In the following year he was again in Italy, and during the spring he worked in Capri; it was there that he executed that marvellous drawing of the "Lemon Tree," which has always, and with justice, been counted among his masterpieces; but in 1860 he decided to settle in London, and established himself in Orme Square, Bayswater. Life in London did not, however, mean that his excursions to other countries were to be abandoned, he continued regularly to spend some months in each year in travel abroad, and he visited in succession Spain, Damascus, Egypt, and other parts of the East, besides renewing his acquaintance with many places which he had seen before. These wanderings were always productive; they added much to his stock of material, and the results of them are embodied in a number of his pictures, as well as in that long series of open air sketches which show how sensitive he was to the beauty of nature, and how delicately he could interpret her moods.
PLATE V.—THE BATH OF PSYCHE
(At the Tate Gallery, London)
One of the most fascinating of Leighton's classic compositions. It was painted six years before his death, and represents perfectly the art of his later period, when his powers had fully matured and he had acquired complete control over refinements of practice. Exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1890. Purchased by the Chantrey Trustees in 1890.
PLATE V.—THE BATH OF PSYCHE
Four years after Leighton became a British artist, by residence as well as by birth, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. In this same year, 1864, he exhibited a picture, "Golden Hours," which is notable as one of the most successful examples of his Italian manner. But though the memories of his youth were still powerful, and had, even at that date, an influence upon his art, there was a definite change coming over his practice. Whether this change was due to closer contact with the traditions of English painting, or simply to the inevitable maturing of his convictions as he drew near to middle age, it is hard to say; but certainly as years went on he inclined more and more away from the sumptuousness of Italy, towards the purer and less emotional dignity of Greece. He sought more persistently for the classic atmosphere, his idealism became more severe, and his decoration more reticent, and he turned more frequently for his subjects to the Greek myths. As an illustration of his new view, it is interesting to compare his "Syracusan Bride leading Wild Animals for Sacrifice to the Temple of Diana," exhibited in 1866, with the "Cimabue's Madonna," by which his reputation had been established eleven years before. Both are processional compositions of large size, both have the same sort of decorative intention; but while there is in the first some kind of story, and some attempt to realise the atmosphere of a particular period of history, in the second there is little more than a purely fanciful pattern of forms and colours, which is interesting solely on account of its beauty. A similar comparison might be made between the "Dante going forth into Exile," which belongs to the same year as the "Golden Hours," and the "Venus Disrobing for the Bath" of 1867, or the "Helios and Rhodes," "Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon," and "Dædalus and Icarus," of 1869. In this latter year he exhibited also his diploma picture, "St. Jerome in the Desert"—as he had been elected a Royal Academician in 1868—but this, a study of strong action, and vehemently dramatic in effect, is neither Italian nor classic, and belongs really to a class of art into which he only occasionally digressed. As time went on the statuesque repose of his canvases increased, and the classic severity became perceptible even when he treated subjects which had no Grecian allusion. It is quite apparent in his large picture of "Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis" (1871), though in this there is no lack of vigorous movement; it gave a particular charm to his conception of the exquisite "Summer Moon" (1872), perhaps the most perfect work he ever produced; and it is felt most of all in the vast composition, "The Daphnephoria," which, exhibited in 1876, rounds off significantly that important decade in his career which opened with the "Syracusan Bride."