Before closing 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, the Cimabue'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 they had 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 it can be 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; and both 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 yet care 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 significant indictment 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 of Cimabue, 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 was very uninteresting to me at first sight; but on looking more at it, I think there is great richness of arrangement, a quality which, when really existing, 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 mass of 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 academical début, he exhibited a picture entitled The 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, and Count Paris, although admirably conceived, and extremely interesting to us now, received no word of friendly criticism that is worth recording.