Translation.]
Paris, Rue Pigalle 21.
My good and dear Friend,—Accidentally I had an idle morning when I received your dear letter, and therefore answer it immediately. With your usual modesty you put aside all that I say of goodness and love, but I repeat it unweariedly. Steinle, my good Master, if in this insincere world I have an unfeigned, pure feeling, it is my warm gratitude and love for you; and the time when I bloomed, gay and full of hope, in your garden will light me through life like a sunny spot in the past; and I yield myself to this feeling the more confidently, since I know that I am under no delusion in it. I have fairly strong insight, and know exactly what I owe to you, and for what I have to thank nature; I can already appraise my moderate natural gifts; but I know also that these gifts received through you alone the impression of taste that can alone make them effective, and that in your hands they were refined as in a furnace. An English painter seldom lacks fancy and invention, but taste, that which forms and embellishes the raw material, that is almost always wanting with us—and it is you I must thank for the little I possess.
To flatter was an impossibility with Leighton. He paid every artist the respect of believing he desired the same sincerity shown in the criticism of his work that he,—Leighton,—wished when his own was judged, and with which he judged it himself. A remarkable feature in his character was the power he had of retaining so secure a hold on his own standards of excellence without for a moment losing his individual self-centre, yet at the same time possessing that of entering sympathetically into the view of other artists—a view often quite contrary to his own—and generously acknowledging every merit that could by any possibility be extracted from their work. Mr. Briton Rivière writes: "The intensity of his own personal belief was well known to himself. He once said to me, in reference to a clever picture which he greatly admired for some of its qualities, that he could not really enjoy it, owing to its careless drawing. On another occasion, when at Mr. Russell's sale I had bought a very vigorous study by Etty, and Leighton was quite enthusiastic about its colour and painting, he said, 'But I could not bear it on my wall, with that drawing,' and he laughed at himself for this strictness, and said, 'I know that I am a prig about drawing.' However, not only did this never blind him to the claims of another kind of art, but I think he was even more keen to recommend for approval the work of any school of painting for which, personally, he had no particular liking or sympathy. 'It is not whether you or I like it, but what it is on its own merits,' was a favourite warning of his to any rapid opinion expressed on a picture. To any one intimately acquainted with his own real views and opinions it was sometimes surprising to find how well he realised the intentions, and put himself in the place, of some artist who had produced something very foreign to his own point of view, and quite repugnant to his beliefs. This is not a common quality among artists, whose critical tolerance is often in an inverse ratio to the firmness of their own particular creed of art faith; and it was one of the many qualities which marked Leighton out as so admirably fitted for the Presidency."
Leighton was, undoubtedly, an absolutely competent critic of his own art; and the fact that his principles had been inspired by a spontaneous and sincere reverence and admiration for the creations of artists whom time has crowned as the greatest in the world, and that with his critical faculty he perceived in what measure he had succeeded in following in their steps, enabled him to gauge with absolute justice the merits and shortcomings of his own work, compared with that of his contemporaries. Whatever those shortcomings were, certain it is that they did not arise from an absence of those natural gifts which are the outcome of emotional sensitiveness, nor from a want of intense feeling for the beauty of Nature, nor from a poverty of invention. The theory that his art was solely the result of his having an abnormal power of industry and of taking pains—a theory which has been advanced many times since Leighton's death—cannot hold good for a moment with those who impartially study his work from the beginning of his career. The spontaneity of the impulse to produce in every born artist is described in the following passage from Leighton's first discourse, when President, to the students of the Royal Academy, December 10, 1879, and the description is obviously drawn from his own personal experience: "The gift of artistic production manifests itself in the young in an impulse so spontaneous and so imperative, and is in its origin so wholly emotional and independent of the action of the intellect, that it at first and for some time entirely absorbs their energies. The student's first steps on the bright paths of his working life are obscured by no shadows save those cast by the difficulties of a technical nature which lie before him, and these difficulties, which indeed he only half discerns, serve rather to whet his appetite than to hamper or discourage him; for his heart whispers that, when he shall have brushed them aside, the road will be clear before him, and the utterance of what he feels stirring within him will be from thenceforward one long unchecked delight. This spirit of spontaneous, unquestioning rejoicing in production, which is still the privilege of youth, and which, even now, the very strong sometimes carry with them through their lives, was indeed, when Art herself was in her prime, the normal and constant condition of the artistic temper, and shone out in all artistic work. It is this spirit which gave a perennial freshness to Athenian Art—the serenest and most spontaneous men have ever seen. And when again, after many centuries, another Art was born out of the night of the Dark Ages, and shed its gentle light over the chaos of society, this spirit once more burst through it into flame. All forms of Art are alike fired with it. Architecture first, exulting in new flights of vigorous and bold creation; then Sculpture; last, Painting, virtually a new Art, looked out on to the world with the wondering delight of a child, timidly at first, but soon to fill it with the bright expression of its joy. Those were halcyon days; the questions, 'Why do I paint?' 'Why do I model?' 'Why should I build beautifully?' 'What—how—shall I build, model, paint?' had no existence in the mind of the artist. 'Why,' he might have answered, 'does the lark soar and sing?'"
Though his direct study from Nature mostly took the form, in later years, of sketching in oil colour views in the different countries in which he travelled, Leighton showed to the end of his life his great delight in flowers by continuing to make sketches from them. In 1895, at Malinmore, he was fascinated by the sea-thistle, and there are four pages in a sketch-book devoted to rapid sketches of the plant, callantra, which he made there. Notes are written on the first sketch indicating the colours. It is interesting to compare the early pencil work executed between 1850 and 1860 with that of forty years later. Though the handling may be different, there is the same complete sense and enjoyment of the wonderful architecture of plants and flowers obvious in both.[47]
FOOTNOTES:
[37] See Appendix, Vol. II., description in Preface to "Catalogue of the Leighton House Collection."
[38] An artist who was a great flower lover, when relating her experiences, maintained that it was in the revelation, to her perceptions, of the infinite perfection of the structure and form of one flower, that she had realised in her own nature a more intimate recognition and response to that of the Creator of the Infinite than had ever been elicited by any church services or creeds, or even, in fact, by the most sublime scenery. In one small flower she had found an epitome of the wonders and beauties of all creation, so focussed as to be grasped closely, and responded to, from the innermost intimate recesses of her nature with a joy unspeakable.
[39] See Appendix, Vol. II., Preface to "Catalogue of the Leighton House Collection."
[40] See Appendix, Vol. II., "Lord Leighton, P.R.A., Some Reminiscences."
[41] Appendix, Vol. II.
[42] Ruskin was mistaken in thinking that the "Lemon Tree" and the "Byzantine Well" are of the same date. The former drawing was made in 1859, the latter seven years earlier in 1852 (reproduced facing page 80), and is referred to in his diary, "Pebbles." I think this is the most beautiful drawing of the kind I have ever seen.
[44] See Appendix, Vol. II.
[45] See letter to Steinle, page 188: "...God forgive me if I am intolerant; but according to my view an artist must produce his art out of his own heart, or he is none."
[46] "I remember hearing him (Wordsworth) say that 'Goethe's poetry was not inevitable enough.' The remark is striking and true; no line in Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but its maker knew well how it came there. Wordsworth is right; Goethe's poetry is not inevitable; not inevitable enough."—Preface to "Poems of Wordsworth," chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold.
[47] Knowing that Leighton was a frequenter of the Kew Gardens, I asked Sir W. Thiselton Dyer to write me his recollections of him, which he most kindly did in the following letter:—
Kew, January 11, 1906.
Dear Mrs. Barrington,—My acquaintance with Lord Leighton was only beginning to ripen into intimacy when he unhappily died. His somewhat grand seigneur manner at first a little alarmed me; but when I had broken through his reserve, I became, like every one else, much attached to him.
He used often to dine in evening dress at a small table behind a screen at the door of the coffee-room at the Athenæum. In the corner adjoining this is a round table known as Abraham's Bosom, as it was once frequented by Abraham Hayward. Here, on Royal Society days, we often had a lively scientific party. Leighton often found it impossible to keep aloof, and joined in the fun.
I found Sir Frederic, as he was called, was well known to our men as a visitor to Kew. He used to drive down in his victoria in the afternoon and take a solitary walk. I only myself came across him once. I had taken some trouble to get a fine show of the old-fashioned Dutch tulips known as Bizards and Byblomen. I found Leighton one day absorbed in the enthusiastic contemplation of them. There were certain combinations of colour which completely fascinated him. I remember that he particularly admired a purplish brown with yellow and a reddish purple with cream-colour. Both were, I think, in the "key" that particularly appealed to him. He was very anxious to have them in his garden in London, and we gave him a little collection, with directions how to grow them. What was the result I never heard.
I then suggested that, as it was a lovely spring day, I should take him a walk. He assented, and we sent his carriage round to the Lion Gate, nearest to Richmond. I took him through the Queen's Cottage grounds to show him the sheets of wild hyacinth. He admitted their beauty, but remarked that the effect was not pictorial.
That, I think, was Leighton's point of view. With an intense feeling for beauty, he had little or none for Nature pure and simple. His art was essentially selective, and I think he took most pleasure at Kew in the more or less artificial products of the gardener's art. What he sought was subtle effects of form and colour. Personally, I appreciate both ways of treating plants. I am always at war with artists for their undisciplined and mostly incompetent treatment of vegetation: drawing and anatomy are usually defective to an instructed eye, such faults would be intolerable in the figure. Their presence robs me of much pleasure in looking at Burne-Jones' pictures. I imagine he mostly made his plants up out of his head. Ruskin, with all his talk, was both unobservant and careless. Millais, on the other hand, though I am not aware that he ever had any botanical training, by sheer force of insight paints plants in a way to which the most fastidious botanist can take no exception. One can actually botanise in his foreground of "Over the Hills and Far Away," yet there is no loss of general pictorial effect. The plant drawing of Albert Dürer, Holman Hunt, and Alma Tadema, though more studied, is absolutely satisfying to the botanist. Sir Joseph Hooker has always complained that the Royal Academy has never given any encouragement to accurate plant drawing. Yet I have heard Sir William Richmond say that, as a student, he made hundreds of careful studies of plant-form, and that he knew no discipline more profitable. I remember remarking to an Academician that I thought that in this respect the competition pictures of the students reached a higher standard than that of the average May Exhibition, and he admitted that that was a possible criticism.
Leighton aimed at beauty by selection and discipline. Millais in his later work looked only to general effect and balance, but as to detail was content to faithfully reproduce, and did not select at all. This explains the admiration which I believe Millais had for Miss North's work. Both produced admirable results, but they were of an essentially different kind, though equally admirable.
But whenever Leighton introduced plant-forms, it was penetrated by his characteristic thoroughness and perfect mastery of what he was about. I am myself a passionate admirer of the Gloire-de-Dijon rose. I remember telling Leighton that I did not think that any one had ever painted it with such consummate skill as he had. I am told, and quite believe it, that his pencil studies from plants are as fine as anything that has ever been done.
Leighton rendered us a very great service on one occasion. Miss North's pictures were painted on paper, roughly framed, and simply hung by her on the brick walls of her gallery. They soon began to rapidly deteriorate. I appealed to L. for advice. I was, I confess, astonished to receive from him a full, precise, and business-like report, pointing out exactly what should be done, and who was the proper person to do it. The gallery was to be lined with boarding, the pictures were to be properly framed, cleaned, lightly varnished, and glazed. The report was at once accepted by the office of works, the work was successfully carried out, and no trouble has been experienced since.
In his turn, Leighton sometimes appealed to me. This was notably the case when he was painting his "Persephone," which I frankly told him I thought was the most beautiful picture he had ever painted. He had been in Capri, and had seen on the rocks a blue flower which he wished to introduce into the foreground. We made out what it was, and sent him tracings from plates and sketches from herbarium specimens. These did not satisfy him, and he ultimately sent to Capri for the living plant. He worked hard at it, and, I do not doubt, produced a very beautiful piece of colour.
That year I dined at the Academy. "Persephone" hung over Leighton's chair, and was the subject of one of the few really witty remarks I ever heard in an after-dinner speech. But then the speaker was Lord Justice Bowen.
But his beautiful foreground was all gone. Leighton, and I think he was right, thought it destroyed the balance of his colour scheme, and painted it out. But I have always felt sad to think of the beautiful work that lay buried there.
When he died, we felt very sad at Kew. He had always been so lovable and disinterested. We decided to send some tribute to his funeral, but to avoid what was commonplace. So we sent a large wreath of bay, introducing, in the place of the conventional berries, single snowdrop flowers. The result was dignified and, I think, adequate. At any rate, the Academicians thought so, if, as I have been told, they placed the wreath by the coffin on the hearse on its way to St. Paul's.
I walked back with Lord Redesdale, one of Leighton's most intimate friends, who had come up from Batsford to attend. There was a great gathering at the Athenæum. I sat next Millais, already himself stricken with death, and whom I never saw again.
I am afraid all this will not be very helpful to you, but my pen ran on to tell you all I could of a good, great, and brave man, whom it was an honour to have known.—Yours always sincerely,
W.C. Thiselton Dyer.
CHAPTER IVToC
WATTS—SUCCESS—FAILURE
1855-1856
It was in the summer of 1855, in consequence of his father having summoned him suddenly back to England, that Leighton first became known as a notable person to the London world. His picture of "Cimabue's Madonna" had preceded him, and gave him an introduction to the art magnates; while the fact that the Queen had bought it of the young and, till then, unknown artist, raised the curiosity of those to whom the intrinsic value of the work was insignificant, compared to its having received this mark of Royal approval. Hanging on the walls of the Academy throughout the season and being much talked about, the picture, combined with the painter's charming personality, won for him at once a prominent position. His friends of the happy Roman days, however, remained the nucleus of his real intimacies. As can be gathered from his letters, he had already in Rome felt general society to be fatiguing and unremunerative, the interest in it never having compensated him for the physical exertion and weariness it entailed. Health—and a more or less stolid temperament—are requisite in order to combat, with any satisfaction, the wear and tear of late hours, and contact with mere acquaintances and strangers whose personalities carry with them no special interest. Leighton found no pleasure in such intercourse sufficient to overbalance its sterility, for he possessed neither robust health nor much equanimity of temperament. He could enjoy with ecstasy those things which delighted him, but had little of that even current of patient contentment, the normal condition of those who can tolerate cheerfully—and even with pleasure—the herding in crowds with mere acquaintances. Circumstances combined in making Leighton's disinclination to indiscriminate visiting often misunderstood. His extreme vitality when in company, his notable gifts as a talker and as a linguist, the high social standing of many of his most intimate friends, naturally gave the impression that he was made for the sort of success which is the aim of many living in the London world. That he never availed himself of all the opportunities that offered themselves was considered by many as a sign of conceit and superciliousness. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. That he was ambitious for Art to take her legitimate position on the platform of the world's highest interests is certain, and that he resented the position which was but too often accorded in England to her earnest votaries, and had a keen discernment in tracing evidences of self-interest and snobbish proclivities in those who would have patronised him, is no less certain; but that Leighton himself was ever personally otherwise than the most modest of men, all who really knew him can attest. To whatever class in society a man or woman might belong, whether a Royal or a quite humble friend—once a friend, Leighton gave of his very best and worthiest. No time or trouble would he spare in such service; though he was too eager a worker, and felt too keenly a responsibility towards his calling for him to allow any moment of his life to be frittered away by claims which were not in his eyes real or of any serious advantage to others.
It was during this summer that he made the personal acquaintance of Ruskin, Holman Hunt, Millais, and Watts. While in London he found a home with his mother's relations, Mr. and Mrs. Nash, in Montagu Square, for whose affectionate kindness he was ever grateful. It was while staying there that Watts and he first met, or rather on the pavement outside the house. Watts recounted how he had ridden one afternoon to Montagu Square, and having asked for Leighton, the artist himself came out to greet him. Watts was much impressed at the time, he said, by the extraordinary amount of vitality and nervous energy which Leighton seemed to possess. This acquaintance thus begun was continued for forty years.[48]
As regarded Art, the supreme interest in the lives of these two famous painters, their relations remained intimate to the end of Leighton's life. Before Leighton definitely settled in London, Watts invited him to show his work in the studios of Little Holland House, which invitation he gratefully accepted. In a letter to his mother Leighton writes: "Watts has been exceedingly amiable to me; the studio is at my disposal if I want to paint there. I am still of opinion that Watts is a most marvellous fellow, and if he had but decent health would whip us all, if he does not already."
It is interesting to trace the influences which developed alike in Leighton and Watts, the feeling for form which in both artists is analogous to that of the Greek. Before going to Italy, Watts had studied the perfection in the work of Pheidias in the Elgin Marbles, a perfection rediscovered by Haydon; and a visit to Greece later only confirmed his conviction that the Pheidian school of sculpture made a higher appeal to his artistic sense than did any other. That was "the indelible seal" which, in the case of his brother artist, had been stamped on Leighton's artistic nature through the guidance of his master, Steinle. When Watts lived in Italy, from the year 1843 to 1847, he found that it was the work of Orcagna and Titian that appealed most to his imagination, and to his sense of form and colour—Orcagna's great conceptions, which struck notes stranger and more widely suggestive than those dictated and restricted by special religious creeds; Titian, the glorious Titian of the Renaissance, whose sense and modelling had the breadth and bloom of Pheidian art, and whose colour was triumphant in qualities of richness and subtlety combined. The pure beauty in the early religious painters made a much slighter and less personal appeal to Watts during those four years he lived in Italy.
It was in Italy, when a child of twelve, that Leighton drank a deep draught from the fountain-head of mediæval and modern art; and this established once and for all the high standard towards which he ever aimed. But though his true artistic preferences were aroused at this early age, the full and complete passion for his calling was not developed till he met his master some years later in Frankfort. Belonging to the brotherhood of Nazarenes, the early religious Italian art appealed more strongly than any other to Steinle; and, doubtless, the earnest study Leighton devoted to Duccio, Cimabue, Giotto, Buonfigli, Perugino, and Pinturicchio, and the delight he took in their work, was originally started by Steinle. The following list, which exists in Steinle's handwriting, of the paintings which he wished Leighton specially to study in Florence is evidence of this.
Translation.]
FLORENCE
St. Croce.—The choir by Angiolo Gaddi, pupil of Giotto. The chapel on the right by his uncle, Taddeo Gaddi. The altar by Giotto himself, in the sacristy the Taddeo Gaddi, in the refectory the Last Supper, all by Giotto.
St. Marco.—Outside Fiesole, where particularly should be seen in the cloister-cell and choir-stalls a Last Supper by Ghirlandajo.
St. Maria Novella.—The choir by Domenico Ghirlandajo, chapel by Giovanni and Filippo Lippi, a Madonna in marble by Benedetto da Majano, the great Madonna of Cimabue. The Hell and Paradise of Andreas Orcagna. Opposite the court of this chapel grey in grey by Dello and Paul Ucello; from the court into the Capello dei Spagnolli, to the left the picture by Taddeo Gaddi; all the rest by Simon Memmi.
Capella di St. Francesco, by Dom. Ghirlandajo.
St. Ambrogio.—Fresco by Cosimo Rosetti.
St. Spirito.—Built by Brunelleschi; altar-pieces by Filippo Lippi and Botticelli.
Al Carmine, dei Massacio's.
St. Miniato.—Chapel by Aretino Spinello.
Palazzo Riccardi.—The lovely chapel by Benozzo Gozzoli.
In the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital.—Beautiful altar-piece by Ghirlandajo.
After visiting Padua, Siena, Perugia, Assisi, however, the pupil became a keen admirer of this early art, independently of any influence other than the inherent beauty, dignity, and purity of the feeling in the works themselves.[49] Moreover, the natural sympathy which Leighton felt for the art of Greece, discovered in this early Italian work records of her influence, and that, in a very striking manner, it was allied to that of the great ancients. In his Academy address of 1887 we find this alluded to in the following passage:—
"The production, both in sculpture and painting, of the middle period of the thirteenth century has a character of transition. In painting, the works, for instance, of Cimabue and of Duccio are still impregnated with the Byzantine spirit, and occasionally reveal startling reminiscences of classic dignity and power, to which justice is not, I think, sufficiently rendered. In sculpture, the handiwork of Nicolo Pisano is full of the amplitude, the rhythm, and virility of classic Art. I see in it, indeed, the tokens of a new life in Art, but little sign of a new artistic form—it is not a dawn; it is an after-glow, strange, belated, and solemn. In the Art of Giotto and the Giottosques, the transformation is fulfilled. It is an art lit up with the spirit of St. Francis, warm with Christian love, pure with Christian purity, simple with Christian humility; it is the fit language of a pious race endowed with an exquisite instinct of the expressiveness of form, as form, but untrained as yet in the knowledge of the concrete facts of the outer world; an art fresh with the dew and tenderness of youth, and yet showing, together with this virginal quality of young life, a simple forcefulness prophetic of the power of its riper day. Within the outline of these general characteristics individuality found sufficient scope."
Even when this transformation is fulfilled in the frescoes of Giotto, any intelligent study of his art at Padua and Assisi, while keeping in mind the manner in which Pheidias felt and treated the human form in his sculpture, would prove to the student how distinctly visible is the link between the ancient and this mediæval art; though the fact of the latter being fired with an ecstasy of spiritual emotion of which the Greek had no experience, may disguise the link where feeling in art is of more interest than form. There is the same detachment of one form from another, each being given its full expression and intention—which induces a feeling of simplicity and serenity in the greatest work. The form of the head is not smudged into the throat, nor the throat into the chest, nor the chest into the arms. Even in the smallest Greek coin or intaglio of the best period this separate individuality of form in each part of the human frame is accentuated, and with it a sense of size and breadth. The same fundamental principles also, adhered to by the great Greek workmen in their treatment of drapery, is to be traced in the work of Giotto.
But the great Greeks did not invent the beauty they immortalised, any more than did Leighton and Watts; the Pheidian school intuitively chose the noblest form it found in nature.[50] The notable gift with which nature endowed the artists of the Periclean epoch consisted of eyes to perceive, and taste to prefer, the form which, intrinsically and most convincingly, inspires admiration in those imbued with the finest sense of beauty—not a gift to invent something new and different from nature. In like manner the gift nature bestowed on Leighton and Watts was the same, a perception and a preference for noble form; and in this choice they had been educated by legacies from Pheidias and his school, but only so far as these legacies induced them to seek and perceive in nature herself the elements of such nobility. In painting the magnificent head and shoulders entitled "Atalanta,"[51] or the reclining figures in "Idyll,"[52] Leighton copied as directly from nature as when he painted the portrait of "Miss Mabel Mills,"[53] where a similar beauty of form in the throat existed as in Miss Jones, who sat for "Atalanta" and "Idyll." When Watts painted his superb "Lady with the Mirror," one of his really great achievements, it was the model before him whose beauty he was recording, though his own sense in recognising it had been further inspired by his study of Pheidias. We need not go out of England to find types which are as completely noble as are those in the most inspiring art ever created, but the sense as a rule is wanting in English artists to select and to prefer such nobility.
Leighton writes to a friend in 1879:—
"I have just remembered a circumstance which might be worth mentioning: I painted pictures in an out-of-door top light and with realistic aims (of course, subordinate to style) in the old Frankfurt days before I came over here, and long before I heard of 'modern' ideas in painting. In this, perhaps, more than in anything, the boy was the father of the man, for it is still the corner-stone of my faith that Art is not a corpse, but a living thing, and that the highest respect for the old masters, who are and will remain supreme, does not lie in doing as they did, but as men of their strength would do if they were now (oh, derisim!) amongst us."
Leighton taught Watts to appreciate the Greek inheritance to be found in early Italian art; and I have frequently heard Watts comment on the evidence of this legacy in Giotto's work. Watts, by ventilating the results of his studies of Pheidian art with Leighton, and analysing the elemental principles on which it was grounded, aided his brother artist in securing a faster hold on the sources of his individual preferences.
No two characters could have been more dissimilar than those of Watts and Leighton, no two men could have led more different external lives; Leighton's great and varied gifts requiring for their full exercise the whole area of life's stage, Watts' genius demanding seclusion, and days undisturbed by friction with the outer world. Watts' first and great object in life was to preserve his work, and to bequeath it to his country, which he, happily for his country, was enabled to do; Leighton's object was to complete a work as far as industry and his gifts would enable him to complete it, then—as he would say—"to get rid of it and never see it again; but try to do better next time"! The one was frank, free, courageous; the other almost morbidly self-depreciative, sensitive, and timid. All the same, no two workmen could have had more sympathy with one another in their true aims and aspirations, or more mutual admiration for each other's artistic gifts.
Watts, to his credit, had from his first acquaintance with Leighton discerned that "the unusual position" which Leighton undoubtedly held from his first appearance in the London world to the day of his death, was due to the possession of unusual gifts, exercised in a very unusually generous and public-spirited manner, and not to reasons invented by those who were envious of this prominent position.
Watts wrote to Leighton after they became neighbours in Kensington:—
"I have been worrying myself by fancying you rather misunderstood the drift of my observations respecting the value of social consideration to a professional man, that I meant to imply you sold your pictures in consequence of the unusual position you undoubtedly hold; knowing me and my opinions as you do, you could hardly think so, yet poets and artists are proverbially sensitive beings. I know I am myself to a degree that could hardly be imagined, though not with regard to opinion of my work; I am resigned, if not contented, to preserve what I can do for posterity, conscious that no other judgment can really be worth anything; I am very often unhappy, thinking that after all the best I can do may not be worthy of being brought before the great tribunal at all; but I do not allow myself to brood over the subject more than I can help. However, I do not attempt to deaden the keen dread I have of giving pain or offence, and am really miserable when I think I have done so, or been unjust; I don't think I am often the latter, but I may by clumsiness fall into the former regrettable position. I should grieve indeed if any word or deed of mine should ever be offensive to you, for you know me to be always yours most sincerely,
"Signor."
Immediately on his arrival from Italy Leighton paid a visit to his family at Bath, arriving on May 24. He returned to London shortly after, where his family joined him on June 15, and the introduction so long desired by Leighton took place between his parents and sisters and his great friends, Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris. In December 1854 Leighton's mother had written: "How delightful to see you again, and perhaps we may spend the next winter together, but of that I am uncertain. In England we shall not be, and both Papa and I incline to Paris, but Gussy has an anxious desire to go to Berlin. The Sartoris' being in Paris would be a strong inducement to us to go there, as we very much wish to make your friends' acquaintance, and we should most likely meet at their house agreeable people. I am exceedingly sorry I overlooked Mrs. Sartoris' friendly message, which I have since discovered in your former letter. Pray offer her my best compliments, and assure her I consider her great kindness to you gives her a claim upon my sympathy, and I shall rejoice to have an opportunity of giving her this assurance in person."
In February his mother wrote: "I hope you will not long be separated from your friends the Sartoris when you leave Rome. We all sincerely desire to become acquainted with the valued friends of whom we hear so much."
Later his father wrote: "With regard to your reasons for remaining at Rome during the spring, you have this time at least the best of the argument. If there were no other than your wish to give more tangible form to your gratitude to your kind friends, the Sartoris, it would be sufficient, to say nothing of the drawings from M. Angelo and Raphael."
And in the same cover his mother says: "I feel, with your father, great satisfaction at your undertaking a likeness of Mrs. Sartoris—I hope it may prove a satisfactory one. Give our love to Mrs. Sartoris." Leighton's younger sister kept a diary in those days. Written in this are notes which describe the keen appreciation which she and her family felt for her brother's friends. "In fact she is, as Fred says, an angel. She seems very fond of him, as she might be of a younger brother.... She is very stout, high coloured, and has little hair. But the shape of her mouth is very fine, the modulations of her voice in speaking are exquisite. She is a creature who can never age, and before whose attractions those of younger and prettier women must always pale." "August 1855.—Fred returned to Bath to stay with us a little while. Beautiful drives together. So generous in giving me several volumes of poetry." "Sept.—Left us to go to Paris."
PORTRAIT OF MRS. ADELAIDE SARTORIS
Drawn by Lord Leighton for her friend Lady Bloomfield, 1867
By permission of the Hon. Mrs. SartorisToList
While in London Leighton wrote the following to his master, Steinle:—
Translation.]
10 Maddox Street, Bond Street,
London, 1855.
My very dear Friend,—At last I am able to write to you again. When I sent off my last letter to you I was busily packing for my journey; now I have been already six weeks in England, and it seems a year since I left Rome. I scarcely need tell you, dearest Friend, that at first, in this London hurly-burly, I hardly knew whether I was standing on my head or my heels: I will not say that this condition has not had a certain charm. I have made several acquaintances, have been cordially received, and have had considerably more praise for my picture than it deserves. However, I have already set seriously to work again, and expect shortly to commence upon a new composition. It is a real grief to me, dear Master, to have to work without your guidance.
My succès, here in London, which, for a beginner, has been extraordinarily great, fills me with anxiety and apprehension; I am always thinking, "What can you exhibit next year that will fulfil the expectations of the public?" When I have settled anything definitely, I shall report to my master in Frankfurt.
Now, however, as regards the photographs. Owing to unforeseen circumstances, Mrs. Sartoris (whom I introduced to you in my last letter) was obliged to alter the plans of her journey, and will not leave this for Germany until the middle of September. What now? Will you wait so long, or shall I seek an opportunity to send you your seven things?
And now, my Friend, how are you occupied? Do you still sparkle with beautiful inventions? Tell me all that you are doing. I had a delightful surprise recently when I saw your long expected "Court Scene" in Paris; it is a charming composition. I tell you nothing of the great Paris Exhibition, for you naturally will not neglect to see a thing so excessively interesting; it throws light upon a great many things. If only you could come in September! then we could meet again and renew old times a little; it would be very delightful. I should like extremely to arrange something of the kind with you; we should certainly agree very well.
Remember me most kindly to your wife and my old friends in Frankfurt, and keep in mind your loving pupil,
Fred Leighton.
In a letter to his mother, before she arrived in London, Leighton refers to Ruskin's criticism when comparing his "Cimabue's Madonna" to Millais' "Rescue":—