Lord Leighton by Leonée Ormond; Richard OrmondReview by: F. GORDON ROEJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 124, No. 5240 (JULY 1976), p. 472Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41372354 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 19:08

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce is collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Royal Society of Arts.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 141.101.201.103 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 19:08:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS

Martin 'was put on permanent display in a national collection in Britain' until the Tate i Gallery did so with The Great Day of His j Wrath in 1972. j

I have not in this review done justice to either J Mr. Feaver or John Martin. !

HUMPHREY HIGGENS !

Lord Leighton By Leonée and Richard Ormond New Haven and London , Yale University Press , for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art^ 1975 • £i9-50 Walter Crane: I remember him well in his own home and at ours not far away, in Kensington. But Frederic, Lord Leighton of Stretton, also (among his other dignities) a Baronet, and President of the Royal Academy, was a bit before my time, though, in after years, his residence in Holland Park Road, with Crane's decorations in its legendary Arab Hall, became a familiar spot. Like much else in Leighton's life and art, that almost romantically dignified structure mirrored its original owner's sense of perfection : a perfec- tion extending to all things, including his personal semblance. Leighton looked the Olym- pian he was. To presume that all the Great should measure up to conventional notions of physical aristocracy is sheer waste of fancy; as though Turner, lacking the bodily attributes of a Greek god, could not have been the commanding genius he was in fact. On his own level, Leighton emphatically cut the figure he was fated to play. His appearance was classically noble; albeit I have heard it hinted by an artist (unnamed in this review) that Leighton was perhaps a shade short in the leg for impeccable proportion. But that is as may be.

Perfectionism has pitfalls. To some observers, my distinguished old friend Herbert Granville Fell among them, Leighton ranked with artists who 'sought a physical norm so devoid of all blemish ... as almost to divest it of humanity.' Such considerations are relative to the occasion, though it can be taken for granted that per- fectionism in art runs a grave risk of eliminating that immensely important factor the 'accidental look'.

If Leighton's performance tended towards perfectionism, it must be ungrudgingly allowed that his draughtsmanship, not least in his drawings, is as admirable as it is credible and searching. To quote the joint authors of the impressive book under review: 'While Leighton exposed the limitations of realism, he was aware that ideal art tended to be too far removed from ordinary experience'. I myself find it difficult to ! escape the conviction that a, conceivably sub- conscious, response to the spirit of his age resulted in Leighton scaling not so much Olympus itself as (to borrow the title of an appetizing work by William Gaunt) a ' Victorian

472

JULY 1976

Olympus', with its tacit concessions to the 'acceptable'. What Leighton could achieve in paint when, in studio parlance, 'he let himself go', is amply apparent in, for example, the colour-sketch for Captive Andromache illus- trated in the book now discussed.

Though not the first full-scale biography of Leighton, Leonée and Richard Ormond's superbly researched and imposingly illustrated volume is, and should long remain, of outstand- ing importance in the literature on Leighton and his place in the art-world. No aspect of their theme has been neglected in a lucid presentation of studiously evaluated facts. If the authors dis- claim comprehensiveness for their Catalogue of Oil Paintings , Frescoes and Life-Size Statues , it is as thorough as anything likely to be published on Leighton's art for many years to come. And his importance as a sculptor - who can forget his Athlete struggling with a Python? - is placed in its proper perspective. Added to which, the Index is worthy of its space. Indeed, it reminds me that, one of these days, I may be tempted to follow our authors' lead in using (p. 187) 'ancestrage' as a relief from tedious repetitions of 'ancestry'.

Leighton himself claimed no more knowledge of his ancestral background than did many another of his day - always excluding those with undeniable claims to 'blood'. As son of a doctor in good repute, and grandson of another, whose services as Physician to the Imperial Family of Russia had won him an English knighthood by special request, the PRA's immediate descent was beyond cavil. But his earlier lineage stem- ming from Robert Leighton, of Market Weighton, husbandman and innkeeper, who died in 1759, 'had either been forgotten or suppressed'.

In its stead, what our authors term 'a highly dubious kinship with the Leightons of Shrop- shire was claimed'. Leighton himself is quoted as knowing nothing of his family before his knightly grandfather (who headed his lineage in Burke's Peerage ), but his friendship with the then current Sir Baldwyn Leighton, Bart., led to his adopting Stretton as the territorial designa- tion of his short-lived barony. As descendant of a twelfth-century Tihel de Lathune, Sir Baldwyn came of a stock so ancient as to make his worthily inherited baronetcy of 1692-3 - to say nothing of the PRA's own baronetcy of 1886 - seem almost a thing of yesterday.

Lastly, and for what it is worth, Leighton's accredited armorial bearings, based on those of the Shropshire family, would not be amiss for a cadet of that venerable line. One is tempted to feel that if the great PRA, whose good faith in such things is unquestioned, was not in fact remotely linked by blood with the Shropshire Leightons, he ought to have been. Dread Shame , his motto, echoed theirs. A seemly flourish for a figure of high distinction in the arts and the world.

F. GORDON ROE

This content downloaded from 141.101.201.103 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 19:08:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions