LEIGHTON.CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE.
(By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., the owners of the copyright.)

Portfolio.Brothers, photo.
LEIGHTON.SIR RICHARD BURTON.LEIGHTON.THE LAST WATCH OF HERO.
(By permission of the Corporation of Manchester, theowners of the picture.)

Perhaps the “Captive Andromache” of 1888 is the quintessence of what he aimed at. The background is the court of an ancient palace, where female slaves are gathered together fetching water. In the centre of the stage, as the leading actress, stands Andromache, who has placed her pitcher on the ground before her, and waits with dignity until the slaves have finished their work. This business of water-drawing has given Leighton an opportunity for combining an assemblage of beautiful poses. The widow of Hector expresses a queenly sorrow with decorum, while the amphora-bearers are standing or walking hither and thither, in the manner demanded by the pictures upon Grecian vases, but without that sureness of line which comes of the real observation of life. In its dignity of style, in the noble composition and purity of the lines which circumscribe the forms with so much distinction and in so impersonal a manner, the picture is an arid and measured work, cold as marble and smooth as porcelain. “Hercules wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis” might be a Grecian relief upon a sarcophagus, so carefully balanced are the masses and the lines. The pose of Alcestis is that of the nymphs of the Parthenon; only, it would not have been so fine were these not in existence. His “Music Lesson” of 1877 is charming, and his “Elijah in the Wilderness” is a work of style. And in his frescoes in the South Kensington Museum there is a perfect compendium of beautiful motives of gesture. The eye delights to linger over these feminine forms, half nude, half enveloped with drapery, yet it notes, too, that these creations are composed out of the painter’s knowledge and artistic reminiscences; there is a want of life in them, because the master has surrendered himself to feeling with the organs of a dead Greek. Leighton’s colour is always carefully considered, scrupulously polished, and endowed with the utmost finish, but it never has the magical charm by which one recognises the work of a true colourist. It is rather the result of painstaking study and cultivated taste than of personal feeling. The grace of form is always carefully prepared—a thing which has the consciousness of its own existence. Beautiful and spontaneous as the movements undoubtedly are, one has always a sense that the artist is present, anxiously watching lest any of his actors offend against a law of art.

Lord Leighton’s pupils, Poynter and Prinsep, followed him with a good deal of determination. Val Prinsep shares with Leighton the smooth forms of a polished painting, whereas Edward Poynter by his more earnest severity and metallic precision verges more on that union of aridness and style characteristic of Ingres. His masterpiece, “A Visit to Æsculapius,” is in point of technique one of the best products of English Classicism. To the left Æsculapius is sitting beneath a pillared porch overgrown with foliage, while, like Raphael’s Jupiter in the Farnesina, he supports his bearded chin thoughtfully with his left hand. A nymph who has hurt her foot appears, accompanied by three companions, before the throne of the god, begging him for a remedy. To say nothing of many other nude or nobly draped female figures, numerous decorative paintings in the Houses of Parliament, St. Paul’s, and St. Stephen’s Church in Dulwich owe their existence to this most industrious artist.

Alma Tadema, the famous Dutchman who has called to life amid the London fog the sacrifices of Pompeii and Herculaneum, stands to this grave academical group as Gérôme to Couture. As Bulwer Lytton, in the field of literature, created a picture of ancient civilisation so successful that it has not been surpassed by his followers, Alma Tadema has solved the problem of the picture of antique manners in the most authentic fashion in the province of painting. He has peopled the past, rebuilt its towns and refurnished its houses, rekindled the flame upon the sacrificial altars and awakened the echo of the dithyrambs to new life. Poynter tells old fables, while Alma Tadema takes us in his company, and, like the best-informed cicerone, leads us through the streets of old Athens, reconstructing the temples, altars, and dwellings, the shops of the butchers, bakers, and fishmongers, just as they once were.

Dixon, photo.
LEIGHTON.THE BATH OF PSYCHE.POYNTER.IDLE FEARS.
(By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co.,the owners of the copyright.)(By permission of Lord Hillingdon, the owner of the picture.)

This power of making himself believed Alma Tadema owes in the first place to his great archæological learning. By Leys in Brussels this side of his talent was first awakened, and in 1863, when he went to Italy for the first time, he discovered his archæological mission. How the old Romans dressed, how their army was equipped and attired, became as well known to him as the appearance of the citizens’ houses, the artizans’ workshops, the market and the bath. He explored the ruins of temples, and he grew familiar with the privileges of the priests, the method of worship, of the sacrifices, and of the festal processions. There was no monument of brass or marble, no wall-painting, no pictured vase nor mosaic, no sample of ancient arts, of pottery, stone-cutting, or work in gold, that he did not study. His brain soon became a complete encyclopædia of antiquity. He knew the forms of architecture as well as he knew the old myths, and all the domestic appointments and robes as exactly as the usages of ritual. In Brussels, as early as the sixties, this complete power of living in the period he chose to represent gave Alma Tadema’s pictures from antiquity their remarkable cachet of striking truthfulness to life. And London, whither he migrated in 1870, offered even a more favourable soil for his art. Whereas the French painters of the antique picture of manners often fell into a diluted idealism and a lifeless traffic with old curiosities, with Alma Tadema one stands in the presence of a veritable fragment of life; he simply paints the people amongst whom he lives and their world. The Pompeian house which he has built in London, with its dreamy vividarium, its great golden hall, its Egyptian decorations, its Ionic pillars, its mosaic floor, and its Oriental carpets, contains everything one needs to conjure up the times of Nero and the Byzantine emperors. It is surrounded by a garden in the old Roman style, and a large conservatory adjoining is planted with plane-trees and cypresses. All the celebrated marble benches and basins, the figures of stone and bronze, the tiger-skins and antique vessels and garments of his pictures, may be found in this notable house in the midst of London. Whether he paints the baths, the amphitheatre, or the atrium, the scenes of his pictures are no other than parts of his own house which he has faithfully painted.

And the figures moving in them are Englishwomen. Among all the beautiful things in the world there are few so beautiful as English girls. Those tall, slender, vigorous figures that one sees upon the beach at Brighton are really like Greek women, and even the garb which they wear in playing tennis is as free and graceful as that of the Grecian people. Alma Tadema was able to introduce into his works these women of lofty and noble figure with golden hair, these forms made for sculpture—to use the phrase of Winckelmann—without any kind of beautifying idealism. In their still-life his pictures are the fruit of enormous archæological learning which has become intuitive vision, but his figures are the result of a healthy rendering of life. In this way the unrivalled classical local colour of his interiors is to be explained, as well as the lifelike character of his figures. By his works a remarkable problem is solved: an intense feeling for modern reality has called the ancient world into being in a credible fashion, whilst it has remained barricaded against all others who have approached it by the road of idealism.