y its name, so the artist must
have become familiar with every separate leaf and twig before he had
completed his task. The whole is broad and simple, and scarcely suggests
the enormous patience which must have been needed to carry out the
self-imposed toil. Nothing is shirked, nothing is scamped; from the stem
to the outermost leaf, every part in succession reveals equal interest,
and yet the whole is not without that larger quality which brings it
together in a harmonious whole, so that it is as much the study of a
tree as the study of each separate item that composes it.
The _Byzantine Well-head_ is another notable instance of similar labour
devoted to an architectural subject; this was evidently a favourite with
its author; for during his life it hung close by his bed in the simple
chamber of his otherwise sumptuous home, a room devoid of luxury and
almost ascetic in its appointments.[11]
The great mass of studies, on brown paper chiefly, which he had
carefully preserved, were purchased by the Fine Art Society, and some
two hundred and fifty were exhibited at their gallery in December, 1896,
and a selection in facsimile has been published in sumptuous form. In a
prefatory note to the catalogue of these studies Mr. S. Pepys Cockerell
says: "It is seldom that we are privileged to watch at ease the workings
of another's mind, but these drawings, the intimate record of a long
life-time, offer an unusually good opportunity. One might call them the
confessions of an artist; and anyone who wants to know what Leighton was
really like, has only to use his eyes. One thing, at any rate, no one
can fail to see, viz., that he had the qualities which result in
industry. Whatever success he achieved was only gained after desperate
labour. It is curious that while he had the reputation for working with
ease, he considered himself to have no facility for anything, whether
for art, for writing, or for speaking. I recollect his once saying:
'Thank Heaven, I was never clever at anything,' for he believed with Sir
Joshua, that everything is granted to well-deserved labour."
The landscape studies in oil (of which a list almost complete will be
found in Appendix II.), show equal observation and sympathetic
perception of the beauty of colour, as well as of the beauty of
form. The truth of these carefully recorded impressions of scenery was
no less patent than the masterly "selection" which had set itself to
depict all that seemed of v
|