PLATE VIII.—PORTRAIT OF SIR RICHARD BURTON
(At the National Portrait Gallery, London)
It would be no exaggeration to describe this painting of the famous explorer as one of the more notable of modern portraits, so strong is it in characterisation and so masterly in manner. The artist was fortunate in having a sitter with such a striking personality, and the sitter in being painted by a man of Leighton's deep insight and great executive power.
PLATE VIII.—PORTRAIT OF SIR RICHARD BURTONPLATE VIII.—PORTRAIT OF SIR RICHARD BURTON
PLATE VIII.—PORTRAIT OF SIR RICHARD BURTONPLATE VIII.—PORTRAIT OF SIR RICHARD BURTON
His choice of subjects, too, was made with little consideration for the prejudices or the wishes of the public. It was nothing to him that by a course of graceful sentimentality and pretty incident he could bring himself into a secure haven of popularity. All he cared for was that he should have scope to exercise his powers of invention, and to develop those subtleties of decoration which were, as he held, of such engrossing interest. Whether he decided upon heroic motives like the "Hercules Wrestling with Death" or "Perseus and Andromeda," upon dainty fancies like "Cleoboulos Instructing his Daughter Cleobouline," "Greek Girls Playing at Ball," or "Winding the Skein," or upon simple studies of beautiful reality like the "Noble Lady of Venice," "Kittens," or the "Idyll," to quote almost at random from the long series of his paintings which come into this last class, he never allowed himself to forget that the result was to be as nearly in accordance with his ideals as it could be made; and whether or not this result would be what the public expected was the last thing about which he concerned himself. But it was natural after all that he should feel some measure of disappointment at the discovery that there were so few minds capable of apprehending the supreme significance of the truths which he sought to teach.
As an executant—an exponent of the craft of painting—he had certain peculiarities. His technique was precise, careful, and rather laborious, without any happy audacities of brushwork, and without any display of cleverness for its own sake. It bore some resemblance, perhaps, to that of painters like Prud'hon or Ary Scheffer, but it had more vitality, and on the whole more power. Leighton, like G. F. Watts, did not attach much importance to that ready directness of handling which is so greatly advocated by men of the modern school; the finish and elaboration of surface which he desired were not to be obtained by treating his picture as if it were to be no more than a brilliant sketch. He aimed at exhaustive accuracy of drawing, exact correctness of modelling, the perfecting of every detail, and the equal completion of all the parts of his canvas; and this manner of working led necessarily to sacrifice of spontaneity of touch. But, on the other hand, it did not result in fumbling, or in that tentative kind of method which can be noted in the performances of artists who are uncertain of their power to solve the more serious executive problems. He had a regular system by which his pictures were built up stage by stage, and he knew perfectly well how far each stage could carry him towards the end he had in view, and how much it would contribute to the pictorial scheme he had devised. His method was his own, and, being his own, he used to say that it was the only one which it was right for him to use, though for a man with other purposes in art, and another kind of temperament, it would probably be entirely wrong.
This mode of practice, however, served Leighton well in nearly everything he undertook. It enabled him to give charm and delicacy to his figure subjects, and wonderful virility and strength to his portraits, and in the painting of the landscapes which he so often used as backgrounds to his figure compositions, it helped him to attain an admirable serenity and breadth of effect. Where it led him astray was in his treatment of drapery, which under his deliberate method was apt to become lifeless through its very excess of realism. The masses of his draperies he designed with dignity, with a fine sense of line, and with a proper feeling for the forms of the figure beneath, but these masses he often cut up by a multiplicity of little folds, all so precisely drawn and carefully accounted for that they conveyed to the eye a map-like impression of lines without meaning, and surfaces without modelling. He seemed to have worried over them until he had lost by needless intricacy all largeness of suggestion. But in his portraits he maintained with rare discretion the right proportion between large character, and the little things by which the individuality of a face is determined. His heads of "Sir Richard Burton" and "Professor Costa," for instance, are magnificent and give him undoubtedly a place among the masters of portraiture.
If an attempt were made to explain in a few words Leighton's position in art, it would probably be most correct to say that he was, by instinct and habit of mind, more a sculptor than a painter. He looked at nature with a sculptor's eye, and he adopted a kind of technical process which in its progressive building up was closely akin to modelling. And if pictures like his "Phryne," his "Clytemnestra," his "Electra," and even his wholly charming "Bath of Psyche," are considered from this point of view, their resemblance to beautifully tinted sculpture is apparent enough. Even his "Cimabue's Madonna" and the "Daphnephoria" suggest bas-reliefs. That he had the sculptor's habit of mind is proved by many of his studies in which he drew a figure, or group of figures, from three or four points of view, so as to arrive at what may be called the anatomy of the pose.
But discussions as to his right to be described as a sculptor who chose to give himself up to painting, or as a painter who had all the qualifications to become a master of sculpture, are a little futile. He was a great artist and he proved his powers in both forms of practice. What is more material is that people should learn to do justice to his greatness, and should try to estimate at its proper worth everything that he did. To scoff at his art, as the unthinking are ready to do, is utter folly; to say that he has no place in art history, as a certain school of critics are in the habit of asserting, is merely stupid prejudice; he will in years to come, when the memories of his wonderful personality have died away, be accepted on his work alone as one of the noblest teachers of the fundamental principles of the best and purest type of æstheticism. His time has not yet arrived; had he lived three or four centuries ago he would be honoured now as a master. Because he was a man of the nineteenth century our familiarity with him has bred, if not actually contempt, at least a habit of undervaluing him which is almost as unreasonable.
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