Again to Steinle he writes:—
Paris, Rue Pigalle 21.
No one could sympathise better than I with your melancholy loneliness in the hermitage of Frankfurt; in that air an artist breathes with difficulty; I confess I should be entirely paralysed by the lack of models and other resources in Frankfurt; one all too easily loses sight of the infinite importance of a complete material representation, which is always the special mark of the artist; I often see with amazement how even quite clever people behave in this respect. It has quite a plausible sound if one says (such a fellow as Strauch, for example), "Away with materialism! Pfui! The great artist is he who has the most ideas!" Stop, my little man! do you not feel what a store of artistic cowardice lies behind your words? Ah, behind so broad a shield you can elude all the difficulties of your work! He who has the most ideas is first only as the greatest poet or even philosopher! He only is an artist who can set his ideas forth. Art means the power to do; undoubtedly the idea is the source, the achieved is art; but an idea completely embodied can no more exist without the artist power than a thousand ideas that are only muddled away by agitated incapacity!
I gladly let myself go on such matters to you, for I know that we are of one mind regarding them, and it does one good to pour out one's heart a little for once.
I hear, with particular interest, that you are painting the little picture of the Madonna that you composed twenty-three years ago in the diligence when you were travelling to Italy; it is a very good thing. I imagine a lovely landscape in the background; an oleander, rich in starry bloom; grey olives and stately cypresses wave in the distance; soft violets nestle on the bank of the cool water, and gaze with earnest eyes out of the whispering grass. On the still bosom of the stream sleep white blossoms, which have flown down when the winds breathed on the limes, and see, in a secret nook in the shade of the lovely Himmelsglocken, the strawberry bed from which the black-eyed John will peep at the treasures. Above, in the branches, many-coloured birds frolic, and chase one another, and flit through the grove, in harmonious, song-rich flight. And the Madonna! how tenderly and lovingly she looks down upon the two playing children! Have I described your picture?
In order to send it to England (and how delighted I should be to see it) you should, so much I know from personal experience, cause your picture to reach the Royal Academy (without fail) on the first of April; I believe that influence is no use at all, for the Academicians are very autocratic; I will, however, obtain all the information in good time. I, who was even more totally unknown in England than you, have refrained, by the advice of my friends, from applying to any person, and have left my pictures entirely to themselves.
Now I must close this immoderately long letter. It seems not impossible to me that I may pass through Frankfurt next spring, then we will have a good long gossip together, won't we?
Till then, keep in warm remembrance your English pupil,
Fred Leighton.
It is clear that Paris lacked the charm which Italy had for Leighton. Parisians have been compared to the Greeks with respect to the peculiarly fin and agile manner in which they can exercise their intellects; and so far Leighton might have been expected to fit in happily and with enjoyment to himself into their life. But though he felt a great respect and admiration for the genuine artistic sense which the French undoubtedly possess as a nation, Leighton, no less as a man than as an artist, was more Greek than is any typical Parisian. He viewed the beauty of nature from a less circumscribed standpoint, his emotions were excited with a more ingenuous spontaneity and less from a parti-pris attitude than, as a rule, are those of the French artist. Paris was too artificial to appeal strongly to Leighton's taste. As with the Greeks, grace and charm in the form of living as in Art was a necessity to his well-being; but he found more natural expression of such grace and charm in the unsophisticated Italian than among the artificial and more highly finished manners of the Parisians. We never read of the eager longing to be in France that Leighton's letters show when it was a question of a return to Italy. Also Paris does not appear to have suited his health. He writes to his mother after living there some weeks:—