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

by Mrs. Russell Barrington

He used often to dine in evening dress at a small table behind a screen at the door of the coffee-room at the Athenæum. In the corner adjoining this is a round table known as Abraham's Bosom, as it was once frequented by Abraham Hayward. Here, on Royal Society days, we often had a lively scientific party. Leighton often found it impossible to keep aloof, and joined in the fun.

I found Sir Frederic, as he was called, was well known to our men as a visitor to Kew. He used to drive down in his victoria in the afternoon and take a solitary walk. I only myself came across him once. I had taken some trouble to get a fine show of the old-fashioned Dutch tulips known as Bizards and Byblomen. I found Leighton one day absorbed in the enthusiastic contemplation of them. There were certain combinations of colour which completely fascinated him. I remember that he particularly admired a purplish brown with yellow and a reddish purple with cream-colour. Both were, I think, in the "key" that particularly appealed to him. He was very anxious to have them in his garden in London, and we gave him a little collection, with directions how to grow them. What was the result I never heard.

I then suggested that, as it was a lovely spring day, I should take him a walk. He assented, and we sent his carriage round to the Lion Gate, nearest to Richmond. I took him through the Queen's Cottage grounds to show him the sheets of wild hyacinth. He admitted their beauty, but remarked that the effect was not pictorial.

That, I think, was Leighton's point of view. With an intense feeling for beauty, he had little or none for Nature pure and simple. His art was essentially selective, and I think he took most pleasure at Kew in the more or less artificial products of the gardener's art. What he sought was subtle effects of form and colour. Personally, I appreciate both ways of treating plants. I am always at war with artists for their undisciplined and mostly incompetent treatment of vegetation: drawing and anatomy are usually defective to an instructed eye, such faults would be intolerable in the figure. Their presence robs me of much pleasure in looking at Burne-Jones' pictures. I imagine he mostly made his plants up out of his head. Ruskin, with all his talk, was both unobservant and careless. Millais, on the other hand, though I am not aware that he ever had any botanical training, by sheer force of insight paints plants in a way to which the most fastidious botanist can take no exception. One can actually botanise in his foreground of "Over the Hills and Far Away," yet there is no loss of general pictorial effect. The plant drawing of Albert Dürer, Holman Hunt, and Alma Tadema, though more studied, is absolutely satisfying to the botanist. Sir Joseph Hooker has always complained that the Royal Academy has never given any encouragement to accurate plant drawing. Yet I have heard Sir William Richmond say that, as a student, he made hundreds of careful studies of plant-form, and that he knew no discipline more profitable. I remember remarking to an Academician that I thought that in this respect the competition pictures of the students reached a higher standard than that of the average May Exhibition, and he admitted that that was a possible criticism.

Leighton aimed at beauty by selection and discipline. Millais in his later work looked only to general effect and balance, but as to detail was content to faithfully reproduce, and did not select at all. This explains the admiration which I believe Millais had for Miss North's work. Both produced admirable results, but they were of an essentially different kind, though equally admirable.

But whenever Leighton introduced plant-forms, it was penetrated by his characteristic thoroughness and perfect mastery of what he was about. I am myself a passionate admirer of the Gloire-de-Dijon rose. I remember telling Leighton that I did not think that any one had ever painted it with such consummate skill as he had. I am told, and quite believe it, that his pencil studies from plants are as fine as anything that has ever been done.

Leighton rendered us a very great service on one occasion. Miss North's pictures were painted on paper, roughly framed, and simply hung by her on the brick walls of her gallery. They soon began to rapidly deteriorate. I appealed to L. for advice. I was, I confess, astonished to receive from him a full, precise, and business-like report, pointing out exactly what should be done, and who was the proper person to do it. The gallery was to be lined with boarding, the pictures were to be properly framed, cleaned, lightly varnished, and glazed. The report was at once accepted by the office of works, the work was successfully carried out, and no trouble has been experienced since.

In his turn, Leighton sometimes appealed to me. This was notably the case when he was painting his "Persephone," which I frankly told him I thought was the most beautiful picture he had ever painted. He had been in Capri, and had seen on the rocks a blue flower which he wished to introduce into the foreground. We made out what it was, and sent him tracings from plates and sketches from herbarium specimens. These did not satisfy him, and he ultimately sent to Capri for the living plant. He worked hard at it, and, I do not doubt, produced a very beautiful piece of colour.

That year I dined at the Academy. "Persephone" hung over Leighton's chair, and was the subject of one of the few really witty remarks I ever heard in an after-dinner speech. But then the speaker was Lord Justice Bowen.

But his beautiful foreground was all gone. Leighton, and I think he was right, thought it destroyed the balance of his colour scheme, and painted it out. But I have always felt sad to think of the beautiful work that lay buried there.