F. Leighton."
EARLY COMIC DRAWING, About 1850
By permission of Mr. Hanson Walker[ToList]
History does not record whether the "little hole for poor Punch" had been found or not. Together with other studies, Leighton was allowed to attend the model class at the famous Staedelsches Institut, and, in 1848, when the family went to Brussels, he painted his first picture, Othello and Desdemona, his elder sister sitting as model for the Desdemona, and also a portrait of himself. From Brussels he went to Paris, studying in an atelier in the Rue Richer, among a set of Bohemian students, and then to Frankfort, to work seriously under his beloved master Steinle. The following letter to his father shows how unsatisfactory he considers his studies had been in both Brussels and Paris, and that now, as he expressed it, he is girding his "loins for a new race."
"Cronberg, Friday evening.
"[Dear Papa],—As I have reason to believe that you are not indifferent to the fate of the studies which met with Dielmann's censure, and at the same time opened my eyes to the fact that I have not yet (to use a German phrase) 'die Natur mit dem Löffel gefressen,'[14] I now write to tell you that I have retouched better parts of them, and that to Burger's satisfaction as well as to mine. Of course some are better than others. Independently of the intense irritation which bad sitting (as well you know) occasions to my nerves, they give me great trouble, and I take it; but this can hardly astonish me, when I consider that, in point of fact, during the whole time that has elapsed between my leaving the model class in the Staedelsches Institut up to my return to Frankfurt, I have never studied from nature; that I did not in Brussels, I need not remind you, and you must also remember that everything I painted in Paris, in the way of portraits, was done before nature, I grant, but with a certain ideal colour or tone, the consistency of which might be illustrated by putting Rubens, Reynolds, Titian, Tom Lawrence, Vandyke, Velasquez, Correggio, Carracci, Rembrandt, and Rafael into a kaleidoscope, and setting them in a rotatory motion, in a word—
When taken
Well shaken.
(What's his name—Hem!)
I am therefore girding my loins for a new race, far from discouraged, but rather with the persuasion that one with my innate love for colouring, and, I think I may add, sharp perception of the merits and demerits of the colouring of others, has a fair chance of success; nor am I dissatisfied with my beginning."
In the year 1849, he went to London to paint the portrait of his great-uncle, Mr. I'Anson, Lady Leighton's brother, and wrote to his father and mother the following:—