A Study in Oils
A STUDY IN OILS
"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; thesethen, 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 thewreck 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 Chaldæan 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."
Head of a Yound Girl
HEAD OF A YOUNG GIRLA STUDY IN OILS
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, andnouveaux richesof 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 æsthetic." Even in Roman architecture, our critic finds little to weaken his view of the Roman æsthetic inefficiency. "It was not," he said, "the spontaneous utterance of an æsthetic instinct, but the outcome of material needs and of patriotic pride," and hence only an incompleteexpression of Roman civilization. "To them, in brief, art was not vernacular: their purest taste, their brightest gifts of mind, found no utterance in it."
Study of a Head
STUDY OF A HEAD
"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.'
...... 'Sævior armisLuxuria 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 æsthetic 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 "newamalgam" 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,à 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.
Study of a Head
STUDY OF A HEAD
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 "mediæval 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, Phœnician, and Carthaginian blood; and to theseinfusions succeeded the great invasion of the Visigoths of the fifth century.
Study of a Head
STUDY OF A HEAD
"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 staticaltour 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 toGermany, 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 Dürer: "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.
Ifwe 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 thequiet, and the perfect Oriental repose, which give the chamber its spell.
The House: The Inner Hall
THE HOUSE: THE INNER HALL
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 exquisitebric-Ã -brac: a drawing ofThe Fontana della Tartarughe in Romeby 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, representingMorning,Noon,Evening, andNight, 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 famousHay Wainwhich, 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 JoshuaReynolds 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 famousPortrait of Captain Burton; and over a doorway his early painting ofThe 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 æsthetic 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 accordin 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, andVenus, by G. F. Watts, andChaucer'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.
Inthe 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 hisfeeling 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 lineas 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 firstand 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 æsthetic 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 treesas 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.
The House: The Arab Hall
THE HOUSE: THE ARAB HALL
On the left, down a short passage, is the Arab Hall. It is so unlike anything else in Europe that its reputationhas 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 borderunfortunately 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.
The hall is square. On one side is the entrance. In the centre of each of the other sides is a lofty arched recess. Those to the north and south are windows, shuttered with genuine musharabiyehs bought in Cairo and having deep cushioned divans. The recess to thewest has only a small pierced window high up. It has a raised step, and in it used to stand certain bronze reproductions from Pompeii, with pots, vases, etc., now gone. Some of the tiles were bought in Damascus in 1873. The price paid was £200 for the complete tile surface of one room. What would they be worth now? Others, particularly the great inscription spoken of below, were bought later in Cairo, and the rest at odd times. Here and there are single tiles, but most of them are in sets forming fine panels. An interesting one, in the south-east corner, represents hawks clutching their prey, cheetahs and deer, a hunter, etc., and another has herons, fish, tortoises, deer, etc. Set into the woodwork in the western recess are four tiles with female figures. These are either Persian or come from the neighbourhood of Persia, for the Anatolian or Egyptian Mahommedan tolerated no representations of life. The rest repeat in pleasing variety the usual motives of oriental design, viz., vines, cypresses, pinks and vases, doorways (? the entrances of mosques), with hanging lamps, and conventional floral designs. Above the entrance runs the chief treasure, the grand series of tiles bearing the great inscription. It is about sixteen feet long. According to Mr. Harding Smith it may be translated thus:
"In the name of the merciful and long-suffering God. The Merciful hath taught the Koran. He hath created man and taught him speech. He hath set the sun and moon in a certain course. Both the trees and the grass are in subjection to him."
It cannot be said that there is anything very new in that. There rarely is in such inscriptions. There are three others, but so far as they have been deciphered they appear to be incomplete, and in two cases, at any rate, to much the same effect as the big one. Just piousreminders. The real interest of them lies in the decorative effect of the imposing procession of letters across the wall, and the splendour of their colours. For beauty and condition this great inscription is said to be without a rival in any collection in Europe.
Let into the woodwork panelling in the west bay there are two small lustred Persian tiles of the thirteenth century. They have been mutilated as to the faces of the figures by true believers. The rest belong to the sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries, a time when artistic production was stimulated by the commercial wealth brought by the trade of Venice and Genoa with the East through Anatolia, Damascus and Cairo.
Round three sides above the tiles runs a decorative mosaic frieze, by Walter Crane, of an arabesque design on a gold ground. It is a beautiful and fanciful piece of work in itself, and it serves moreover to blend the prevailing colour of the tiles with the gilding of the upper regions. But it does not continue round the fourth side, because over the entrance, above the great inscription, an oriel window of musharabiyeh work looks down into the hall from the first floor of the house.
The pierced windows, or at least eight of them, were brought from Cairo, and when bought had the original glass in them; but in the east the glass is stuck in with white of egg, and as they were, as usual, ill-packed, the glass all came out and was ground to fragments in the jolting of the journey. Only enough could be saved to fill the window in the upper part of the west recess opposite the entrance. The remainder had to be filled with English imitations.
Returning now to the staircase, we find it ends on the first floor in a landing leading to the great studio. On the left it is open to the little studio; so-called because,having a skylight, Lord Leighton used it for painting out-of-door effects until he had the glass studio built. Adjoining it, or forming an extension of it, is another room, built only a year or two before the late owner's death. After the addition of the glass studio the two were only used as an antechamber, and were hung with the pictures presented by brother artists, and with a few old masters. The mouldings round the skylights are very pretty. The latticed window before mentioned looks down from the little studio into the Arab Hall.
The great studio is a large room about sixty feet by twenty-five and about seventeen in height. In the centre of the north side is the lofty window forming a bay and extending into a skylight in the top. High up on either side of it are the three small openings mentioned when speaking of the exterior. A curtain hangs in front of them, and in point of fact they were never used. In the west wall is an apse with a gilt semi-dome, which appears in some of Lord Leighton's pictures. Across the east end runs a gallery at about eight feet from the floor with bookshelves under it on either side, and in the middle a broad passage leads into the glass studio, and still outside this is a wide balcony looking into the garden. Casts of a portion of the Panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon run along the upper part ofthewall of the great studio, fit emblem of the lifelong devotion of the President to classic art. Such then is the workshop. Even now, comparatively bare as it is at the present moment of writing, this is one of the most picturesque suites of rooms in existence; but to see it on one of the grand occasions of Leighton's musical receptions was a very different sight and one not easily to be forgotten. Then when walls and easels were covered with pictures, when rare carpets hung from the gallery, flowers and palmsfilled the bay window, beautiful women and men of every form of distinction crowded the floor to listen to Joachim and Piatti, nothing was wanting which could give beauty or interest to the spectacle.
It will be seen that the house is still rich in artistic beauty and still has objects of value. But the most precious of its contents are after all its associations. Its floors have been trodden by all that was most notable in the society of its owner's day, people whose names alone would be an epitome of our times. It was also the workshop of a great artist. But, above all, it was the centre of a great influence which profoundly modified English art.
Whatever judgment the future may pass upon his own productions, the fact must never be lost sight of that even without them Leighton was a great man. Intellectually, spiritually, and socially he was the most brilliant leader and stimulator of artists we have ever seen in England. His earnest example and lifelong persistence fanned the flame of enthusiasm among all branches of art workers. He taught Englishmen to study form, and it was under his encouragement that sculpture, which was fallen so low, has now risen into so good a place. Finally he did more than anyone else has done to raise the status of the artist in society.
The house which he built himself was his hobby, and in the refinement and catholicity of taste it shows, there is so just a reflex of his characteristics that an account of it is indispensable to any book which claims to describe the man.
S. Pepys Cockerell.
Beforeclosing our record it will be well to quote, as we promised earlier, some of the contemporary criticism that Sir Frederic's work has encountered from time to time; and especially the criticism of his earlier performances, while he was still in the years of his pre-Academic probation.
As a provocation to criticism, most interesting of all is his picture, theCimabue's Madonna carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence, upon which we have already commented. As we may here remind our readers, it was painted at Rome chiefly, in 1853-4, and was exhibited at the Academy of 1855. In that year, as good fortune would have it, Mr. Ruskin issued for the first time, "Notes on some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal Academy." Some pages of this famous pronouncement are devoted to this very picture, and we cannot do better than quote freely from a criticism so remarkable.
"This is a very important and very beautiful picture," says Mr. Ruskin. "It has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of Venetian art—that is to say, on the calm acceptance of the whole of nature, small and great, as, in its place, deserving of faithful rendering. The great secret of the Venetians was their simplicity. They were great colourists, not because theyhad peculiar secrets about oil and colour, but because when they saw a thing red, they painted it red; and ... when they saw it distinctly, they painted it distinctly. In all Paul Veronese's pictures, the lace borders of the table cloths or fringes of the dresses are painted with just as much care as the faces of the principal figures; and the reader may rest assured that in all great art it is so. Everything in it is done as well as itcanbe done. Thus in the picture before us, in the background is the Church of San Miniato, strictly accurate in every detail; on the top of the wall are oleanders and pinks, as carefully painted as the church; the architecture of the shrine on the wall is well studied from thirteenth-century Gothic, and painted with as much care as the pinks; the dresses of the figures, very beautifully designed, are painted with as much care as the faces: that is to say, all things throughout with as much care as the painter could bestow. It necessarily follows that what is most difficult (i.e.the faces) should be comparatively the worst done. But if they are done as well as the painter could do them, it is all we have to ask; and modern artists are under a wonderful mistake in thinking that when they have painted faces ill, they make their pictures more valuable by painting the dresses worse.
"The painting before us has been objected to because it seems broken up in bits. Precisely the same objection would hold, and in very nearly the same degree, against the best works of the Venetians. All faithful colourists' work, in figure-painting, has a look of sharp separation between part and part.... Although, however, in common with all other works of its class, it is marked by these sharp divisions, there is no confusion in its arrangement. The principal figure is nobly principal, not by extraordinary light, but by its own pure whiteness; andboth the Master and the young Giotto attract full regard by distinction of form and face. The features of the boy are carefully studied, and are indeed what, from the existing portraits of him, we know those of Giotto must have been in his youth. The head of the young girl who wears the garland of blue flowers is also very sweetly conceived.
"Such are the chief merits of the picture. Its defect is that the equal care given to the whole of it is not yetcare enough. I am aware of no instance of a young painter, who was to be really great, who did not in his youth paint with intense effort and delicacy of finish. The handling here is much too broad; and the faces are, in many instances, out of drawing, and very opaque and feeble in colour. Nor have they in general the dignity of the countenance of the thirteenth century. The Dante especially is ill-conceived—far too haughty, and in no wise noble or thoughtful. It seems to me probable that Mr. Leighton has greatness in him, but there is no absolute proof of it in this picture; and if he does not, in succeeding years, paint far better, he will soon lose the power of painting so well."
To Mr. Ruskin's account, which is sufficient to enable one to realize the picture in some detail, we may add further the criticism of the "Athenæum" of May 12th, 1855, which is interesting as showing how the work affected a contemporary critic of another order. It speaks of Mr. Leighton as "a young artist who, we believe, has studied in Italy," and goes on to say: "There can be no question that the picture is one of great power, although the composition is quaint even to sectarianism; and though the touch, in parts broad and masterly, is in the lesser parts of the roughest character." The last clause of the sentence bears out, it may be perceived, a significantindictment in Mr. Ruskin's deliverance, which lays stress on a defect that the artist, in his maturer brush-work, does not show.
Rossetti, writing to his friend William Allingham, May 11th, 1855, says: "There is a big picture ofCimabue, one of his works in procession, by a new man, living abroad, named Leighton—a huge thing, which the Queen has bought, which everyone talks of. The R.A.'s have been gasping for years for someone to back against Hunt and Millais, and here they have him, a fact that makes some people do the picture injustice in return. It wasveryuninteresting to me at first sight; but on looking more at it, I think there is great richness of arrangement, a quality which, whenreallyexisting, as it does in the best old masters, and perhaps hitherto in no living man—at any rate English—ranks among the great qualities.
"But I am not quite sure yet either of this or of the faculty for colour, which I suspect exists very strongly, but is certainly at present under a thick veil of paint, owing, I fancy, to too much continental study. One undoubted excellence it has—facility, without much neatness or ultra-cleverness in the execution, which is greatly like that of Paul Veronese; and the colour may mature in future works to the same resemblance, I fancy. There is much feeling for beauty, too, in the women. As for purely intellectual qualities, expression, intention, etc., there is little as yet of them; but I think that in art richness of arrangement is so nearly allied to these, that where it exists (in an earnest man) they will probably supervene. However, the choice of subject, though interesting in a certain way, leaves one quite in the dark as to what faculty the man may have for representing incident or passionate emotion. But I believe, as far as this showing goes, that he possesses qualities which the massof our artists aim at chiefly, and only seem to possess. Whether he have those of which neither they nor he give sign, I cannot tell; but he is said to be only twenty-four years old. There is something very French in his work, at present, which is the most disagreeable thing about it; but this I dare say would leave him if he came to England."[12]
In the year following Leighton's academicaldébut, he exhibited a picture entitledThe Triumph of Music, which the "Athenæum," hereafter so sympathetic towards his work, described as "anything but a triumph of art."
Partly, perhaps, because of the general tone of discouragement in all the criticisms of this year, the artist did not send in anything to the Academy of 1857. In 1858 his two pictures—The Fisherman and the Syren, andCount Paris, although admirably conceived, and extremely interesting to us now, received no word of friendly criticism that is worth recording.
At the Academy of 1859 were exhibited two pictures by him, which served to reassure at last those critics who had been shaking their heads over his supposed inability to follow up his first success. We turn to the "Athenæum" again, to study its gradual conversion from an attitude of critical distrust to one of critical sympathy:
"Mr. Leighton," says the "Athenæum," "after a temporary eclipse, struggles again to light. His heads of Italian women this year are worthy of a young old master: anything more feeling, commanding, or coldly beautiful, we have not seen for many a day.... This isreal painting, and we cannot but think that a painter who can paint so powerfully will soon be able to surpass that processional picture of his,..."i.e., theCimabue.
In 1860, the artist, who then entered upon his thirtieth year, exhibited a small picture,Capri, Sunrise, which won great praise for its successful treatment of Italian landscape under the Scirocco, whose sulphurous light is cast with evil suggestion upon the white houses and green vegetation. In paying his tribute to the quality of the picture, the critic of the "Athenæum" cannot resist, however, the old cry of great expectations. For the effect of theCimabue's Madonnahad aroused critics to regard the painter as one who would continue the legend of the great historical schools, and carry on the traditions of the so-called grand style. But the critic proposes, the creator disposes: the artist went his own way, following still his own ideals.
In 1861, some rather warm discussion raged over two of the artist's contributions to the Royal Academy, which appeared in its catalogue as Nos. 399 and 550, and which, it was said, had been deliberately slighted by the hanging committee. In later years, Leighton must sometimes have smiled when he heard (as from his position he must needs have,) the annual plaint of the "skied." It is to the "Art Journal," whose criticisms, when they had to do with the new and rising schools, used to be always entertaining, if often provoking, in those days, that we turn for a contemporary account of these things, rather than to any other source. The critic having premised, with a delightful and convincing air of "I told you so!" that his first effort (the inevitableCimabue's Madonna) having exhausted the poor artist, "he has been coming down the ladder of fame ever since," continues in characteristic tones: "Instead ofbeing hung too high, theDream, had it been properly hung, would have been displayed upon the ceiling." The picture, according to this authority, consisted only of a questionable combination of the "lower forms of mere decorative ornamentation," and was in fact, "not so much a picture as a very clever treatment for the centre of a ceiling." So much for what was really the first clear sign of the artist's delightful decorative faculty.
It is clear from various evidences of the feeling of the critics about Leighton at this time, that they had begun to look upon him as one whose ideals were frivolous, and not seriously minded, or weighted with the true British substantiality of the old Academy tradition. In the very next year, the artist, by the chances of his own temperamental many-sided delight in life and art, did something to reassure his admonitors once more. No. 217 at the Royal Academy of 1862 was his picture,The Star of Bethlehem, which, with some natural and not unfair deductions, won considerable praise from the critic last quoted. In this painting, which shows curiously the mingled academic and natural quality of the artist, the critic found profound incompatibilities of conception and technique; and next year, the same critic was stirred to exclaim,—"The pictures which of all others give most trouble and anxiety to the critic are perhaps those of Mr. Millais and Mr. Leighton,"—a very suggestive conjunction of names, let us add.
It was probably the same critic, who speaking of theDante at Verona, in 1864, said gravely, "The promise given by theCimabuehere reaches fruition."
Writing in 1863, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, a critic whom it is interesting to be able to cite, said of two of the artist's pictures of that year, theGirl feeding Peacocksand theGirl with a Basket of Fruit, they belong "to that classof art in which Mr. Leighton shines—the art of luxurious exquisiteness; beauty, for beauty's sake; colour, light, form, choice details, for their own sake, or for beauty's."
In the same year, Mr. Rossetti spoke of the young artist as the one "British painter of special faculty who has come forward with the most decided novelty of aim"—since, that is, the new development of art under the little band of Pre-Raphaelites,—with which Mr. W. M. Rossetti was himself so closely associated.
By way of contrast, we may cite the "Art Journal" of 1865, which provides a most extraordinary criticism ofDavid, of that year. "We would venture to ask," says this ingenious critic, "why the divine psalmist has so small a brain? Within this skull there is not compass for the poet's thoughts to range. We state as a physiological fact, that a head so small, with a brow so receding, could not have belonged to any man who has made himself conspicuous in the world's history. Again, descending to mere matter of costume, there cannot be a doubt that the purple mantle flung on the psalmist's shoulders is wholly wanting in study of detail, and constitutes a blot on the landscape. Barring these oversights, the picture possesses merits."
At this period we hear the first critical murmurs against the artist's very deliberately chosen method of flesh-painting. In 1867, speaking of theVenus Disrobing, the "Art Journal" critic says: "According to the manner, not to say the mannerism, of the artist, it has a pale silvery hue, not as white as marble, not so life-glowing as flesh." With this we may compare, for the comparison is instructive, the "Athenæum," whose notice is more sympathetic. The figure of the goddess it describes as "all rosy white, ... admirably drawn, and modelled with extreme care."
Again, in 1868, the "Art Journal" says of Sir Frederic'sActæa: "The artist has made some attempt to paint flesh in its freshness and transparency, and indeed the more he renounces the opacity of the German school, and the more he can realize the brilliance of the old Venetian painters, the better."
In 1869, the "Athenæum" praised theSister's Kiss, as "a lovely group," but complained that the execution was a "little too smooth,"—a complaint not infrequently echoed from time to time by the artist's critics. Some years later we find Mr. W. M. Rossetti making the same complaint in criticisingWinding the Skein.
In 1875 the picture,Portions of the Interior of the Grand Mosque at Damascus, won great praise, as "a remarkably delicate piece of work, in which the beautiful colouring of the tiled walls and mosaic pavement are skilfully rendered."
In 1876, the quondam hostile "Art Journal" is completely converted by theDaphnephoria: "To project such a scene upon canvas presupposes a man of high poetic imagination, and when it is accompanied by such delicacy and yet such precision of drawing and such sincerity of modelling, the poet is merged in the painter and we speak of such a one as a master. There is, indeed, nothing more consolatory to those who take an interest in British art than the knowledge that we have among us a man of such pure devotion and lofty aim."
It was in 1875, that Mr. Ruskin, resuming hisrôleof an Academy critic, claimed Leighton as "a kindred Goth," and confessed, "I determined on writing this number of 'Academy Notes,' simply because I was so much delighted with Mr. Leslie'sSchool, Mr. Leighton'sLittle Fatima, Mr. Hook'sHearts of Oak, and Mr. Couldery'sKittens."
In his lectures on the Art of England, the same critic, speaking of Leighton's children, says: "It is with extreme gratitude, and unqualified admiration, that I find Sir Frederic condescending from the majesties of Olympus to the worship of those unappalling powers, which, heaven be thanked, are as brightly Anglo-Saxon as Hellenic; and painting for us, with a soft charm peculiarly his own, the witchcraft and the wonderfulness of childhood."
Upon theEgyptian Slingerof the same year, which Mr. Ruskin terms the "study of man in his Oriental function of scarecrow (symmetrically antithetic to his British one of game preserver)," his criticism is interesting, but adverse. The critic who elsewhere acknowledged fully the artist's acutely observant and enthusiastic study of the organism of the human body, confesses himself unable to recognize his skill, or to feel sympathy with the subjects that admit of its display. It is, he goes on to say further of theSlinger, "it is, I do not doubt, anatomically correct, and with the addition of the corn, the poppies, and the moon, becomes semi-artistic; so that I feel much compunction in depressing it into the Natural History class; and the more, because it partly forfeits its claim even to such position, by obscuring in twilight and disturbing our minds, in the process of scientific investigation, by sensational effects of afterglow and lunar effulgence, which are disadvantageous, not to the scientific observer only, but to less learned spectators; for when simple persons like myself, greatly susceptible to the influence of the stage lamps and pink side-lights, first catch sight of this striding figure from the other side of the room, and take it, perhaps, for the angel with his right foot on the sea and the left on the earth, swearing there shall be Time no longer; or for Achilles alighting from one ofhis lance-cast-long leaps on the shore of Scamander, and find on near approach that all this grand straddling and turning down of the gas mean practically only a lad shying stones at sparrows, we are only too likely to pass it petulantly without taking note of what is really interesting in this eastern custom and skill."