Leighton

It is true that a definite connection can almost always be traced between the temperament of an artist and the work that he produces. One of the first things that must be taken into account in any study of his achievement is the manner of his training during the most impressionable years of his boyhood. Youthful associations and surroundings must obviously have a very real influence upon the direction in which any man develops in after life, and much of his later success or failure must depend upon the kind of cultivation that is given at the outset to his natural tastes and instinctive preferences. Everything which helps to define his personality, or to shape his character, has an actual bearing upon his ultimate efficiency as a producer, and counts for something in the building up of his scheme of active existence; the discipline of a judicious up-bringing puts his temperament under the control of his intelligence, and by pointing the way in which he can best apply his powers, saves him from wasting his energies in unprofitable experiment. He starts his career with a knowledge of himself, and with confidence in his personal qualifications for the profession he has chosen; and this confidence enables him to use his individuality not only to his own advantage, but for the benefit of other men as well.

It would not be easy to find a better instance of this connection between the artist's personality and the character of his performance than is afforded by the life and practice of Lord Leighton, nor one which marks more definitely the effect produced by early associations and training. Indeed, to understand his art at all, it is necessary to trace from his childhood the sequence of events by which the trend of his aesthetic convictions was determined, and to follow, step by step, the evolution of that creed in which he retained, to the end, the fullest and most absolute faith. He was no opportunist in art matters, momentary fashions did not affect him, and he did not yield to the temptation, which many artists are unable to resist, to make experiments in unaccustomed directions; what he once believed he believed always, and neither his catholicity of taste, nor his generous toleration of methods of practice quite opposed to his own, had any effect upon the consistency of his effort. What he conceived to be his mission he fulfilled to the utmost, and there is no plainer proof of his strength than the firmness of his adherence to the course which he had decided at the outset was the one he ought to follow.

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PLATE II.--THE SYRACUSAN BRIDE

(The plate represents the centre portion of the picture, now in the possession of Mr. Mildmay, M.P., at Ivybridge)

A typical example of the artist's earlier manner--characteristically suave in line arrangement and dignified in effect--this picture shows well how he could manage the intricacies of an elaborate composition. The decorative beauty of the whole design and the grace of individual figures can be sincerely admired.

[Illustration: PLATE II.--THE SYRACUSAN BRIDE]

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Leighton does not seem to have owed to heredity any of his particular gifts as an artist. His father and grandfather were both medical men, and, during several generations preceding his birth, no member of his family appears to have possessed more than an ordinary degree of taste in art matters. Yet the desire for the pictorial expression of his ideas was one of the first of his childish inclinations; and in 1839, before he was ten years old--he was born at Scarborough on December 3, 1830--this desire had become so strong that his parents began seriously to consider whether it ought not to be accepted by them as determining the profession which he was eventually to follow. Their final decision on the subject was postponed for some years longer, for they felt the need for caution lest his powers should prove to be insufficient to justify them in consenting that he should become a professional artist. But meanwhile his father, himself a man of culture and a lover of the classics, determined that the boy should receive a good general education, and that, though art teaching was not to be denied to him, it should be one only of the subjects in which he was to be trained.