To Leighton the simple joyous child of nature, in the form of the unsophisticated Italian, was a preferable being. To the end of his life he retained much of the child in his own nature, and had ever an inborn sympathy with the love for children so evident everywhere in unspoilt Italy; for the gracious caressing of them by the poorest of the poor—old men in the veriest tatters and rags showing a complete and beautiful submission to the dominating charms of babyhood.

The memory of the hideous, gruesome stories of baby-farming in England strikes indeed a contrast with the scenes that abound at every turn in any old, dirty, picturesque Italian village, and assuredly settles the question, Is our English development of civilisation an unalloyed benefit?

As a contrast to the definite, explicit German development of his intellectual machinery, Leighton had special sympathy with the emotional spontaneity of the Italian race; also as a contrast to the selective and finely poised conclusions to be worked out in theories of composition learnt from his beloved master Steinle, arose a special admiration for the casual, unpremeditated, inevitable grace and charm in the manners and gestures of this southern people. What laboured theories so often failed to achieve, nature here was always doing in her most careless moods.

In considering the intimate aspect of Leighton's nature, and the interweaving of the original fabric with the forces developed by the circumstances he encountered, the influence of Italy must assuredly be given a very distinct prominence. From her and her people he acquired courage in the exercise of his intuitive preferences, also a development of that rapid and direct insight so inborn in her children. Like the lizards that dart with such lightning speed across her sun-scorched walls and over the gnarled bark of the weird olive tree, the perceptions of the typical Italian are swift, and fly straight to the mark. In the Italian, however, this vividness of perception is mostly expended in ejaculation and dramatic gesture, which,—subsiding,—leaves a state of indolence and nonchalance, untroubled by any mental exertion. In Leighton the rapidity with which his perceptions seized the core of truth was backed by an intellectual activity of extraordinary power, by which he worked his intuitive sensibilities into the interests which guided the solid aims of his life.

Probably no Englishman ever approached the Greek of the Periclean period so nearly as did Leighton, for the reason that he possessed that combination of intellectual and emotional power in a like rare degree. The human beings who achieve most as active workers in the world, are doubtless those in whom can be traced a capacity for making apparently incompatible forces pull together towards a desired end. Leighton succeeded in allying two distinct developments in his nature; and by, so to say, putting these into double harness and driving them together, acquired an advantage which few other artists, if any, have possessed since the time of the Greeks.

But, being essentially English as well as Greek-like, Leighton pushed this combination of powers to a moral issue. He held as his creed of creeds that the mission of Art was to act as a lever in the uplifting of the human race, not by going beyond her own domain, but by directing the sense of beauty with which her true priesthood must ever be endowed, in order to eliminate from man his more brutal tendencies, to refine and perfect his insight into nature, and to develop his delight in her perfection. He held that, the stronger the emotional force in an artist, the stronger the sense of responsibility should be; the more he should seek to express it in a manner which would elevate rather than deprave. In his picture of "Cymon and Iphigenia," Leighton expressed the main dogma of his belief. In sentences towards the end of his second address to the Royal Academy students in the year 1881, he eloquently describes the complex and deep nature of those æsthetic emotions whence spring the Arts:—

"It is not, it cannot be, the foremost duty of Art to seek to embody that which it cannot adequately present, and to enter into a competition in which it is doomed to inevitable defeat.

"On the other hand, there is a field in which she has no rival. We have within us the faculty for a range of emotions of vast compass, of exquisite subtlety, and of irresistible force, to which Art and Art alone amongst human forms of expression has a key; these then, and no others, are the chords which it is her appointed duty to strike; and Form, Colour, and the contrasts of Light and Shade are the agents through which it is given to her to set them in motion. Her duty is, therefore, to awaken those sensations directly emotional and indirectly intellectual, which can be communicated only through the sense of sight, to the delight of which she has primarily to minister. And the dignity of these sensations lies in this, that they are inseparably connected by association of ideas, with a range of perceptions and feelings of infinite variety and scope. They come fraught with dim complex memories of all the ever-shifting spectacle of inanimate creation, and of the more deeply stirring phenomena of life; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the outer world; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the changeful and transitory lives of men. Nay, so closely overlaid is the simple æsthetic sensation with elements of ethic or intellectual emotion by these constant and manifold accretions of associated ideas, that it is difficult to conceive of it independently of this precious overgrowth.... The most sensitively religious mind may indeed rest satisfied in the consciousness that it is not on the wings of abstract thought alone that we rise to the highest moods of contemplation, or to the most chastened moral temper; and assuredly Arts which have for their chief task to reveal the inmost springs of Beauty in the created world, to display all the pomp of the teeming earth, and all the pageant of those heavens of which we are told that they declare the Glory of God, are not the least eloquent witnesses to the might and to the majesty of the mysterious and eternal Fountain of all good things."

Not only could no attempt be approximately made at giving a real and vivid picture of Leighton's remarkable personality were not the three aspects of his nature taken into account, but also if the influences which affected him strongly during those years when his genius and character were being developed were not also considered. His conscious nature and feelings, during the first thirty years of his life, can be best traced in his letters, notably in those to his mother. It is easy to recognise, in reading his mother's letters to him, from whom he inherits the warm tender generosity which made his nature so lovable.

When at Frankfort, in 1845, he first became acquainted with the most "indelible" influence of his life in that inner sanctuary in which he had hitherto been a lonely inmate. Seven years later, in the Diary he calls "Pebbles," written for his mother, when, fully fledged, he leaves the nest to battle alone on the field of life, he pays a tribute of unqualified affection and gratitude to his master, Steinle, who first unlocked the door to Leighton's full consciousness of the depth of his devotion for his calling (see pp. 61 and 62).

In 1879, the year after Leighton was elected President of the Royal Academy, in the same letter to Mrs. Mark Pattison already quoted from, he writes, respecting the influences which affected his art development: "For bad by Florentine Academy, for good, far beyond all others, by Steinle, a noble-minded, single-hearted artist, s'il en fut. Technically, I learnt (later) much from Robert Fleury, but being very receptive and prone to admire, I have learnt, and still do, from innumerable artists, big and small. Steinle's is, however, the indelible seal. The thoroughness of all the great old masters is so pervading a quality that I look upon them all as forming one aristocracy."

During the first year when he settled in Rome, in the beginning of 1853, he made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris. Leighton's friendship with Mrs. Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble), many years his senior, and one who had ever viewed her art as a singer from the purest and highest aspect, became a strong and elevating influence in his life. Professor Giovanni Costa (the "Nino" of the letters), one of Leighton's most intimate friends from the year 1853 to the end in 1896, wrote of Mrs. Sartoris, referring to the early days in Rome from 1853 to 1856:[11] "The greatest influence on the life of Frederic Leighton was exerted by Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris (Miss Adelaide Kemble), who had the mind of a great artist. Mr. Sartoris was one of the greatest critics of art, and Mrs. Sartoris had a most elevated and serene nature."

This great friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris brought with it many others, notably those of Robert Browning and of Mr. Henry Greville. Some years later, Leighton writes of Mr. Henry Greville, in a letter to his pupil and friend, Mr. John Walker: "He is indeed one of the kindest and best men possible, I look on him myself as a second father"; and Henry Greville in a letter to Leighton writes: "I wish you were my son, Fay"—Fay being the name given to Leighton by his inner circle of intimates, and certainly a stroke of genius in the one who invented it. Writing from Frankfort to his mother, where he returned to show his works to Steinle after his family had finally migrated to Bath and he to Rome, he says: "I have had such a letter from Henry (Henry Greville); there never was anything like the tenderness of it. You would have been just enchanted."

The friendship with Mrs. Sartoris only ended with her death in 1879, the year after Leighton was elected President of the Royal Academy. Being then close upon fifty, deeply sensible of the grave responsibilities involved by his new position, Leighton entered on a fresh phase in his career. As president of the centre of national living art, this phase involved a serious view being taken of the interests of art such as could be encouraged by a public body. Also as one who had been helped and encouraged by personal friendship and influence to work out the best in him, with his ever eager and generous nature he felt anxious to hand on the help he had received by devoting a like sympathy to the individual interests of other workers. His field of action had become enlarged, and he rose with consummate ability to the fulfilment of the duties this larger area entailed on him. Not only by his biennial addresses to the students of the Royal Academy, but by the speeches delivered spontaneously at the councils and elsewhere, when no preparation would have been possible, his fame as an orator was established. Many there are who have heard the impromptu speeches he made, who can vouch, as do Mr. Briton Rivière and Mr. Hamo Thornycroft, that these were just as fine in language and excellent in the concise form in which the words were made to convey the intended meaning, as those which Leighton had carefully prepared beforehand, and possessed, moreover, the charm of an unlaboured effort.

The seventeen years, during which Leighton was President of the Royal Academy, and prominent in every direction as the leader of the art of his country, were not without saddening influences. His duties necessitated contact with many varieties of human nature, some far from sympathetic to him. The contrast between his own disinterested reverence for beauty, moral and physical, with the indifference displayed by many of his brother artists towards his own high aims and aspirations, forced itself more and more on Leighton as the optimistic fervour and enthusiasm of youth waned with years and failing health. He had to face the depressing fact that selfish motives are the ruling factors with most men, even with those who ostensibly follow the calling of beauty. Much of the joyousness of his spirit was lessened accordingly, though his "sweet reasonableness," to quote Watts' truly suggestive words, never deserted him. This prevented any bitterness or resentment from finding permanent location in his nature. Another source of distress arose from the fact that his great position aroused the jealousy of the envious. However exceptional his tact, however truly heartfelt his consideration for others, no virtues could stand against the vice of being so pre-eminently successful in the eyes of the envious, whose vanity alone placed them in their own estimation on a level with the great.

Nothing perhaps excites so rampant a jealousy in unappreciative and envious natures, as does the unexplainable charm of a delightful personality. It aggravates the dull and envious beyond measure to see a being thus endowed galloping over the ground in all directions with ease, there being in their eyes no sufficient explanation for the pace. Such success is viewed by the envious as a kind of trick, some witchery of fascination, which deludes the world into bestowing unmerited advantages on the conjuror. Those, on the contrary, who can appreciate a transcendent and delightful personality, recognise it as the convincing grace of the power of uncommon gifts flashing their radiance into the intercourse of every-day life, modestly ignored as conscious possessions but inevitably sparkling out in any human intercourse, and from a social point of view making the greatest among us the servants of all.

Jealousy fights with hidden weapons. What man or woman ever acknowledged being jealous? The passion is disguised. Hence the hideous sins that follow in its wake: ingratitude, treachery, calumnies, are called into the service to blacken the offending object. Bacon says of envy: "It is also the vilest affection, and the most depraved; for which cause it is the proper attribute of the devil, who is called the envious man, that soweth tares amongst the wheat by night, as it always cometh to pass that envy worketh subtilly, and in the dark; and to the prejudice of good things, such as is the wheat."

Leighton suffered from the jealousy of the envious, though in most cases the open expression of it was smothered during his life by reason of his power and position. Besides being tender-hearted and easily hurt at any feeling of hostility shown against him, he cordially hated any phase of the ugly.

In the spring of 1895 Leighton said to a friend: "My one constant prayer is that I should not live beyond seventy." His great dread was to be a burden to any one—to cease to be useful to all. His wish was more than fulfilled. He passed onward five years before the allotted three score and ten.

Many there were who felt with Watts that life was indeed darkened; "a great light was extinguished," a beloved friend was no longer amongst them to help, encourage, and brighten the days. To a wide social circle, a personality, rare in its charm and endowments, differing from all others, had passed off the stage. It was as if, amid the sober brown and grey plumage of our quiet-coloured English birds, through the mists and fogs of our northern clime, there had sped across the page of our nineteenth century history the flight of some brilliant-hued flamingo, emitting flashes of light and colour on his way.

To the wide public a power and a control, noble and distinguished in its quality, had ceased to rule over the art interests of the country. Last, but not least, to his "brothers and sisters," as Leighton called all earnest students and artists, it was as if a strong support, a centre of impelling force, an inspiration towards the best and highest in art, had been suddenly swept away.

On the day of his funeral, a friend, whose husband had known him from the commencement to the end of the brilliant career, wrote the following notes:—[12]

"Lord Leighton's funeral to-day was as brilliant as his life, and we came home from the majestic ceremony at St. Paul's Cathedral feeling that his kind and gracious spirit would have rejoiced—for all he loved and honoured in life were there mourning for the loss of their gifted and genial friend. As the procession moved slowly into the Cathedral the crimson and golden pall was Venetian in its brilliancy, and the long branch of palm spoke touchingly of pain over and the conquest won. Music, the sister Art he so devoutly worshipped, lifted up her voice in pathetic accents to the dome of the vast Cathedral, striving to re-echo the solemnity and grief around.

"Dear gracious Leighton, how vividly my husband recalled his earliest impressions of him, the handsome young artist at Rome. Visions arise in the mind of joyous days in his second home there, the cultured and hospitable house of Adelaide Sartoris, which formed the happy background of Leighton's life. He remembered the departure of his picture 'The Triumph of Cimabue,' sent with diffidence, and so, proportionate was the joy when news came of its success, and that the Queen had bought it. It was the month of May. Rome was at its loveliest, and Leighton's friends and brother artists gave him a festal dinner to celebrate his honours. On receiving the news, Leighton's first act was to fly to three less successful artists and buy a picture from each of them (George Mason, then still unknown, was one), and so Leighton reflected his own happiness at once on others. To-day as we viewed the distinguished (in the best sense of the term) mourners, it seemed an epitome of all his social and artistic life. He never forgot an old friend, and not one was absent to-day. The men around his coffin all looked heartily sad. It was only when those peaceful words came, 'We give Thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world,' that we remembered the agony of his last three days on earth, and we could be glad for our dear friend that it was past. We could give hearty thanks, but it was for him and him alone, for we turn with heavy hearts to our homes, feeling that with Frederic Leighton ever so much kindness, love, and colour has gone out of the world."

Attached to the wreath which lay on his coffin were the lines written by our Queen:—

In Leighton's own letters, more than is possible in any other written words, will be traced those qualities of character and feeling which guided the rare gifts nature had bestowed. These, used with unstinting generosity for the benefit of others, established for our national art a position, cosmopolitan in its influence, never previously attained by English painting and sculpture, and of which it may be fairly hoped, future generations, no less than the present, may reap the benefit.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IToC

ANTECEDENTS AND SCHOOL DAYS
1830-1852

Some light is thrown on Leighton's ancestry by the following letter, written by Sir Baldwyn Leighton to Sir Albert Woods, Garter, at the time when a peerage was bestowed on Frederic Leighton. It deals with the question of associating the name of Stretton with the Barony.

In 1862, Leighton writes to his mother:—

The conclusion arrived at from these inquiries was—that, three or four hundred years ago, the descendants of John de Leighton and the Cambray heiress migrated from Shropshire to Yorkshire, and that Leighton's grandfather, Sir James Leighton, court physician to the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, was a descendant of this branch. Dr. Leighton, the artist's father, married the daughter of George Augustus Nash of Edmonton. He and his wife, early in their married life, went to St. Petersburg, and it was supposed that he would probably succeed his father as court physician to the Czar, who favoured Sir James Leighton with his intimacy; but the climate of St. Petersburg not suiting Mrs. Leighton's health, they remained there but a few years. It was at St. Petersburg that the two eldest children were born, Fanny, who died young, and Alexandra, the god-child of the Empress Alexandra, who became Mrs. Sutherland Orr. From St. Petersburg, the family moved to Scarborough, and it was at Scarborough, on December 3, 1830, that the most famous member of the Leighton family was born. The question as to which was the actual house in which the event took place was satisfactorily settled at the time when Leighton was raised to the peerage, in letters which appeared in the press,—one containing the testimony of Mrs. Anne Thorley, who was in Dr. Leighton's service for three years with the family at Scarborough, and for two years after they moved to London. She affirms that Leighton was born in the house in Brunswick Terrace, now numbered 13, but which at that time consisted only of three houses. Mrs. Thorley adds, "Fred's mother was a splendid lady—such a good one with her children, and most affectionate."

A second son named James, who died in his infancy, was also born at Scarborough, and five years after the birth of Leighton his younger sister Augusta, now Mrs. Matthews, was born in London.

Dr. Leighton had every prospect of excelling among those most distinguished in his profession. Deafness, however, by which he was unfortunately attacked about that time, made it impossible for him to practise any longer as a physician. Deprived of his active work, he turned his attention to more abstract lines of study, and to philosophy.

In 1840, Mrs. Leighton, after a severe illness, required a drier climate than that of England, and the family travelled on the Continent, visiting Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.

Family annals record the delight with which Leighton, the boy of ten, enjoyed the beauty of nature in Switzerland, the flowers and everything he saw in the land of mountains. When he reached Rome, the buildings, the fountains, the ruins, the models awaiting hire on the Piazza di Spagna, fascinated him, and he filled many sketch-books with records of all the picturesque scenes that struck him as so new and wonderful. From earliest days, drawing was Leighton's greatest amusement, and he had it always in his own mind that he would be an artist and nothing else. When in Rome, he was allowed to study drawing under Signor Meli, but his father insisted on other lessons being carried on with regularity and industry. We hear of his elder sister and Leighton learning Latin together from a young priest. Dr. Leighton had a commanding intelligence, and made his will felt. As with many fond fathers who centre their chief interest on an only son, and foster thoughts of a notable future for him, Dr. Leighton seems to have felt that the greater his interest and affection, the greater must be the exercise of strict discipline over his boy. Leighton received, to say the least, a stern upbringing from his father, mitigated, however, by the greatest tenderness from his mother. The boy's will respecting his future career proved sufficient for the occasion, and he had reason to be thankful that the general knowledge, which Dr. Leighton insisted on his acquiring, was instilled at so early an age. From the time he was ten years old he was made to study the classics, and at twelve he spoke French and Italian as fluently as English. Dr. Leighton had himself taught the boy anatomy, ever cherishing the hope that he would, when he came to years of discretion, renounce the idea of being an artist, and follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather by becoming a doctor. In either case a knowledge of anatomy was thought necessary, and, in after years, Leighton declared he knew much more anatomy when he was fourteen than he did when he was President of the Royal Academy. "I owe," he said, "my knowledge to my father. He would teach me the names of the bones and the muscles. He would show them to me in action and in repose; then I would have to draw them from memory; until my memory drawing was perfect, he would not let it pass."

The family returned to England for the summer of 1841, spending it at the paternal grandfather's country house at Greenford; and during the following winter Leighton studied at the University College School in London. Mrs. Leighton's health again declined in England, and the family migrated to Germany, the country chosen by Dr. Leighton as that in which the education of the children could be best carried forward. Leighton studied under tutors at Berlin, it being only in his spare moments that he found time to sketch, or to visit the galleries. Then followed a move to Frankfort, and thence to Florence. There he was allowed to enter the studio of Bezzuoli and Servolini, celebrated artists in Florence, but of whose real greatness Leighton, even at that early age, entertained his doubts. It was in Florence that the father's will had finally to submit to the son's passion for his vocation. Dr. Leighton was too wise to allow prejudice to affect his serious actions. He could no longer blind himself to the fact, that this desire to be an artist was a vital matter with his son. He felt it would be wrong to try and override the boy's desires without seeking the opinion of an expert on art matters as to whether there was any probability of Leighton excelling. He therefore took him and his drawings to Hiram Powers, the sculptor, for the verdict to be given. The well-known conversation took place after Powers had examined the work.

"Shall I make him a painter?" asked Dr. Leighton.

"Sir, you cannot help yourself; nature has made him one already," answered the sculptor.

"What can he hope for, if I let him prepare for this career?"

"Let him aim at the highest," answered Powers; "he will be certain to get there."

Leighton had won: he had now to prove good his cause. Even though theoretically his father had given in, he yet hoped that, as years went on, a change in his boy's views might come about; but he was allowed to work at the Accademia delle belle Arti, under Bezzuoli and Servolini, and besides continuing his study of anatomy with his father, Leighton attended classes in the hospital under Zanetti. Of this time in Florence, one of his life-long friends, Professor Costa, writes: "I knew, both from himself and from his fellow-students, that at the age of fourteen Leighton studied at the Academy of Florence under Bezzuoli and Servolini, who at this time (1842) had a great reputation. They were celebrated Florentines, excellent good men, but they could give but little light to this star, which was to become one of the first magnitude. Leighton, from his innate kindness, loved and esteemed his old masters much, though not agreeing in the judgment of his fellow-students that they should be considered on the same level as the ancient Florentines. 'And who have you,' said Leighton one day to a certain Bettino (who is still living), 'who resembles your ancient masters?' And Bettino answered, 'We have still to-day our great Michael Angelos, and Raffaels, in Bezzuoli, in Servolini, in Ciseri.' But this boy of twelve years old could not believe this, and one fine day got into the diligence, and left the Academy of Florence to return to England. Although the diligence went at a great pace, his fellow-students followed it on foot, running behind it, crying, 'Come back, Inglesino! come back, Inglesino! come back,' so much was he loved and respected. He did come back, in fact, many times to Italy, which he considered as his second fatherland."

It was, however, at Frankfort, where the family settled in 1843, that Leighton fell under the real, living art influence of his life, in the person of Steinle. Leighton described this artist later as "an intensely fervent Catholic, a man of most striking personality, and of most courtly manners." In the temperament of this religious Catholic was united a fervour of feeling with a pure severity in the style of his art which belonged to the school of the Nazarenes, of which Steinle was a follower, Overbeck and Pfühler having led the way. A spiritual ardour and spontaneity placed Steinle on a higher level as an artist than that on which the rest of the brotherhood stood. Leighton, boy as he was, at once realised in his master the existence of that "sincerity of emotion,"—to use his own words when preaching, nearly forty years later, to the Royal Academy students; a quality ever considered by him as an essential attribute of the true artist-nature—of that inner vision of the religious poet, of that finer fibre of temperament which endowed art in Leighton's eyes with higher qualities than science or philosophy alone could ever include. Steinle viewed art with the reverence and nobility of feeling which accorded with those aspirations that had been hinted to the boy's nature in his best moments, but which had had no sufficiently clear, decisive outline to inspire hitherto his actual performances. In Steinle's work he found the positive expression of those aspirations; there, in such art, was an absolute confutation of the creed that art was but a pleasant recreation, having no backbone in it to influence the serious work of the world; the creed which meant that, if taken up as a profession, it led but to the making of money by amusing the æsthetic sense of the public in a superficial manner. The view taken by the magnates—the "Barbarians" of the time—was, that unless a painter were a Raphael, a Titian, or a Reynolds, his position was little removed from that of the second-rate actor or the dancer. It was not the profession, but the individual prominence in it which alone saved the situation. In Steinle, Leighton found an exponent of art, who reverenced the vocation of art itself as one which should be sanctified by the purest aims and the highest aspirations.

In the nature of one who exercises a strong influence over another is often found the real clue to the nature influenced. Circumstances had led Leighton to be reserved with regard to his deepest feelings respecting art, but with Steinle that reserve vanished. Under the influence of this master he realised an adequate cause for this deep-rooted, peremptory passion. Steinle's nature explains that of his pupil; for Leighton was, in an intimate sense, introduced to a full knowledge of his own self by Steinle. This influence, to use his own words, written more than thirty years later, was the "indelible seal," because it made Leighton one with himself. The impress was given which steadied the whole nature. There was no vagueness of aim, no swaying to and fro, after he had once made Steinle his master. The religious nature also of the German artist had thrown a certain spell over him. Leighton possessed ever the most beautiful of all qualities—the power of feeling enthusiasm, of loving unselfishly, and generously adoring what he admired most. Fortunate, it may possibly have been, that his father's strict training developed his splendid intellectual powers at an early age; fortunate it certainly was, that, when emancipated from other trammels, he entered the service of art under an influence so pure, so vital in spiritual passion as was that of Steinle.

However, it was not till Leighton reached the age of seventeen that he was allowed to give his time uninterruptedly to the study of art. At that age he had acquired sufficient knowledge of the classics and of the general lines of knowledge even to satisfy his father. He had also completely mastered the German, French, and Italian languages. The vitality of his brain was almost abnormal, otherwise his constitution was not strong. Constantly such phrases as "I am not ill, but I am never well" occur in his letters, and he suffered from weakness and heat, also from "blots" in his eyes, perhaps the result of scarlet fever, which he had as a child. His school days seem to have had their mauvais moments. When he was fifteen, his parents and elder sister went to England, leaving him and his little sister at school during their holidays. The love for his mother, and his longing to be with her, is told in the following pathetic appeal:—