The life, letters and work of Frederic Leighton. Volume IIBarrington, Russell, Mrs.
General
The life, letters and work of Frederic Leighton. Volume II
Barrington, Russell, Mrs.
Leighton of Stretton, Frederic Leighton, Baron, 1830-1896
Watts, whose greatest artistic emotion was excited when he seized the
beauty and style in Pheidias. He felt also the same enthusiastic
excitement over Leighton's studies, stamped with a like Pheidian
quality of style. Because the modern eye is so often blind to these
qualities, therefore Leighton's work has been disposed of by many as
merely academical and the result solely of taking inordinate pains!
Surely those desirous of any true culture might learn one lesson at
all events of Leighton: the value of Catholicity through learning "to
master what they reject as fully as what they adopt ... the better
motives of men" with whom they are not in sympathy. Catholicity is the
outcome of the best natures, the best understandings, the best
educations. It overrides those subtle egoisms and commercial interests
which so often guide while distorting a true judgment in art matters,
keeping the preferences of the public wriggling about without any
definite instinct or principal on a never truly-convincing dead level.
The mainspring of catholicity in art is a fervent reverence for
nature. All works in which such fervent reverence is found, in
whatever direction it is displayed, are worthy to be admitted into the
fold, whether it be form, colour, or tone in nature's aspect--whether
it be the stirring whirls of northern tempests, the rural peace of
English glades, or the fineness of rarefied atmosphere in the south,
as in Greek isles and sea. Whichever mood of nature appeals to a true
artist and inspires in him the sacred fire, and consequently the
expression in his touch, should find a place in the heart of the true
lover of art. Because the æsthetic pores of a music-lover are open to
the rapturous tumult of the wildly whirling Schumann symphony in A
minor, is he, therefore, incapable of being entranced by the rare
refinement of Palestrina's cameo-like phrases? Because he feels a
rapturous excitement as the curtain falls at the end of the first act
of "Lohengrin," can he not also feel a soul-satisfaction in the
elevated serenity of Bach's "Christmas Oratorio"? Does it not rather
denote a want of elasticity in the æsthetic perceptions, a want of
flexibility in the sensibilities flavouring somewhat of the
Philistine, to be touched by a limited range of emotions? Because
Leighton is not Whistler, or Watts is not Sargent, why must the one be
admired at the expense of the other? With Leighton's rare intellectual
acumen he knew well that these limitations in viewing various outlooks
on art arose chiefly from a want of wide culture and experience. In
the great galleries of Europe, among the treasures in the churches of
Italy, his own vision had been enlarged, and he had felt how
nourishing to his own best instincts such enlargement had proved.
Hence his earnest endeavours when first entering the Academy to
establish the Winter Exhibitions of Old Masters, and later, when
President, to give as many facilities as possible for students to
travel abroad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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