I am quite aware that people do talk of it laughingly, but I don't think it goes beyond "chaff" yet. No doubt many other young artists are chaffed in the same way with imaginary dignities. I am delighted that Mamma is better; I should have said this before but that I have answered your letter systematically. I trust the improvement will be lasting.
I congratulate you on Colenso's visit, and shall be very anxious to hear from you how it went off.
As for myself, I am very snugly ensconced in a little mezzanino on the Grand Canal, with a sort of passage which I use as a studio and a bath-room, inasmuch as it opens straight on the water, and enables me to take a very jolly swim every day. I am not attempting a picture, but am making a sketch for one which I shall probably paint on the spot next autumn, staying here a couple of months or so. Meanwhile I have got several heads in hand—studies, not for sale, for use—and a few sketches in Saint Mark's, which I think promise well. Et voilà.
I stay here a fortnight longer, so that a letter written on receipt of this would still catch me; after that Rome is the safest address. I shall be there from the 20th to the 28th of October.
Best love to Mamma, and believe me, your affectionate son,
Fred.
In the preceding letters mention is made of the final arrangements for the building of Leighton's house in Holland Park Road. Mr. George Aitchison, R.A., his old friend, undertook to be the architect. It was begun in 1865, and first occupied by Leighton in 1866.
Referring to opinions expressed regarding Florentine Art, past and present, Leighton wrote to his younger sister: "——'s remark about ——, if I remember it, was utter bosh and pedantry. The Florentines of the end of the fifteenth century were emphatically realists, though their realism was animated by a higher genius and a deeper humanity than the modern Italians exhibit, though they, by-the-bye, are mostly not realists but mannerists. The chief characteristic of English Art is (I speak of course of the better men) originality and humanity on the one hand, and on the other, absence of acquired knowledge and guiding taste. Some day I will write you a lot more about it."
Fully launched into the English art world, deeply interested in every phase of sincere work produced by contemporary brother artists, Leighton nevertheless adhered in his own practice to the views and principles which he held from the time he became Steinle's devoted pupil. To a question which referred to his art development, asked by Mrs. Mark Pattison when she was about to write an account of his life in 1879, Leighton answered, "I can only speak of what is not a change but virtually a growth, the passage from Gothicism to Classicism (for want of better words) i.e. a growth from multiplicity to simplicity. Artists' manners are not changed by books!" "As regards English artists," he writes in the same letter, "I can only of course speak with great reserve. Elmore treated me with marked kindness, lending me a studio. Millais, Rossetti, Hunt were most cordial and friendly, though I openly told them I was wholly opposed to their views; but, indeed, few men have more cause to speak well of their brethren."
The artistic events of the years 1862, 1863, and 1864 culminated in Leighton being elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. His old friend, Mr. George Aitchison, wrote at the time of Leighton's death: "In 1860 he took a studio at Orme Square, Bayswater. It was during this time that his conversation was so brilliant and so free from restraint. I remember a summer afternoon I spent with him, Mason, and Murch on the terrace at the Crystal Palace, when he gave vent to the freest criticism on books, artists, philosophy, science, and the methods of teaching, and deplored the waste of time to students of making large chalk studies, when everything that was wanted could be shown on a sheet of smooth paper, seven inches high, with a hard pencil. He was a great admirer of Boxall and his delicate painting, of Mr. Watts' and Sir E. Burne-Jones' work, and persuaded the last two to join the Royal Academy. In 1864 he was made an A.R.A., and after this he became very cautious of expressing any but the most general opinions on contemporary English art, as his remarks generally got into the papers."