A biographer's obvious moral duty is to aim at presenting impartially "the plain truth," following Leighton's lead in not desiring to give either a more or less favourable view of his capacities as an artist than they deserve. On May 7, 1864, Leighton writes in a letter to his father and mother: "I had a kind note this morning from Ruskin in which, after criticising two or three things, he speaks very warmly of other points in my work and of the development of what he calls 'enormous power and sense of beauty.' I quote this for what it is worth, because I know it will give you pleasure, but I have not and never shall have 'enormous power,' though I have some 'sense of beauty.'" Leighton remained ever far from being contented with his own work. "I alone know how far I have fallen short of my ideal," he says, many years later, to the old acquaintance of the Lucca days. He had studied under the shadow of the great masters; and though never an imitator even of the greatest,[45] he had set himself a standard of supreme excellence, more easily approached under the conditions in which artists worked in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries than it possibly could be in those of the nineteenth. With respect to his power of draughtsmanship and his natural sense of beauty, Leighton knew his place was among the greatest. His appreciation and love of colour were also far keener than those possessed by the average artist. He felt nevertheless that he lacked the inevitable and continuous force which alone gives "enormous power" and ease to the craftsman, when he deals with work on a large scale, and which carries with it the absolutely convincing effect of the world-renowned art of the past. Realising that the "enormous power" was not there because the ever conclusively propelling force was lacking, perhaps owing partly to the want of robust health, and also doubtless from the scattering of his powers in many directions to which he was drawn by a sense of duty, Leighton, in working out the designs of his large pictures, clung all the more resolutely to the exercise of that system which he had adopted, and which many of his friends—Watts and Briton Rivière among the number—thought tended to cramp his genius. He was not sufficiently sure of himself to admit the "accidental" into his work.
"CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE." 1888
The Corporation of Manchester[ToList]
STUDY IN COLOUR FOR "CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE." 1888
By permission of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson[ToList]
"WEAVING THE WREATH." 1873[ToList]