Part 8 (1/2)
Many more extracts we would gladly make, whether from the account of the French sculpture of this period, marked as it was by ”sincerity and freshness, often by great beauty and stateliness;” or from the criticism of such artists as Jean Cousin, who painted windows which were ”limpid with hues of amethyst, sapphire, and topaz, and fair as a May morning;”
or again, of Watteau, of whom we are told that ”in the vivacity and grace of his drawing, in the fascination of his harmonies, rich and suave at once, in the fidelity with which he reflected his times without hinting at their coa.r.s.eness, this wizard of the brush remains one of the most interesting, as he is one of the most fascinating, masters of his country's art.”
In the Discourse of 1893 the History of Gothic Architecture was pursued, from its native France to its adopted home in Germany. At the end of last century Goethe declared that not only was the Gothic style native to Germany, but no other nation had a peculiar style of its own; ”for,”
he said, ”the Italians have none, and still less the Frenchmen”!
According to Leighton, ”the Germans, as a race, were, speaking broadly, never at one in spirit with ogival architecture. The result was such as you would expect; in the use of a form of architecture which was not of spontaneous growth in their midst, and unrestrained, moreover, as they were, by a sound innate instinct of special fitness, German builders were often led into solecisms, incongruities, and excesses, from which in the practice of their native style they have been largely free.” Of this style, which may be called the German-Romanesque, the best examples are to be found among the churches of the Rhineland. In the thirteenth century this style, admirably as it expressed the genius of the Teuton, succ.u.mbed to invading French influence. ”I have often wondered,” he continued, ”at the strange contrast between the reticent and grave sobriety of the architecture of Germany before the fall of the Hohenstaufens, and its erratic self-indulgence in the Gothic period.”
There is much, however, to be said in praise of the Gothic churches of Germany, their fine colouring, suggestiveness, and variety. Take the description of the Church of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg. ”Nothing could well be more delightful than the impression which you receive on entering it; the beauty of the dark brown stone, the rich hues of the stained gla.s.s, the right relation of tone value, to use a painter's term, between the structure and the lights--the sombre blazoned s.h.i.+elds which cl.u.s.ter along the walls, the succession on pier beyond pier of pictures powerful in colour and enhanced by the gleaming gold of fantastic carven frames, above all the succession of picturesque objects in mid-air above you, a large chandelier, a stately rood-cross, and to crown all, Veit Stoss's masterpiece, the Annunciation, rich with gold and colour; all these things conspire to produce a whole, delightful and poetic, in spite of much that invites criticism in the architectural forms themselves.” Still more interesting is the word-picture of the great Cathedral of Cologne, ”a monument of indomitable will, of science, and of stylistic orthodoxy ... its beautiful rhythm, its n.o.ble consistency and unity, its soaring height, rivet the beholder's gaze”; and yet, the building, in spite of all, does not entirely convince: ”the kindling touch of genius” seems to be wanting.
Take, finally, this description of Albert Durer: ”He was a man of a strong and upright nature, bent on pure and high ideals, a man ever seeking, if I may use his own characteristic expression, to make known through his work the mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart; he was a thinker, a theorist, and as you know, a writer; like many of the great artists of the Renaissance, he was steeped also in the love of science.... Superbly inexhaustible as a designer, as a draughtsman he was powerful, thorough, and minute to a marvel, but never without a certain almost caligraphic mannerism of hand, wanting in spontaneous simplicity--never broadly serene. In his colour he was rich and vivid, not always unerring in his harmonies, not alluring in his execution--withal a giant.”
With this tribute to a great predecessor we must leave these Discourses, which need, to be properly appreciated, to be studied as a whole; as indeed they form Leighton's deliberate exposition of his whole principles of Aesthetics. In working this out, Discourse by Discourse, he was not content to rely upon convenient literary sources, or previously acquired knowledge of his subject; but undertook special journeys, and spent long periods, abroad, to procure his own evidence at first hand. This gives his Discourses all the value of original research, based on new materials, to add to their purely critical value.
Had they been completed, they would have formed an invaluable contribution to the history and the philosophy of Art.
CHAPTER IX
LORD LEIGHTON'S HOME
If we seek for practical expression of Leighton's sympathy for decorative art, we may find it most satisfactorily in his own home as it appeared during his life. Mr. George Aitchison, R.A., designed the whole house;--even the Arab Hall being largely built from drawings made specially by him in Moorish Spain. Although the exterior of No. 2, Holland Park Road has individuality, rather than distinction, it was within that its special charms were found. One of the first things seen on entering was a striking bronze statue, ”Icarus,” by Mr. Alfred Gilbert; a typical instance of Leighton's generous recognition of artistic contemporaries.
In earlier pages we spoke of the Arab Hall and its Oriental enchantment.
No attempt to paint the effects of such an interior in words can call it up half as clearly as the slightest actual drawing. There is a dim dome above, and a fountain falling into a great black marble basin below; there are eight little arched windows of stained gla.s.s in the dome; and there are white marble columns, whose bases are green, whose capitals are carved with rare and curious birds, supporting the arches of the alcoves. The Cairo lattice-work in the lower arched recesses lets in only so much of the hot light of midsummer (for it is in summer that one should see it to appreciate its last charm), as consists with the coolness, and the quiet, and the perfect Oriental repose, which give the chamber its spell.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HOUSE: THE INNER HALL]
More in what we may call the highway of the house, from entrance hall to studios, is the large hall, out of which the Arab Hall leads, and from which the dark oak staircase ascends with walls tiled in blue and white.
Here, on every side, one saw all manner of lovely paintings and exquisite _bric-a-brac_: a drawing of _The Fontana della Tartarughe in Rome_ by Leighton's old mentor, Steinle; other bronzes and paintings, and in full view a huge stuffed peac.o.c.k, which seemed to have shed some of its brilliant hues upon its surroundings.
In the drawing-room hung many Corots and Constables, with a superb Daubigny, and a most tempting example of George Mason,--a picture of a girl driving calves on a windy hill, amid a perfect embarra.s.sment of such artistic riches. The famous Corots, a sequence of panels, representing _Morning_, _Noon_, _Evening_, and _Night_, which cost Lord Leighton less than 1,000 francs each, were sold for 6,000 guineas for the four, at Christie's, in July, 1896. Still another small Corot, a picture of a boat afloat on a still lake, was also in this room. One of the Constables that hung there is literally historic--for it is the sketch for that famous _Hay Wain_ which, exhibited in Paris, at once upset the cla.s.sical tradition, and gave impetus to the whole modern school of French landscape. Near it was one of Constable's many pictures of Hampstead Heath,--simply a bit of dark heath against a sympathetic sky; but so painted as to be a masterpiece of its kind. These pictures were but a few of the many artfully disposed things of beauty, born in older Italy, or newer France, or in our new-old London.
Upon the staircase there were pictures at every turn to make one pause, step by step, on the way. Sir Joshua Reynolds was represented by an unfinished canvas of Lord Rockingham, in which the great Burke, in his minor function of secretary, also figures. Then came G. F. Watts's earlier portrait of Leighton himself; and here a genuine Tintoretto.
There was the P.R.A.'s famous _Portrait of Captain Burton_; and over a doorway his early painting of _The Plague at Florence_, with another early work, _Romeo and Juliet_, one of his very few Shakespearean pictures.
From the landing whence most of these things were visible, you entered at once the great studio. Round the upper wall ran a cast of the Parthenon frieze, and beneath this the wall on one side was riddled and windowed, as it were, with innumerable framed pictures, small studies of foreign scenes; so that one looked out in turn upon Italy and the South, Egypt and the East, or upon an Irish sunset, or a Scottish mountain-side.
Opposite these, below the great window, were many of the artist's miniature wax models and studies. Else, the ordinary not unpicturesque lumber of an artist's studio was conspicuously absent. The secret of Leighton's despatch and careful ordering of his days, was to be read, indeed, in every detail of his work-a-day surroundings. Even in a dim antechamber, with a trellised niche most mysteriously overlooking the Arab Hall, at one end of the studio, in which the curious visitor might have expected to find dusty studies, discarded canvases, and other such aesthetic remnants,--even that was found to contain not lumber, but a Sebastian del Piombo, a sketch of Sappho by Delacroix, a landscape by Costa, a Madonna and Child of Sano di Pietro del Piombo.
At the extreme other end of the main studio was the working studio of gla.s.s, built to combat the fogs by procuring whatever vestige of light Kensington may accord in its most November moods. The last addition to the building, not long before Lord Leighton's death, was a gallery, known as ”The Music Room,” expressly designed to receive his pictures--mostly gifts from contemporary artists; or, to speak more accurately, works that had been exchanged for others in a wholly non-commercial spirit. These included, _Sh.e.l.ling Peas_, by Sir J. E.
Millais, _The Corner of the Studio_, by Sir L. Alma-Tadema, _The Haystacks_, and _Venus_, by G. F. Watts, and _Chaucer's Dream of Good Women_, by Sir E. Burne-Jones.
Such was the daily environment of that hard, unceasing, indefatigable labour which, natural faculty taken for granted, is always the secret of an artist's extraordinary production. And it was an environment, as one felt on leaving it for the gray London without, that well accorded with the radiant painted procession of the figures, cla.s.sic and other, that file through Lord Leighton's pictures.
CHAPTER X
LORD LEIGHTON'S HOUSE IN 1900