"A very big picture by a man called Leighton"

Lord Leighton : Cimabue's Madonna

The title of this piece is a quote from none other than Queen Victoria and is a handy way to refer to a painting by Frederic, (later Lord) Leighton (1830-96) the full title of which is "Cimabue's celebrated 'Madonna' is carried in procession through the streets of Florence; in front of the 'Madonna', and crowned with laurels, walks Cimabue with his pupil Giotto; behind are Arnolfo de Lapo, Gaddo Gaddi, Andrea Tafi, Nicola Pisano, Buffalmacco, Simone Memmi. In the right corner is Dante."

Somewhat of a mouthful I am sure you will agree and for obvious reasons it is usually just referred to as "Cimabue's Madonna". In defence of the original title though, and by way of a little digression, it should be noted that it is a curious fact that pictures and their titles are easily separated, unlike books the title of a picture rarely, if ever, appears on the work itself and it often takes a lot of scholarly research going back through exhibition catalogues or dealer's sales records to match the picture to the title. Indeed most of the pictures known today painted by the old masters before the eighteenth century are known by titles given many years, sometimes centuries later, Leonardo's "The Virgin of the Rocks" and Velasquez's "Rokeby Venus" being just two examples that spring instantly to mind. Thus in the nineteenth century "titles" were often in reality rather "descriptions" in order to prevent any subsequent confusion. The painting by Turner known today simply as "The Slave Ship" but originally exhibited as "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhoon coming on" is another famous example.

But to return to Leighton's picture, the reason for writing about it today is that yesterday I had the pleasant experience of being able to inspect it closely for the first time. The painting usually hangs above the archways of the main entrance at the National Gallery in London and requires one to climb the staircase towards the main galleries and turn round into the traffic as it were and view the painting form a distance of 15-20 metres. Now however it has been hung in a room usually reserved (I think) for impressionist or perhaps post-impressionist work but now re-hung with romantic painting from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Leighton's picture dominates the room as indeed it would any room if for no other reason than its size, it is a colossal picture measuring 222cm x 521cm, which in old money means its about 7feet high by 17feet long. As Leighton commented to a friend when he sent it in the Royal Academy show of 1855 "at least they wont be able to ignore it".

Lord Leighton : Cimabue' Madonna (Detail)

Leighton painted the picture in Rome and was unusual amongst English artists of the time in being trained abroad. His grandfather had been court physician to the Tsar of Russia and his father, also a doctor, spent most of his life travelling around Europe seeking a favourable climate for his sickly wife and the best education money could buy for his only son. Leighton therefore studied briefly in Florence and then more extensively in Germany with the Nazarene painter Eduard von Steinle. When he submitted this picture to the Academy he was therefore virtually unknown in Britain and subject to a certain amount of insular prejudice from which he recovered only slowly.

Thus it was that when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert attended the Academy opening as was their custom both picture and the artist were unknown to them. Both, however were hugely impressed  as Victoria noted in her diary:  "It is a beautiful painting, quite reminding one of a Paul Veronese, so bright and full of light. Albert was enchanted with it - so much so that he made me buy it." The picture remains to this day in the Royal Collection but is on a long term loan to the National Gallery.

Lord Leighton: Cimabue's Madonna (Detail)

It was a wonderful experience to examine it closely; it really is an extraordinary piece of work particularly when one remembers that it was the first work Leighton had exhibited in England and he was only 25 years of age at the time. Given that, it is a remarkably mature work and one which was to set the stage for Leighton's career. Over the years he produced a big set piece procession picture of this sort roughly every decade, the last being the magnificent "Captive Andromache" which now hangs in Manchester City Art Gallery and is the key work of the latter part of his career just as the "Cimabue" is of the early part.

Lord Leighton: Captive Andromache



Lord Leighton: Cimabue's Madonna (Detail)

As the long title explains the picture shows an event narrated by Giorgio Vasari in his celebrated mid 16th century work "The Lives of the Painters" when the people of Florence were so enamoured of the seemingly miraculous work by Cimabue that they went en fete and carried the picture now known as the "Rucellai Madonna" to its resting place in the Church of Santa Maria Novella. Leighton depicts many of the famous personalities of that time. Cimabue himself is the slightly isolated figure in white in the centre, the young boy with him is Giotto who would surpass him as the great genius of the age. Dante looks on from the edge of the picture, fittingly. as he remarked on this passing of the torch of fame from one to the other in his great work the Comedy.

 





Lord Leighton Cimabue's Madonna (Detail showing Dante)


 

The determination of Leighton to make a sensation with this picture is obvious. Not just its size but its glorious colour mark it out as exceptional. Close to one can fully appreciate the individualised heads of all the characters and the beautifully painted draperies and accessories. Originally the figures moved continuously from the right to the left of the picture but when it was nearly complete and two years labour had been spent on it, it was suggested to Leighton that frieze like composition was a bit static and laborious. After some consideration Leighton concurred and wiped out the whole left side to repaint the figures turning towards the viewer. Knowing how difficult it is to change the slightest thing in a picture of mine if I consider it reasonably well done I can only admire with awe this dedication to the pursuit of perfection, a dedication which Leighton pursued throughout his career.

 

Lord Leighton: Cimabue's Madonna (Detail)

I don't know if the picture's new position is permanent or only temporary. It has been replaced in its original place by a work by Puvis de Chavannes "The beheading of John the Baptist" a smaller but still very striking piece. Undoubtedly it will enable more people to see it and appreciate Leighton's talent, he is still under appreciated even in this country and even more so abroad. Ironically a man who struggled to win acceptance in England in his lifetime because of his foreign education and training is now seen as archetypically English and amongst European art lovers that can still be a term of criticism.  However as always the best thing to do is study the work and come to your own decision, thankfully with this rehang, doing so has just become that little bit easier.

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema at Leighton House

Alma-Tadema : Self Portrait
 

I recently got the chance to view the beautiful exhibition of the works of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) held at the wonderful Leighton House in Kensington, the former home of Alma-Tadema's friend Lord Leighton. It is a magnificent setting for any show of pictures and most especially of pictures designed, as these were, to be enjoyed and admired by those cultivated souls who seek rest and beauty in art.

Alma-Tadema has perhaps more then any other artist of the period epitomised the huge swings in popularity of Victorian art. In the late nineteenth century he was one of the giants, hugely popular with the art buying public and enormously honoured and feted by public institutions throughout Britain and Europe. But as the twentieth century dawned and welcomed the rise of post impressionism and even more avant-garde movements such as cubism, Victorian art in general and academic art in particular was reviled and dismissed as an irrelevance or worse. Alma-Tadema was seen as the archetypal academic figure and he had committed the unforgivable sin of painting pretty pictures which people liked to look at and pay good money to own. He had the misfortune in this respect to outlive his contemporaries such as Leighton, Millais and Burne-Jones all of whom had the good sense to depart this earth before the 20th century arrived, and thus he lived to see his pictures derided and sold for knock down prices. This trend continued for a good 50 years or so and one  still finds art professionals with a sniffy condescending attitude towards Alma-Tadema and his confreres. But form the 1960's a few brave souls started to write about these pictures with a fresh eye, some even braver souls started buying them again and for the last 40 years or so there has been a huge boom in critical interest and financial value of these works. Having suffered more than most during the nadir Alma-Tadema is now once again one of the most sought after painters of the period with his works selling for many millions at auction. Recent exhibitions have confirmed his popularity with the general public and it is hard to think of an artist better suited to a luxurious large format coffee table book.




Alma-Tadema : The Kiss
 



Alma-Tadema : Silver Favourites
 

His reputation rests today largely on his reconstructions of daily life in ancient Greece or (more usually) Rome as in these two examples above. The elements don't change a great deal, some pretty women not doing anything very much, some marble, flowers and beautiful Mediterranean seas and skies. It has often been remarked that the people in his paintings are Victorians in togas but I don't think this adds up to any sort of valid criticism. On a literal level it is of course true, but is it any different than saying Titian's classical figures are Venetians in togas? Alma-Tadema very rarely painted mythological scenes and as his career went on he produced fewer and fewer scenes featuring actual historical personages. He was happy to make parallels between the idle wealthy classes of his own day and those of imperial Rome, and who is to say that it is not instructive to be reminded that people through all epochs have shared the natural human emotions?

This exhibition is displayed more or less chronologically and one can easily see two main developments in Alma-Tadema's art. The first is his early concentration on scenes from medieval especially Merovingian Europe such as this early masterpiece :



Alma-Tadema : The Education of the children of Clovis
 

 

After his honeymoon in Pompeii in the mid 1860's he developed an interest in daily life in the Roman empire and began to paint scenes from the ancient world, developing as we have seen the classic Alma -Tadema recipe by the 1880's. This change is mirrored by a slightly more subtle but to me more important change and that is the suppression of the anecdotal. I have remarked already that as his career progressed he painted fewer pictures featuring historical personages and this is also an aspect of this change. It is very difficult to look at a picture such as this



Alma-Tadema: Cataullus at Lesbia

 

or this:



Alma-Tadema : A Roman Art-Lover
 


and not ask yourself "what is going on here?, who is saying what to whom? what roles are the other figures playing in this confrontation? and so on. In other words the anecdotal  takes over and becomes the first point of concern. Now it is my contention that in as far as the anecdotal becomes the main focus of a picture, it  is a weak picture. A picture is primarily something we look at and therefore the first appeal must be to the visual sense. We should be struck firstly by a beautiful arrangement of colour and form and only then should we turn to the question of what those forms represent. Of course I do not mean to imply that this is a lengthy process or even necessarily  a conscious one but I am sure that where this process does not happen in this way the picture suffers for it. Take as an example Botticelli's famous picture "Primavera"; books have been written about the precise meaning or meanings of this work but it is surely true that even Botticelli's original audience, far more learned in the abstruse Neo-Platonism of the Medici court than we, must have said when first seeing it not, "what a learned thing" but rather "what a beautiful one"

 

Botticelli : Primavera

.

 

 



In the 1870's and !880's the Aesthetic movement re-introduced the idea that a work of art should be above all else a thing formally beautiful. "All art aspires to the condition of music" in Walter Pater's famous phrase meaning that music was the art where form and content are inextricably linked to the extent that they are not just inseparable but actually one thing. Alma-Tadema was never an avowed adherent of aestheticism but he was not untouched by its philosophy and consequently made a conscious attempt to suppress the anecdotal in his pictures, in my mind to their great benefit.

 

Alma-Tadema : Expectations.



 

Alma-Tadema: Her eyes are with her Thoughts
 

In pictures such as the examples above the true subject  is the absolute beauty of the scene, the delicious colour harmony of the blossom against the sky, the lovely rendering of the marble and drapery and so on. All this hits us in an instant and only once this aesthetic sensation is registered do we stop to wonder what the girl is doing and who if anyone she is looking out for. But for all that, its not very important who she is and what she is doing and we needn't spend long speculating. What may be called the literary subject is a meaning kept in reserve as it were behind the primary subject of formal beauty.  As Swinburne said about a  picture by Albert Moore "One more beautiful thing has come into the world and its meaning is beauty and its reason for being is to be".

 

A branch of art where the anecdotal is by necessity kept to a minimum is the art of portraiture and the exhibition contains enough examples to show clearly the Alma-Tadema could have made a fine career from this alone had he so wished. "All great art is praise" says Ruskin so it is not perhaps surprising that Alma-Tadema, like many artists, painted his best portraits from those he loved best and there is no finer example than this wonderful aesthetic picture of his daughter Anna. Incidentally Anna under the  tutelage of her father became a successful painter in her own right as did her sister Laurence and their step-mother, Alma-Tadema's second wife Laura.

 



Alma-Tadema :Portrait of Anna Alma-Tadema.
 

So, for my taste, this exhibition got better as it went on and it culminated with a couple of the most splendid pictures Alma Tadema ever painted. I should also say a couple of the largest pictures he ever painted because unlike most of his contemporaries he tended to produce small works, most of the ones illustrated here are no more than a couple of feet at their largest dimension. These two pictures which can be seen as a pair as they were painted for the same patron the engineer Sir John Aird (builder of the first Aswan Dam in Egypt) and offer opposing colour schemes are 7 feet long and utterly overwhelming in their sumptuous detail and beautifully delicate colour. Their magnificence as objects is enough in itself to distract the viewer (initially at least)  from asking what is going on here and just to revel in their beauty something which can't be said for the smaller works of his early career. The "Roses of Heliogabalus" which appears at first sight to be a group of Romans frolicking in rose petals actually depicts a probably invented scene from the "Augustan History" in which the emperor deliberately smothered his guests to death under the weight of the blossom.



 



Alma Tadema: The Roses of Heliogabalus

 

 

Alma-Tadema : The Finding of Moses



So, in summary, a beautiful, beguiling exhibition in delightful surroundings. A chance to come to terms with one of the giants of nineteenth century art scene in Britain and incidentally to become better acquainted with the excellent work of his wife and daughters. It may be true that one often feels the lack of real weight in Alma-Tadema, his aim was primarily to please rather than to exalt (to borrow Burne-Jones' distinction) but his pictures pass the first and most important test of any visual art; i.e. are they beautiful to look at?  This is no little thing after all, it is impossible to leave this exhibition without feeling happier and more at ease with the world and that surely is worthy of commendation. I will finish with one more image, that of a picture which Alma-Tadema himself considered one of his best, a view with which I would be inclined to agree. The modernist would no doubt call it sentimental but is it not the case that it reminds us one of one of the glories of the human race, the fact that one person can give unconditional love to another which is  never better exemplified that in a mother's love for her child? Why shouldn't we celebrate such a thing and what can be wrong with such a beautiful reminder of a beautiful fact? To me this a worthy aim for art and worth celebrating, the good the true and the beautiful are the eternal verities.

 

Alma-Tadema : An Earthly Paradise