[49] Leighton gave this group to Watts, who expressed to me an unbounded admiration for it. "Nothing more beautiful has ever been done! Pheidias never did anything better. I believe it was better even than Pheidias!" were the words Watts used when deploring the fact that he had lent it to a sculptor to be cast—something had gone wrong in the process of casting, and it had been destroyed. When giving me the modelled sketch for the "Python," Watts said, "I am giving you the most beautiful thing I have in my place."
[50] The group of singing girls modelled as a study for "The Daphnephoria."
[51] See complete list in [Appendix].
[52] The "Arts of War" lunette was commenced in 1870 and finished in 1880. The "Arts of Peace," begun in 1881, was completed in 1886. An account of these two frescoes appeared in the Magazine of Art written by Mr. J. Ward, the master of the Macclesfield School of Art, who assisted Leighton in the work.
[53] In a letter from Mr. J.G. Hodgson, A.R.A., praises are bestowed on this picture and the "Moorish Garden" at the expense of "Clytemnestra" and the "Antique Juggling Girl." The letter is a good example of the criticisms which Leighton's serious work often received—that work in which, nevertheless, he was most true to himself. The ordinary English eye neither longed for nor appreciated Leighton's native Hellenic strain.
5 Hill Road,
Friday, April 4, 1874.
My dear Leighton,—I was immensely delighted with your two pictures of the Jew's house and the Alhambra ("Moorish Garden: A Dream of Granada"). I was at the opera last night, but thought much less of Crispin and his Comara than of them; they are quite charming, and excite me with the desire of emulation, at that safe distance which is inherent in the nature of things. For your "Clytemnestra" and the other ("Antique Juggling Girl"), I, being a Philister, care nothing at all. From those to turn to these, seems like leaving a garden fragrant with roses and citron blossoms, where I hear the murmur of cooling streams, Abanah and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, to enter a museum filled with dusty plaster casts.
After all, the woes of the house of Atreus are now of very little importance to mankind, or interest either. The most of the latter they possess, is that they serve as themes for some good Greek play, which had better have been burnt, as they have hampered the genius of modern Europe and taught us nothing. Had only Homer and the lyrics survived, we should have done better. At all events, if a man must illustrate, why does he not illustrate Shakespeare, a bigger man head and shoulders than any of the Greek tragedists? But it appears to me you are made for a much better and more intellectual purpose than illustrating anybody. You have the eye to see and power to represent what you see. You have special gifts and faculties highly trained. The aspect of nature, as it appears to such a mind, would be of the highest intellectual value to us, and would lead to progress. I don't think modern art differs from that of any other day. It has always been the effort to represent what is seen every day, bringing to bear upon the representation the greatest possible amount of culture, i.e. of reflection and selection. The women and that dear little girl in the courtyard of your Jew's house will outlive all the "Clytemnestras," &c.; they live with blood in their veins, the others are but galvanised corpses. There I have had it out; you must not complain, because you have had to apologise for slashing into me, and now it is my turn. In the prologue to Goethe's "Faust," if you remember, the poet, a stubborn fellow, has his notions of the high aim of his art. He will do nothing but what is extremely sublime, &c. The clown quite agrees that such things may possibly do for the future, but who, says he, is to amuse the present? I am that sort of clown, I suppose. Don't be riled, and believe me,—Very much your admiring friend,
J.G. Hodgson.
[54] Mr. William Spottiswoode wrote of one of these:—