The life, letters and work of Frederic Leighton. Volume I

by Mrs. Russell Barrington

BRANCH OF VINE. Bellosquardo, Florence, 1856
Leighton House Collection[ToList]

There are those who would define genius by describing it as the faculty for taking infinite pains. But obviously genius is in itself a power, born of inspiration, which so completely overmasters all other conditions in a nature, that no labour nor time is taken into account so long as the impelling force obtains utterance. The inborn conviction in a nature that it has the power to create, demolishes all impediments which come in the way to hinder this power from stamping itself into a form. The necessity of taking infinite pains is but the natural and inevitable consequence of the burning desire born, who knows how? in the spirit of those who are blessed with genius, and the faculty to discern how best to develop it. Leighton, by reason, perhaps, of the very spontaneity of his own gifts, and also of his extreme natural modesty, allied to the conscientiousness with which he carried out his feeling of duty towards his vocation, was apt to lay more stress on the necessity for taking pains than on the necessity of possessing the real source of his power of industry. He saw too often the fatal results of artists depending on talent to achieve what only talent allied to industry can perform, for him not to accentuate the all-importance of unceasing labour. He wrote to his elder sister with reference to one of these fatal results: "I have not seen that young man's recent work, neither do I hunger and thirst thereafter; twenty-one years ago, or more, his parents brought me a composition of his—it justified the highest hopes—it was very ambitious in its scope (though the work of a child), and the ambition was justified in the ability it displayed. Nothing that I could have done at his age approached it. I told his parents so. He ought now to have been a very considerable artist, to say the least—he no longer even aims! He told me a year or two ago that he had ceased to design! He paints portraits, and twists a little moustache under an eyeglass. He is nothing, as far as the world knows, and I doubt whether he is hiding himself under a bushel. I fear vanity and idleness have rotted out his talents. It is a strange and a sad case. I often quote it (without names) to those who show precocious gifts." His attached friend and fellow-Academician, Mr. Briton Rivière, writes of Leighton:—

"I have always believed that his ruling passion was Duty—the keenest possible sense of it; to do anything he had to do as perfectly as possible, and to be always at his best. He was evidently a believer in Goethe's maxim that 'an artist who does anything, does all.' In his own work, in what concerned his colleagues and the outside body of artists, in fact in everything he did. Nothing easily or passively done satisfied him; but in every case the decision and action were brought by care and work—if possible, executed by himself; and no pressure of time or labour ever made him escape such personal trouble, or caused him to transfer it to the shoulders of another. This temper of mind was shown even in small matters, which so busy a man might well have left for others to do. I think it sometimes injured his own work as an artist, because, though a great artist can never be evolved except by years of patient work and strenuous effort to do his very best always, yet, on the other hand, it is often the happy, easy work and absolutely spontaneous effort at the moment by such a hand which is his very best. Such happy, easy work probably Leighton would seldom allow himself to do, and never would leave at the right moment, but would still strive to make better and more complete. He must still elaborate it and try to make it more perfect; and this it was which made his old friend and enthusiastic admirer, Watts, sometimes say "how much finer Leighton's work would be if he would admit the accidental into it."

I remember once casually remarking to Leighton how much easier writing was than painting. He answered quickly but seriously—quite impressively: "Believe me, nothing is easy if it is done as well as you can possibly do it." This was Leighton's creed of creeds. Whatever genius or facilities an artist may possess, he must ignore them as factors in the fight. He must possess them unconsciously—the whole conscious effort being concentrated on surmounting difficulties, not on encouraging facilities.

To return to the subject of this chapter. It would be obviously unreasonable to attempt to compare slight studies of plants and flowers, however precious, with finished important works of art such as "Cimabue's Madonna," "A Syracusan Bride," "Daphnephoria," "Captive Andromache," "The Return of Persephone," or, in fact, with any of Leighton's well-known paintings—or indeed with those masterly studies of the figure and draperies in black and white chalk, drawn for his pictures, or when he was seized with the beauty of an attitude while his model was resting. These, though executed in a few seconds, are true and subtle records of the perfection in the form and structure of the human figure, proving the existence of a knowledge and of a sense of beauty which Watts declared were unrivalled since the days of Pheidias. The later masterly studies of landscape in oil-colour which formerly lined the walls of his Kensington studio, in which can be so truly discerned the distinctive colouring and atmosphere of the various countries where they were painted, also are greater as achievements than the pencil drawings. Nevertheless, when studying Leighton's genius with a view to gauge rightly its power and also its limitations, it is, I maintain, essential to take into account these direct studies from Nature, made with the object solely of following, watching, and copying her faithfully, ingenuously, "choosing nothing and rejecting nothing," but into which crept unconsciously the undeniable evidence of his native gifts. As proofs of spontaneous power in the quality of his genius, they refute much unjust criticism which has been hurled at Leighton's art since his death. Sir William Richmond wrote[44]:—

"That term of abuse and of contempt, trite now, on account of the mannerism of its constant adoption by ephemeral critics, and sometimes adopted by poorly equipped artists, 'academic,' has been most unjustly, in its derogatory sense, applied to Leighton's art.

"In point of fact, it is academic, but only in the good sense of being highly educated, very scientific, and restrained. And in that sense it is a pity that there is not more of such academic art. The bad sense, wherein such criticism is applicable, being justly advanced towards work that displays no inspiration, no originality, that is correct and commonplace, balanced without enthusiasm, adequate without reason, and accurate without good taste in the choice of beautiful and expressive gestures, forms, and colours, and is preoccupied and narrow."

It is probably the restraint, the science, the high education in Leighton's finished pictures which have provoked unsympathetic critics to endeavour to demolish Leighton's reputation as a great artist. To these, such qualities would seem to deny the existence of any sensitiveness, any spontaneity in his art. They have asserted that it is cold, dry—academic. For the reason that science, calculated effects, style, and high education—qualities rarely found in modern English art—are evident in Leighton's pictures, they conclude that the painter is possessed of no intuitive genius. They take essentially a British, a non-cosmopolitan standpoint from which to preach. They do not take into account the standard towards which Leighton was ever aiming. He may not have attained the goal towards which he worked, but the nature of that goal should be understood and recognised before any criticism on his work can pass as intelligent and just; and these exquisite drawings of flowers and plants come to our aid in confuting sterile estimates of Leighton's art, which deny any other elements but those which can be acquired by painstaking and teachable qualities. Here are records of Nature complicated by no intellectual choice, no academic learning, no results of high education; and what is the result? an undeniable evidence of the finest, most tender sensitiveness for beauty, resulting in a complete and perfect rendering of the subtlest forms of growth. When "face to face" with Nature, Leighton's æsthetic emotions were keen enough and all-sufficient to create these perfect records, as later in his life he created unrivalled drawings of the human figure in even more spontaneous and certainly more rapid strokes of his pencil, and landscape sketches which prove undeniably his gifts as a colourist; but it may be questioned whether his æsthetic emotions had as great a staying power as those qualities of heart and brain which made Leighton a great man, independent of the position he held as a great artist. His sensibilities were of the keenest; the agility and vitality of his brain power were quite abnormal. As Watts wrote, a "magnificent intellectual capacity, and an unerring and instantaneous spring upon the point to unravel." It seemed, however, that this vitality and agility did at times run away with that more abiding strength of æsthetic emotion which impregnates the very greatest art with a serenity, a sublime atmosphere,—an emotion which denotes a mood in which the artist has been steeped throughout the creation of a work, from the first moment he conceives it to the moment when he puts the last touch to the canvas, and affects the actual manipulation of the pigment. The above criticism applies only justly to certain of Leighton's works. In many of his paintings the poetic motive which inspired their invention,—their mental atmosphere,—governs the achievements throughout, though doubtless these works also would have had a more convincing effect as art had the surface possessed a more vibrating quality. Among those pictures in which form, colour, tone, and expression are completely dominated by their poetic meaning are "Lieder ohne Worte," a lovely, though youthful, work; "David;" "Ariadne," a picture little known, but in some respects perhaps the most poetic Leighton ever painted; "Summer Moon" (Watts' favourite Leighton), "Elisha Raising the Son of the Shunammite," "Winding the Skein," "Music Lesson," "Antique Juggling Girl," "Dædalus and Icarus," "Helios and Rhodos," "Golden Hours," "Cymon and Iphigenia," "The Spirit of the Summit," "Flaming June," "Clytie" (unfinished).