SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON.* Turs volume, published shortly before the death
of its subject, bears the title under which his name was most familiar. It follows two others dealing with Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Albert Moore, is of the same shape and structure, and, like them, consists of a number of photo- gravures and process-blocks from the works of the artist, along with an account of the course of his production.
It is a question that might admit of debate whether all this hackneying of a man's work by reproduction in the not very attractive form of half-tone blocks is desirable. In the case of an old master it may be a necessary evil thus to illustrate a critical or historical disquisition; a living man, fastidious about the appearance of his work and able to control its multiplication, might, one would think, have grave doubts about the affair. The reproductions, in this -volume, of the lemon-tree and Damascus well-head, do little justice to those remarkable drawings ; some of the chalk studies fare better, but there is a general air of meanness and dullness about the prints after pictures. The best plate is the frontispiece, a photogravure after the "Summer Moon," perhaps the most beautiful of its author's designs.
But if to an artist of sensitive feelings the lavish pro- ceedings of the process-man must be trying, the dealings of the critic and the chronicler must be still harder to bear. Doubtless reputation brings a certain callousness, but an artist, one would think, must feel embarrassed while the wondering scribe reminds him that, though a painter, he learned a certain amount of Latin and Greek at school, speaks several languages, reads his own, is neither untidy nor a procrastinator. Then the sightseer is once more trotted round the Arabian Hall, roams the house, and peers into the corners of the studio. All this is silly and tedious enough, but not so bad as the mass of commentary, original and selected, which pads out these pages. No single illuminating word emerges from the epithets, and the catalogue droops along under a listless accumulation of flabby words. Here is a typical specimen. "The artist has painted her (4 Psamathe ') sitting by the seashore, gazing over the 2Egean, and she is unkind enough not to show us her face, her back being turned to the spectator." Criticism like this need never be at a loss. If the lady shows her face, you say, "She is unkind enough not to show us her back, her face being turned to the spectator." The most positive matter in the volume is the descriptions of the painter's processes in elaborating a picture, but the writers have no guess of the moral to be drawn from their facts, of the limits implied by the very exact and complete system described, of how radically it contradicts the picture-making of the greatest masters of the art of painting.
In the art of design as distinguished from the more complex art of painting, Lord Leighton had a very considerable talent. It is unlikely that the favourable verdict of time will be refused to the invention and grace of many of his figures, to the " Athlete," the " Sluggard," and many little pre- paratory models in sculpture, to figures like those in the " Maidens Playing at Ball " or some of those in the "Alcestis" among his paintings. It is true that as a .draughtsman Lord Leighton's was rather a smooth, flowing, decorative line than a searching or constructive ; it has the -elements of superficial pleasure rather than more vital qualities; but for all that the facile rhetorical language in which he conveyed his idea does not deprive it of every virtue.
It would seem, moreover, from the evidence of some of his portraits and of many of his oil-studies recently dispersed, that he arrived in his eclectic training at a clear enough idea of how drawing in paint should be set about, but it would be difficult to point to a more signal example of the fallacy of 4' finish " than the procedure that turned these studies into the final picture. Mr. Ruskin in an early criticism, quoted in this book, speaks of a want of finish as characterising the work, and nothing could be truer in any valuable sense of that word. To refine upon structure and colour by additional -statements as the picture proceeds, in the manner of Rem.
• Sir Frederic Leighton, Bart., P.R.A. an Illustrated Chronicle. By Erre_t 114.s. With Prefatory Eva}, by F. G. Eterdiens. Loud m : Bell and Son•.
brandt, is real finish ; to smooth over the original statement of structure, good so far as it went, is a mechanical procedure that can only give pleasure to very superficial observers. Within the pages of this book the reader can appreciate from the illustrations how frequently a study even lost in vitality in the process of painting.
It is unlikely that time will give higher rank to Lord Leighton's colour than to his drawing. The studies prove how insensitive his eye was to the element of light, and the intensification of local colours in his finished pictures is only the same limitation writ large,—a so-called " decorative " substitute elaborated in place of the real sensibility. In this, as almost always in his touch on humanity, he gives one an odd sensation of something voluptuous called in to cover an essentially chilly vision. There is a remark of Lord Leigh- ton's, cited in all innocence by Mr. Spielmann, that throws a flood of light on his actual vision. " Shadows," he said, "on a woman's face should not be black as on a man's, but red."
It is difficult to criticise frankly a man so recently dead, and who attached so many admiring friends by his talents, virtues, and taste, without an appearance of brutality, and we have no wish to insist on the weaknesses of a remarkable artist. But to claim for the graceful eclectic talent of this painter that it lifts him into the front rank even of contem- porary art is to make a draft on Fame that cannot possibly be honoured. A book written under the conditions of that before us must doubtless take the side of flattery ; criticism must all the more be plain-spoken.
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