited the same year, is a three-quarter length figure of a girl in a green robe standing in front of a bench, holding in her right hand a string of beads. This year's Academy held alsoA Condottiere, the noble figure of a man in armour, now in the Birmingham Municipal Gallery, and a portrait of theRight Hon. Edward Ryan. Hardly less memorable wasMoretta, exhibited in the Academy of 1873, in the words of a critic of the day, "one of the most subtle and fortunate productions of the painter."Morettais robed in green, with masses of loosely arranged hair, anda tender and delicate face.Weaving the Wreath, shown the same year (and again in the Guildhall, 1895), is a very charming figure of quite a young girl seated on a carpet upon a raised step at the foot of a building. Behind her is a bas-relief, against which her head, crowned by a chaplet of flowers, tells out with sculpturesque effect; the sharp, vertical line of thread strained between her hands, and thence in diagonal line to the ball at her feet, is curiously rigid, and by contrast makes the draperies across which it is silhouetted appear still more mobile.
We are passing over, deliberately, the artist's decorative masterpieces of this period,—the South Kensington frescoes to wit; of which theArts of Warbelongs to the year 1872, and its companion,Arts of Peace, to 1873. These works will be found treated at length in a later chapter on the artist's decorative work (pp.63,64).
In the Academy of 1874 appeared four pictures, the most important being the heroic painting,—Clytemnestra from the Battlements of Argos watches for the Beacon-fires which are to announce the Return of Agamemnon. In this picture, the figure of Clytemnestra is seen standing erect, with hands folded, supporting the drapery that clothes a majestic form. For further description, we may be content to quote that given at the time in the appreciative art columns of the "Athenæum:"
"There is the grandeur of Greek tragedy in Mr. Leighton'sClytemnestrawatching for the signal of her husband's return from Troy. The time is deep in the fateful night, while the city sleeps; moonlight floods the walls, the roofs, the gates, and the towers with a ghastly glare, which seems presageful, and casts shadows as dark as they are mysterious and terrible. The dense blue of the sky is dim, sad, and ominous. But the most ominousand impressive element of the picture is a grim figure, the tall woman on the palace roof before us, who looks Titanic in her stateliness, and huge beyond humanity in the voluminous white drapery that wraps her limbs and bosom. Her hands are clenched and her arms thrust down straight and rigidly, each finger locked as in a struggle to strangle its fellow; the muscles swell on the bulky limbs. Drawn erect and with set features, which are so pale that the moonlight could not make them paler, the queen stares fixedly and yet eagerly into the distance, as if she had the will to look over the very edge of the world for the light to come."