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

by Mrs. Russell Barrington

STUDY IN COLOUR FOR "CYMON AND IPHIGENIA." 1884
By permission of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson[ToList]

STUDY FOR SLEEPING GROUP FOR "CYMON AND IPHIGENIA"
Given by Lord Leighton to G.F. Watts, O.M., and given by the latter to the Collection in Leighton House, 1883[ToList]

As the exquisite fragments in pencil of cyclamen, bramble and vine branch,[68] explain most intimately Leighton's genius as a draughtsman, so this head of Neruccia appears to me, together with one other work, to explain most explicitly his genius as a painter—a modeller with the brush. In 1890 Leighton painted "The Bath of Psyche."[69] The modelling in the torso of this figure, and in the head of Neruccia, reach the zenith as exemplifying Leighton's individuality as a painter. They might truly earn for him the title—Praxiteles of the brush.

It would be tedious for writer and reader alike to describe too minutely the special characteristics of even the most notable pictures painted during the seventeen years when Leighton occupied the position of President of the Royal Academy. Words are but poor interpreters of painting such as his. Eighty canvases, two statues, and two designs—the reverse of the Jubilee Medallion, "And the sea gave up its dead which were in it"—were exhibited at the Royal Academy; eighteen slighter works at the Suffolk Street, and twenty-three at the Grosvenor Galleries. On referring to the list in the [Appendix] it will be realised how great was the amount of labour involved in the achievement of many of these works, considering their size, the complication of their designs, and also the completeness of their finish. It must also be remembered that Leighton made many hundreds of studies for his pictures. More especially numerous were these for the designs "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it," "The Dance, Decorative Frieze"; "Cymon and Iphigenia"; "Music, a Frieze"; "Design for the reverse of the Jubilee Medallion," "Captive Andromache," "Perseus and Andromeda," "Return of Persephone," "The Garden of the Hesperides," "Rizpah," "Summer Slumbers," "The Spirit of the Summit," "Flaming June," "Phœnicians Bartering with Britons," and "Clytie." When all these achievements are taken into account it will be realised that Leighton, to the end, however important his duties outside his studios, was true to his vocation, and proved himself the "workman first and the official after."

As a work combining poetic feeling, power of design, and great beauty in the arrangement of line, while at the same time expressing most explicitly Leighton's creed of creeds—namely, the ennobling and elevating influence of beauty in the lives of men and women—"Cymon and Iphigenia" is perhaps the picture he himself would have chosen as the most representative among these later works. He chose it as the one he wished sent to the Berlin Exhibition in 1885. When beginning it he described to me the moment of the day he wished to catch for the scene—"the most mysteriously beautiful in the whole twenty-four hours, when the merest lip of the moon has risen from behind the sea horizon, and the air is haunted still with the flush of the after-glow from the sun already hidden in the west."[70]

The study for the group of sleeping figures reproduced here is almost identical in design with the sketch in plaster from the clay, so lamentably destroyed when Watts lent it to be cast in bronze after Leighton's death. Leighton also gave the drawing of this group to his fellow artist, so enthusiastically did Watts admire it. He, in his turn, gave it to the Leighton House Collection in the year 1897, together with the fine painting which Leighton exchanged for his own portrait, painted about 1863, and which greeted friends as they mounted the staircase in Leighton House during all the years he lived in Holland Park Road (see [frontispiece to Vol. I.]). The study for "Cymon and Iphigenia" is particularly valuable now as an example of Leighton's rapid sketches where every touch reflects a mine of knowledge, because it was put under glass before any of the crispness of the touch was blurred by rubbing.[71]