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 is real 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., the Cimabue.
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 the Cimabue's Madonna had 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 inevitable Cimabue's Madonna) having exhausted the poor artist, "he has been coming down the ladder of fame ever since," continues in characteristic tones: "Instead of being hung too high, the Dream, 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 the Dante at Verona, in 1864, said gravely, "The promise given by the Cimabue here 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, the Girl feeding Peacocks and the Girl with a Basket of Fruit, they belong "to that class of 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 of David, 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 the Venus 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."