Chapter XI: The Artist and His Critics

Before closing our record it will be well to quote, as we promised earlier, some of the contemporary criticism that Sir Frederic's work has encountered from time to time; and especially the criticism of his earlier performances, while he was still in the years of his pre-Academic probation.

As a provocation to criticism, most interesting of all is his picture, the _Cimabue's Madonna carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence_, upon which we have already commented. As we may here remind our readers, it was painted at Rome chiefly, in 1853-4, and was exhibited at the Academy of 1855. In that year, as good fortune would have it, Mr. Ruskin issued for the first time, "Notes on some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal Academy." Some pages of this famous pronouncement are devoted to this very picture, and we cannot do better than quote freely from a criticism so remarkable.

"This is a very important and very beautiful picture," says Mr. Ruskin. "It has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of Venetian art--that is to say, on the calm acceptance of the whole of nature, small and great, as, in its place, deserving of faithful rendering. The great secret of the Venetians was their simplicity. They were great colourists, not because they had peculiar secrets about oil and colour, but because when they saw a thing red, they painted it red; and ... when they saw it distinctly, they painted it distinctly. In all Paul Veronese's pictures, the lace borders of the table cloths or fringes of the dresses are painted with just as much care as the faces of the principal figures; and the reader may rest assured that in all great art it is so. Everything in it is done as well as it _can_ be done. Thus in the picture before us, in the background is the Church of San Miniato, strictly accurate in every detail; on the top of the wall are oleanders and pinks, as carefully painted as the church; the architecture of the shrine on the wall is well studied from thirteenth-century Gothic, and painted with as much care as the pinks; the dresses of the figures, very beautifully designed, are painted with as much care as the faces: that is to say, all things throughout with as much care as the painter could bestow. It necessarily follows that what is most difficult (_i.e._ the faces) should be comparatively the worst done. But if they are done as well as the painter could do them, it is all we have to ask; and modern artists are under a wonderful mistake in thinking that when they have painted faces ill, they make their pictures more valuable by painting the dresses worse.

"The painting before us has been objected to because it seems broken up in bits. Precisely the same objection would hold, and in very nearly the same degree, against the best works of the Venetians. All faithful colourists' work, in figure-painting, has a look of sharp separation between part and part.... Although, however, in common with all other works of its class, it is marked by these sharp divisions, there is no confusion in its arrangement. The principal figure is nobly principal, not by extraordinary light, but by its own pure whiteness; and both the Master and the young Giotto attract full regard by distinction of form and face. The features of the boy are carefully studied, and are indeed what, from the existing portraits of him, we know those of Giotto must have been in his youth. The head of the young girl who wears the garland of blue flowers is also very sweetly conceived.

"Such are the chief merits of the picture. Its defect is that the equal care given to the whole of it is not yet _care enough_. I am aware of no instance of a young painter, who was to be really great, who did not in his youth paint with intense effort and delicacy of finish. The handling here is much too broad; and the faces are, in many instances, out of drawing, and very opaque and feeble in colour. Nor have they in general the dignity of the countenance of the thirteenth century. The Dante especially is ill-conceived--far too haughty, and in no wise noble or thoughtful. It seems to me probable that Mr. Leighton has greatness in him, but there is no absolute proof of it in this picture; and if he does not, in succeeding years, paint far better, he will soon lose the power of painting so well."

To Mr. Ruskin's account, which is sufficient to enable one to realize the picture in some detail, we may add further the criticism of the "Athenæum" of May 12th, 1855, which is interesting as showing how the work affected a contemporary critic of another order. It speaks of Mr. Leighton as "a young artist who, we believe, has studied in Italy," and goes on to say: "There can be no question that the picture is one of great power, although the composition is quaint even to sectarianism; and though the touch, in parts broad and masterly, is in the lesser parts of the roughest character." The last clause of the sentence bears out, it may be perceived, a significant indictment in Mr. Ruskin's deliverance, which lays stress on a defect that the artist, in his maturer brush-work, does not show.

Rossetti, writing to his friend William Allingham, May 11th, 1855, says: "There is a big picture of _Cimabue_, one of his works in procession, by a new man, living abroad, named Leighton--a huge thing, which the Queen has bought, which everyone talks of. The R.A.'s have been gasping for years for someone to back against Hunt and Millais, and here they have him, a fact that makes some people do the picture injustice in return. It was _very_ uninteresting to me at first sight; but on looking more at it, I think there is great richness of arrangement, a quality which, when _really_ existing, as it does in the best old masters, and perhaps hitherto in no living man--at any rate English--ranks among the great qualities.

"But I am not quite sure yet either of this or of the faculty for colour, which I suspect exists very strongly, but is certainly at present under a thick veil of paint, owing, I fancy, to too much continental study. One undoubted excellence it has--facility, without much neatness or ultra-cleverness in the execution, which is greatly like that of Paul Veronese; and the colour may mature in future works to the same resemblance, I fancy. There is much feeling for beauty, too, in the women. As for purely intellectual qualities, expression, intention, etc., there is little as yet of them; but I think that in art richness of arrangement is so nearly allied to these, that where it exists (in an earnest man) they will probably supervene. However, the choice of subject, though interesting in a certain way, leaves one quite in the dark as to what faculty the man may have for representing incident or passionate emotion. But I believe, as far as this showing goes, that he possesses qualities which the mass of our artists aim at chiefly, and only seem to possess. Whether he have those of which neither they nor he give sign, I cannot tell; but he is said to be only twenty-four years old. There is something very French in his work, at present, which is the most disagreeable thing about it; but this I dare say would leave him if he came to England."[12]

In the year following Leighton's academical _début_, he exhibited a picture entitled _The Triumph of Music_, which the "Athenæum," hereafter so sympathetic towards his work, described as "anything but a triumph of art."

Partly, perhaps, because of the general tone of discouragement in all the criticisms of this year, the artist did not send in anything to the Academy of 1857. In 1858 his two pictures--_The Fisherman and the Syren_, and _Count Paris_, although admirably conceived, and extremely interesting to us now, received no word of friendly criticism that is worth recording.

At the Academy of 1859 were exhibited two pictures by him, which served to reassure at last those critics who had been shaking their heads over his supposed inability to follow up his first success. We turn to the "Athenæum" again, to study its gradual conversion from an attitude of critical distrust to one of critical sympathy:

"Mr. Leighton," says the "Athenæum," "after a temporary eclipse, struggles again to light. His heads of Italian women this year are worthy of a young old master: anything more feeling, commanding, or coldly beautiful, we have not seen for many a day.... This is real painting, and we cannot but think that a painter who can paint so powerfully will soon be able to surpass that processional picture of his,..." _i.e._, the _Cimabue_.

In 1860, the artist, who then entered upon his thirtieth year, exhibited a small picture, _Capri, Sunrise_, which won great praise for its successful treatment of Italian landscape under the Scirocco, whose sulphurous light is cast with evil suggestion upon the white houses and green vegetation. In paying his tribute to the quality of the picture, the critic of the "Athenæum" cannot resist, however, the old cry of great expectations. For the effect of the _Cimabue's Madonna_ had aroused critics to regard the painter as one who would continue the legend of the great historical schools, and carry on the traditions of the so-called grand style. But the critic proposes, the creator disposes: the artist went his own way, following still his own ideals.

In 1861, some rather warm discussion raged over two of the artist's contributions to the Royal Academy, which appeared in its catalogue as Nos. 399 and 550, and which, it was said, had been deliberately slighted by the hanging committee. In later years, Leighton must sometimes have smiled when he heard (as from his position he must needs have,) the annual plaint of the "skied." It is to the "Art Journal," whose criticisms, when they had to do with the new and rising schools, used to be always entertaining, if often provoking, in those days, that we turn for a contemporary account of these things, rather than to any other source. The critic having premised, with a delightful and convincing air of "I told you so!" that his first effort (the inevitable _Cimabue's Madonna_) having exhausted the poor artist, "he has been coming down the ladder of fame ever since," continues in characteristic tones: "Instead of being hung too high, the _Dream_, had it been properly hung, would have been displayed upon the ceiling." The picture, according to this authority, consisted only of a questionable combination of the "lower forms of mere decorative ornamentation," and was in fact, "not so much a picture as a very clever treatment for the centre of a ceiling." So much for what was really the first clear sign of the artist's delightful decorative faculty.

It is clear from various evidences of the feeling of the critics about Leighton at this time, that they had begun to look upon him as one whose ideals were frivolous, and not seriously minded, or weighted with the true British substantiality of the old Academy tradition. In the very next year, the artist, by the chances of his own temperamental many-sided delight in life and art, did something to reassure his admonitors once more. No. 217 at the Royal Academy of 1862 was his picture, _The Star of Bethlehem_, which, with some natural and not unfair deductions, won considerable praise from the critic last quoted. In this painting, which shows curiously the mingled academic and natural quality of the artist, the critic found profound incompatibilities of conception and technique; and next year, the same critic was stirred to exclaim,--"The pictures which of all others give most trouble and anxiety to the critic are perhaps those of Mr. Millais and Mr. Leighton,"--a very suggestive conjunction of names, let us add.

It was probably the same critic, who speaking of the _Dante at Verona_, in 1864, said gravely, "The promise given by the _Cimabue_ here reaches fruition."

Writing in 1863, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, a critic whom it is interesting to be able to cite, said of two of the artist's pictures of that year, the _Girl feeding Peacocks_ and the _Girl with a Basket of Fruit_, they belong "to that class of art in which Mr. Leighton shines--the art of luxurious exquisiteness; beauty, for beauty's sake; colour, light, form, choice details, for their own sake, or for beauty's."

In the same year, Mr. Rossetti spoke of the young artist as the one "British painter of special faculty who has come forward with the most decided novelty of aim"--since, that is, the new development of art under the little band of Pre-Raphaelites,--with which Mr. W. M. Rossetti was himself so closely associated.

By way of contrast, we may cite the "Art Journal" of 1865, which provides a most extraordinary criticism of _David_, of that year. "We would venture to ask," says this ingenious critic, "why the divine psalmist has so small a brain? Within this skull there is not compass for the poet's thoughts to range. We state as a physiological fact, that a head so small, with a brow so receding, could not have belonged to any man who has made himself conspicuous in the world's history. Again, descending to mere matter of costume, there cannot be a doubt that the purple mantle flung on the psalmist's shoulders is wholly wanting in study of detail, and constitutes a blot on the landscape. Barring these oversights, the picture possesses merits."

At this period we hear the first critical murmurs against the artist's very deliberately chosen method of flesh-painting. In 1867, speaking of the _Venus Disrobing_, the "Art Journal" critic says: "According to the manner, not to say the mannerism, of the artist, it has a pale silvery hue, not as white as marble, not so life-glowing as flesh." With this we may compare, for the comparison is instructive, the "Athenæum," whose notice is more sympathetic. The figure of the goddess it describes as "all rosy white, ... admirably drawn, and modelled with extreme care."

Again, in 1868, the "Art Journal" says of Sir Frederic's _Actæa_: "The artist has made some attempt to paint flesh in its freshness and transparency, and indeed the more he renounces the opacity of the German school, and the more he can realize the brilliance of the old Venetian painters, the better."

In 1869, the "Athenæum" praised the _Sister's Kiss_, as "a lovely group," but complained that the execution was a "little too smooth,"--a complaint not infrequently echoed from time to time by the artist's critics. Some years later we find Mr. W. M. Rossetti making the same complaint in criticising _Winding the Skein_.

In 1875 the picture, _Portions of the Interior of the Grand Mosque at Damascus_, won great praise, as "a remarkably delicate piece of work, in which the beautiful colouring of the tiled walls and mosaic pavement are skilfully rendered."

In 1876, the quondam hostile "Art Journal" is completely converted by the _Daphnephoria_: "To project such a scene upon canvas presupposes a man of high poetic imagination, and when it is accompanied by such delicacy and yet such precision of drawing and such sincerity of modelling, the poet is merged in the painter and we speak of such a one as a master. There is, indeed, nothing more consolatory to those who take an interest in British art than the knowledge that we have among us a man of such pure devotion and lofty aim."

It was in 1875, that Mr. Ruskin, resuming his _rôle_ of an Academy critic, claimed Leighton as "a kindred Goth," and confessed, "I determined on writing this number of 'Academy Notes,' simply because I was so much delighted with Mr. Leslie's _School_, Mr. Leighton's _Little Fatima_, Mr. Hook's _Hearts of Oak_, and Mr. Couldery's _Kittens_."

In his lectures on the Art of England, the same critic, speaking of Leighton's children, says: "It is with extreme gratitude, and unqualified admiration, that I find Sir Frederic condescending from the majesties of Olympus to the worship of those unappalling powers, which, heaven be thanked, are as brightly Anglo-Saxon as Hellenic; and painting for us, with a soft charm peculiarly his own, the witchcraft and the wonderfulness of childhood."

Upon the _Egyptian Slinger_ of the same year, which Mr. Ruskin terms the "study of man in his Oriental function of scarecrow (symmetrically antithetic to his British one of game preserver)," his criticism is interesting, but adverse. The critic who elsewhere acknowledged fully the artist's acutely observant and enthusiastic study of the organism of the human body, confesses himself unable to recognize his skill, or to feel sympathy with the subjects that admit of its display. It is, he goes on to say further of the _Slinger_, "it is, I do not doubt, anatomically correct, and with the addition of the corn, the poppies, and the moon, becomes semi-artistic; so that I feel much compunction in depressing it into the Natural History class; and the more, because it partly forfeits its claim even to such position, by obscuring in twilight and disturbing our minds, in the process of scientific investigation, by sensational effects of afterglow and lunar effulgence, which are disadvantageous, not to the scientific observer only, but to less learned spectators; for when simple persons like myself, greatly susceptible to the influence of the stage lamps and pink side-lights, first catch sight of this striding figure from the other side of the room, and take it, perhaps, for the angel with his right foot on the sea and the left on the earth, swearing there shall be Time no longer; or for Achilles alighting from one of his lance-cast-long leaps on the shore of Scamander, and find on near approach that all this grand straddling and turning down of the gas mean practically only a lad shying stones at sparrows, we are only too likely to pass it petulantly without taking note of what is really interesting in this eastern custom and skill."

The most recent criticism of importance on the art of Leighton is contained in an admirable volume by M. de la Sizeranne.[13] We take this opportunity of quoting a few sentences from an appreciation which opens with the significant remark that Sir Frederic Leighton is officially the representative of English painting on the Continent, and, in reality, the representative of Continental painting in England, and concludes by tracing the definitely English ideal that underlies the artist's work. Elsewhere the critic says, "Ce qui est britannique en M. Leighton, quoique bien voilé par son éclectisme, transparaîtra encore." Apart from Leighton's distinctively native predilection for certain subjects, M. de la Sizeranne finds him very English in his treatment of draperies, for instance, a treatment which he traces ingeniously to the much study given to the Greek drapery of the Elgin marbles by the English School, since the days of the Pre-Raphaelites. Elsewhere, taking as his text the picture _The Spirit of the Summit_, he says: "Des sujets qui élèvent la pensée vers les sommets de la vie ou de l'histoire, de sorte qu'on ne puisse se rappeler un nez ou une jambe sans se souvenir de quelque haute leçon évangélique, ou de moins de quelque grande nécessité sociale, voilà ce que M. Leighton a traité. Et un style beaucoup plus sobre que celui d'Overbeck, beaucoup plus viril que celui de M. Bouguereau, voilà comment il les a traités." Again: "La grandeur de la communion humaine, la noblesse de la paix, tel est le thème qui a le plus souvent et le mieux inspiré M. Leighton. Et cela il ne l'a pas trouvé en France, ni ailleurs. C'est bien une idée anglaise." No better summing up of the chronicle of the life work of the artist could well be found.

But we have pursued far enough this study of an artist's progress through the thorny, devious ways of art criticism. We have reached the point, in fact, where the comparative uncertainties of an artist's career make way for the certainties. With one quotation more, in which we have a tribute from another critic, Mr. Comyns Carr, we may fitly close: "No painter of our time," said Mr. Carr, "maintains a firmer or more constant adherence to those severe principles of design which have received the sanction of great example in the past. Sir Frederic Leighton has never lowered the standard of his work in deference to any popular demand, and for this persistent devotion to his own highest ideals he deserves well of all who share his faith in the power of beauty."