Part 2 (2/2)
In it the figure of Ariadne, clothed in white drapery, is seen lying on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea. _Acme and Septimius_ is a circular picture, with two small full-length figures reclining on a marble bench.
This extract from Sir Theodore Martin's translation of Catullus was appended to its t.i.tle in the catalogue:
”Then bending gently back her head, With that sweet mouth so rosy red, Upon his eyes she dropped a kiss, Intoxicating him with bliss.”
A love song on canvas, a pictorial transcript from Catullus, it was perhaps the most popular picture of the year. The last of the three was _Actaea, the Nymph of the Sh.o.r.e_. It represents a small full-length nude figure lying on white drapery by the sea-sh.o.r.e. Actaea is a lovely figure, full of that grace which Leighton so well knew how to impart to his idealized figures.
After this year, at any rate, there could be no longer any doubt but that the artist's power really lay in the creation of ideal forms; whether presented in monomime or combined in poetic and decorative groups, called up from the wonderful limbo of cla.s.sic myth and history.
With 1869 came _Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon_, a memorable picture, full of characteristic effects of colour and composition, and a notable exercise in the grand style. This work, considered from any side, must be seen to be the outcome of a unique faculty, so unprecedented in English art as to run every risk of misconception that native predilections could impose upon those who stopped to criticise it. The figure of Electra clad in black drapery offered a problem of peculiar difficulty.
Another painting shown this year was _Daedalus and Icarus_, a strikingly conceived picture. The two figures are singularly n.o.ble conceptions of the idealized nude; the drapery at the back of Icarus is typical of the painter in every fold, while the landscape seen far below the stone platform on which the figures stand, shows a bay of the blue aegean sea in full sidelight, with a lovely glimpse of the white walls of a distant town.
The same exhibition of 1869 saw, also, the vigorously painted diploma picture, _St. Jerome_, which marked his election as R.A. In it the saint, nude to the waist, kneels with uplifted arms at the foot of a crucifix, his lion seen in the background. _Helios and Rhodos_, another painting exhibited at the same time, shows Helios descending from his chariot, which is in a cloud above, to embrace the nymph Rhodos, who has risen from the sea.
[Ill.u.s.tration: DaeDALUS AND ICARUS (1869)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. JEROME (1869)]
CHAPTER IV
YEAR BY YEAR--1870 TO 1878
Sundry journeys into the East during this period of Leighton's career, gave him new subject-matter, new tints to his palette, and added something of an oriental fantasy to the cla.s.sic sentiment of his art.
The sketches of Damascus and other time-honoured eastern cities, mosques, gardens, and courtyards, which figured largely among Sir Frederic's studies, were made for the most part in the autumn of 1873.
Previously, as early as 1867, the East had cast its spell upon him. In 1868, he went into Egypt, and made a voyage up the Nile with M. de Lesseps, then at the flood of good-fortune. The Khedive himself provided the steamer for this adventure. ”It was during this voyage,” we are told, ”that Sir Frederic came across a small child with the strangest and most limited idea of full dress that probably ever occurred to mortal--a tiny coin strung on to one of her strong coa.r.s.e hairs.” Of the studies made during the journey, one is a woman's head, draped so as to have a singularly archaic and Sphinx-like effect. Another is the fine profile of a young peasant; and yet another, the head of an old man, simple-minded and philosophical.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GARDEN AT GENERALIFE, GRANADA]
[Ill.u.s.tration: MIMBAR OF THE GREAT MOSQUE AT DAMASCUS (Since destroyed by fire)]
In 1869 the _Helios and Rhodos_, already mentioned, served as the first sign to the public of the new R.A.'s interest in things oriental. To the 1870 exhibition, his only contribution was the picture, _A Nile Woman_, which is now owned by the Princess of Wales. It is a small full-length figure of a girl, balancing an empty pitcher upon her head, at the time of moonrise. Antic.i.p.ating the Eastern subjects which future years produced, we may note a picture of _Old Damascus_, showing the Jews' quarter in that fabled city, in all its motley picturesqueness, and the delightful _Moorish Garden,--A Dream of Granada_, which were exhibited in 1874. A powerful picture, shown in 1875, of the _Egyptian Slinger_,[4] is ill.u.s.trated later in this volume, but no reproduction can quite suggest the striking colouring of the original, and the masterly treatment of its light and shade, in the presentment of this lonely figure posed high on its platform against the clear evening sky.
The delightful _Little Fatima_, and the _Grand Mosque, Damascus_, enlarged from the sketch previously alluded to, were also exhibited in 1875.
But perhaps the most picturesque memorial of the East due to the artist's wanderings of these years, is an architectural, and not a pictorial one. The fame of the Arab Hall in Lord Leighton's house has reached even further than that of _Little Fatima_, or his painting of the _Grand Mosque at Damascus_. Built originally to provide a setting for some exquisite blue tiles, brought by the owner from Damascus itself, it remains the most perfect representation of an oriental interior to be found in London; but this again belongs to a later period, and we must return to the date whence this chronicle was interrupted. Before doing so, however, it may be noted that in 1870 began the famous Winter Exhibitions of Old Masters and Deceased British Artists, of which Leighton was one of the most active supporters.
In the May exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1871, was hung a notable canvas, _Greek Girls picking up Pebbles by the Sea_, described at the time as ”a delightful composition, comprising figures of almost exhaustless grace, and wealth of beauty in design and colour.”
Another painting, also shown there, _Cleoboulos instructing his daughter Cleobouline_, is a charming example of its kind. The philosopher, with a scroll on his lap, sits on a cus.h.i.+oned bench with his young daughter by his side, his earnest action in delightful contrast with her girlish grace.
<script>