Chapter II: Year by Year--1855 to 1864

The Academy of forty years ago was very different from that we know to-day. It was held in the left wing of the National Gallery, and had not nearly so much space at its disposal as it has in its present quarters at Burlington House. The exhibition of 1855 contained few pictures, compared with the multitudinous items of the present shows.

Generally speaking, the exhibition was of a heavier, more Georgian aspect, in spite of certain Pre-Raphaelite experiments and other signs of the coming of a younger generation. Sir Charles Eastlake was President. Professor Hart was delivering lectures to its students, full of academic, respectable intelligence, if little more; lectures which those who are curious may find reported in full in the "Athenæum" of that time.

More interesting was the appearance of Mr. Ruskin as commentator on the pictures of the Academy in this year, the first in which he issued his characteristic "Academy Notes." His long, and, all things considered, remarkably appreciative criticism of the _Cimabue's Madonna_ we discuss elsewhere (p. 103). Of another picture of Italy by a very different painter, which was considered a masterpiece by some critics, we find him speaking in terms of monition: "Is it altogether too late to warn him that he is fast becoming nothing more than an Academician?" The one picture of the year, according to Mr. Ruskin, was the _Rescue_, by Millais. "It is the only great picture exhibited this year," he writes, "but this is very great." For the rest, _A Scene from As You Like It_, by Maclise; another Shakespearean subject, the inevitable _Lear and Cordelia_, by Herbert; and a _Beatrice_ by the then President, and we have recalled everything that served to give the Academy of that year its distinction in the eyes of contemporary critics. Sir Edwin Landseer, who to the outer world was the one great fact in the art of the time, does not appear to have exhibited in 1855.

Looking back now to that date, what one discerns chiefly is the emergence of the Pre-Raphaelites from the more conventional multitude that were taking up the artistic traditions of the first half of the century. Millais, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and their associates, count to us, to-day, as the representatives of an earlier generation; in 1855 they still stood for all that was daring, unprecedented, and adventurous in their art.

This newcomer, with his _Cimabue's Madonna_ in a new style, puzzled the critics considerably. They did not know quite how to allot him in their casual division of contemporary schools. "Landseer and Maclise we know; and Millais and Holman Hunt; but who is Leighton?" was the tenor of their commentary.

Meanwhile an event of great significance to English Art in this year was happening--an exhibition of English pictures in Paris, the first of its kind. This beginning of such international exchanges was important; it has led up to many striking modifications of both English and French schools since that date. It is curious that it should coincide with the awakening to certain other foreign influences: that of the early Italian school upon the Pre-Raphaelites, and that of the later Italian, popularly known as "the classic school," upon Leighton and Mr. G. F. Watts.

Of this exhibition of English pictures, which was held in the Avenue Montaigne, M. Ernest Chesneau, a critic very sympathetic to English art, tells us, in his admirable book on the "English School of Painting," that "for the French it was a revelation of a style and a school of the very existence of which they had hitherto had no idea; and whether owing to its novelty, or the surprise it occasioned, or, indeed, to its real merit, whatever may have been the true cause, most certain it is that the English, until then little thought of and almost unknown abroad, obtained in France a great success."

M. Chesneau, in going on to account further for the great impression made by the English painters in Paris, attributes it largely to the _singularity_ which, for foreign eyes, marks their work. It is curious, indeed, that French critics, and M. Chesneau among them, really admire this singularity, which they count distinctively British. They look for it in our pictures, and if they do not find it--as in the work of Leighton--they feel aggrieved.

British eccentricity, whether thinking its way with the aid of genius into "Pre-Raphaelitism," or now again, with the aid of extreme cleverness and talent, into certain cruder forms of "impressionism," is sure of its effect. But an art like Leighton's, whose aim is beauty and not eccentricity, is apt to be slighted by both French and English critics, with some notable exceptions. Not all its grace, its classic quality, its beauty of line and distinction of treatment, avail it, when it comes into conflict with doctrinaire theories on the one hand, and a love for mere sensationalism on the other.

The success of his picture at the Academy, and the incidental lionizing of a season, did not tempt the artist to stay long in London, and he went to Paris, where he settled himself in a studio and proceeded to complete his _Triumph of Music_, and other pictures begun in Rome.

By this time the painter's method might seem assured, but Paris was still able to add something to his style, with the aid of such masters as Fleury. English critics, who expected _The Triumph of Music_ to sustain the reputation won by _Cimabue's Madonna_, were disappointed--partly because Orpheus was represented as playing a violin, in place of the traditional lyre. To those who will examine and compare them more carefully, there is no such discrepancy. _The Triumph of Music: Orpheus by the power of his Art redeems his wife from Hades_, which is every whit as distinctive a performance as the _Cimabue's Madonna_ (as indeed it was conceived and painted largely under the same conditions), was nevertheless not a popular success. Certainly, it marks, as clearly as anything can, the sense of colour, the sense of form, the draughtsmanship, the immensely cultured eye and hand, first discovered to the English critics by its predecessor. It was sold after the painter's death.

Of certain other works painted in 1856, 1857, and 1858, some of which never found their way to the Academy, little need be said. To this period belong two pictures painted in Paris, the one, _Pan_ under a fig-tree, with a quotation from Keats's "Endymion":

"O thou, to whom
Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom
Their ripened heritage,"

and the other, a pendant to it, _A Nymph and Cupid_.

_Salome, the Daughter of Herodias_, painted in 1857, but apparently not exhibited at the Academy, represents a small full-length figure in white drapery, with her arms above her head, which is crowned with flowers; behind her stands a female musician. Another, shown in 1858 at the Royal Academy, and again in the 1897 retrospective exhibition, was first entitled _The Fisherman and Syren_, and afterwards _The Mermaid_; it is a composition of two small full-length figures, a mermaid clasping a fisherman round the neck. The subject is taken from a ballad by Goethe:

"Half drew she him,
Half sunk he in,
And never more was seen."

In the same year was a painting inspired by "Romeo and Juliet," entitled _Count Paris, accompanied by Friar Laurence, comes to the house of the Capulets to claim his bride; he finds Juliet stretched, apparently lifeless, on the bed_. The picture shows, in addition to the figures named in its former title, the father and mother of Juliet bending over their daughter's body, and through an opening beyond numerous figures at the foot of the staircase.

The latter year marked the painter's return to London, where he entered more actively into its artistic life than he had done hitherto, and made closer acquaintance with the Pre-Raphaelites, who were already entering upon their second and maturer stage. To take Rossetti: it was in 1856 that he made those five notable designs to illustrate "Poems by Alfred Tennyson," which Moxon and Co. published in the following year; an event that, for the first time, really introduced him to the public at large. To 1857, again, belongs Rossetti's _Blue Closet_ and _Damsel of the Sangrael_, both painted for Mr. W. Morris. And in 1857 and 1858, the famous and hapless distemper pictures on the walls of the Union Debating Society's room at Oxford, were engaging Rossetti and his associates, including Burne-Jones, William Morris, Mr. Val. Prinsep, Mr. Arthur Hughes, and Mr. Spencer Stanhope.

It was in the summer of 1858, Mr. F. G. Stephens tells us, that the original Hogarth Club was founded, of which the two Rossettis were prominent instigators,--one of the most notable of the many protestant societies that have sprung up at different times from a slightly anti-Academic bias. It is interesting to find that Leighton's famous _Lemon Tree_ drawing in silverpoint was exhibited here. The Hogarth Club held its meetings at 178, Piccadilly, in the first instance; removed afterwards to 6, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, and finally dissolved, in 1861, after existing for four seasons.

To speak of other painters more or less associated with Rossetti and his school, Mr. Holman Hunt, whose _Light of the World_ had greatly struck Paris in 1855, exhibited his _Scapegoat_ at the Academy of 1856, a picture which called from Mr. Ruskin immense praise, and a characteristic protest: "I pray him to paint a few pictures with less feeling in them, and more handling." Of Millais we have already spoken. In 1856 he exhibited _The Child of the Regiment_, _Peace Concluded_, and _Autumn Leaves_.

In 1859 Leighton showed three pictures at the Academy. One, _A Roman Lady_ (then called _La Nanna_), a half-length black-haired figure, facing the spectator, in Italian costume; another, now called _Nanna_, then entitled _Pavonia_, a half-length figure of a girl in Italian costume, with peacock's feathers in the background; and _Sunny Hours_, which seems to have escaped record so far. The same year saw another of his pictures, _Samson and Delilah_, exhibited at Suffolk Street.

We must not pass by the famous _Study of a Lemon Tree_ (now at Oxford), mentioned above, without quoting the praise by Mr. Ruskin, which made it famous. Mr. Ruskin couples it with another drawing, both of which we have been fortunately able to reproduce in our pages. These "two perfect early drawings," he writes, "are of _A Lemon Tree_, and another of the same date, of _A Byzantine Well_, which determine for you without appeal, the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. Of all our present masters Sir Frederic Leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any seen since Correggio's time. But you see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained, and exalted, his gift of beautiful _vaghezza_." The _Lemon Tree_ study, let us add, was drawn at Capri in the spring of 1859. Here, and elsewhere in the South of Europe, whither the artist returned, escaping from London at every opportunity, many other notable studies and drawings were made during this period. Some of these were employed long since for the backgrounds of pictures familiar to us all. Others, faithful studies of nature, small oil and water-colour drawings, chiefly landscape, were scarce known to the general public during the painter's life, but were eagerly competed for at the sale of his pictures in July, 1896.

The little picture of _Capri at Sunrise_ was hung in the Academy of 1860, the painter's only contribution of that year. In the year following, we find another small picture of Capri, together with five others, some of which played their part in winning for the artist his wider recognition.

Meanwhile, the artist was drawing his London ties closer. In 1860 he took up his abode at 2, Orme Square, where he continued to reside until he built his famous house in Holland Park Road, some years later. His art did not for this reason become more like London, or more infected with that British singularity which some critics would seem to demand. On the contrary, Italy and the South, the glow of colour, the perfection of form, the plastic exquisiteness, which mark for us his mature performances, and which follow after classic ideals, were more and more clearly to be discerned in the remarkable cycle of pictures associated with this part of his career.

In 1861 he painted portraits of his sister, _Mrs. Sutherland Orr_, and of _Mr. John Hanson Walker_, the former shown at the Academy, where also hung _Paolo e Francesca_, _A Dream_, _Lieder ohne Worte_, _J. A.--a Study_, and _Capri--Paganos_. Rossetti, writing of this exhibition, says: "Leighton might, as you say, have made a burst had not his pictures been ill-placed mostly--indeed, one of them (the only very good one, _Lieder ohne Worte_) is the only instance of very striking unfairness in the place."[2] In 1862 there were no fewer than six of the artist's pictures at the May exhibition of the Academy: the _Odalisque_, a very popular work, shows a draped female figure, in a very Leightonesque pose, with her arm above her head, leaning against a wall by the water. She holds a peacock's feather screen in her left hand, while a swan in the water at her feet cranes its head upwards towards her; _Michael Angelo nursing his dying Servant_, a group of two three-quarter length figures; the servant reclining in an armchair with his head resting against the shoulder of Michael Angelo--a fairly powerful but somewhat academic version of the incident--which looks at first glance like the work of a not very important "old master;" _The Star of Bethlehem_, showing one of the Magi on the terrace of his house looking at the strange star in the East, while below are indications of a revel he has just left. _Duett_, _Sisters_, _Sea Echoes_, and _Rustic Music_, also belong to this year.

In 1863 he showed _Eucharis_, a half-length figure of a white-robed girl, with a basket of fruit on her head; _Jezebel and Ahab_; _A Cross-bow Man_; and _A Girl Feeding Peacocks_; with these we complete the list of his work as an outsider.