Lot Essay
Goivanni Costa - 'who as an artist is one in hundreds and as a man one in thousands', as Leighton told Walter Crane in 1872 - was the central figure in the Etruscan School of landscape painters; the name does not refer, as might be imagined, to Tuscany, but to his nickname, 'The Etruscan'. The group acquired some formal coherence in 1883, but long before this it had existed in a looser sense. Its aim was to express poetry and emotion through landscape, studied at first hand but given a distinctly abstract interpretation; a narrow retangular format was perhaps the most obvious hallmark of the Etruscan style. Although a number of exponents were Italian - Costa himself, Cesare Formilli, Napoleone Parisani, Gaetano Vannicola, and others, the circle also embraced many English artists who visited or settled in Italy. Leighton, George Howard, George Heming Mason, William Blake Richmond, Walter Crane, Matthew Ridley Corbet and his wife Edith, were all among those associated with the movement at one date or another. There were also links with the Barbizon School in France; on visits to Paris in 1862-3 Costa worked with Corot and painted with other artists at Fontainebleau.
The friendship between Leighton and Costa, which lasted for nearly half a century, was vital to the development of the Etruscan School. Costa was born in Rome in 1833, and although his involvement with the cause of Italian liberation led to periods of exile during his early career, he spent most of his life in his native city and derived his deepest inspiration from the Campagna. He met Leighton in the spring of 1853 when the young Englishman, who was three years his senior, was living in Rome and painting Cimabue's Madonna (Royal Collection, on loan to the National Gallery). Costa was later to describe their meeting as follows. 'In the month of May the usual artists' picnic took place at Cervara, a farm in the Roman Campagna. There used to be donkey races, and the winner of these was always the hero of the day. We had halted at Tor de' Schiavi, three miles out of Rome and half the distance to Cervara, for breakfast. Everyone had dismounted and tied his beast to a paling, and all were eating merrily. Suddenly one of the donkeys kicked over a beehive, and out flew the bees to revenge themselves on the donkeys. There were about a hundred of the poor beasts, but they all unloosed themselves and took to flight, kicking up their heels in the air - all but one little donkey who was unable to free himself, and so the whole swarm fell upon him. The picnic party also broke up and fled, with the exception of one young man with fair, curly hair, dressed in velvet, who, slipping on gloves and tying a handkerchief over his face, ran to liberate the poor little beast. I had started to do the same, but less resolutely, having no gloves; so I met him as he came back, and congratulated him, asking him his name. And in this way I first made the acquaintance of Frederic Leighton'.
The two artists became close friends. Leighton revisited Italy almost nearly year, and they would always have a few days' tour, looking at the Old Masters they both passionately admired. Costa also paid visits to Leighton in London, and was one of the very few intimates who were allowed to stay at 2 Holland Park Road (now Leighton House). Leighton did much to promote Costa's work in England, encouraging patrons to buy his pictures, buying them himself, seeing that they were exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery (which became something of a forum for the Etruscans), and helping to arrange one-man exhibitions at the Fine Art Society (1882) and Agnew's (1894). But Costa's success was never proportionate to his talents, and in the 1880s Leighton found himself supporting him financially, as he did so many artists who were less fortunate than himself. They met for the last time in the autumn of 1895. Leighton was a sick man by this time, but he managed to paint a still-life in the courtyard of the Palazzo Odeschalchi, where Costa had a studio, using it as a study for his last painting, Clytie. Characteristically, he was more concerned about Costa's welfare than his own. 'I had a very pleasant time with dear old Nino', he told his friend W.C. Cartwright, 'first in Rome and then in Siena and Florence. I wish he were stronger in health as well as more prosperous!' When he died three months later, he left Costa £3,000. Costa paid a touching tribute to Leighton in an account of their friendship published in the Cornhill in March 1897.
The present portrait, apparently Leighton's only likeness of Costa, was painted at Lerici, on the Ligurian coast, in the autumn of 1878, during one of the artists' annual tours. It was on this occassion that Leighton received the news that was to lead to his enormously successful presidency of the Royal Academy. 'I remember', Costa wrote, 'that when Sir Frances Grant died in 1878 Leighton was staying with me at Lerici, and while we were at dinner a telegram arrived with the news. I exclaimed: "The President is dead; long live the President!" alluding to him; and he answered, "Certainly I will not deny that I have every probability of being elected"'. Costa also described how Leighton painted the portrait as an 'experiment' in technical procedures which the two artists decided to adopt from then on. 'For this portrait he had four sittings - one for the drawing and the monochrome chiaroscuro, one for the local colours; then, having covered all with grey, he painted the lights with red, white and black, making use of the thoroughly dried grey beneath for his half-tints. With scumbles he completed the colour and the modelling'.
The picture was given by Leighton to Costa at the time it was painted and has remained in Costa's family ever since. Both the latest monographs on Leighton describe it as 'untraced', but it is discussed in all the older literature and illustrated by Rhys and Mrs Barrington. It was one of eight works that Leighton showed at the Academy in 1879, the first time that he appeared in the role of president. Its companions were Elijah in the Wilderness (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), a vast and formal exercise in academic values that had already been seen at the International Exhibition in Paris the previous year; a full-length likness of Countess Brownlow (National Trust, Belton House), an ambitious and not altogether successful interpretation of the English portrait tradition at its grandest; and a group of the pictures in which pretty female models masquerade under fancy titles that Leighton produced as pot-boilers in such numbers.
Everyone liked the Portrait of Professor Costa. This 'fine, masculine' likeness, wrote F.G. Stephens in the Athenaeum, 'is one of the choicest examples of brush power in the whole exhibition, bold and strong without bravura - a work of the same kind as Sir Frederic's portrait of Capt. Burton, and even finer'. Stephens was not alone in comparing the portrait to that of the explorer Richard Burton (National Portrait Gallery), exhibited at the Academy in 1876 and to this day regarded as one of Leighton's masterpieces as a portraitist. 'Remembering the President's powerful head of Captain Burton last year [sic] and his present portrait of Signor Costa', wrote the art critic of The Times, 'we cannot but wish that Sir Frederic would oftener condescend to the natural treatment of real personages, certain as he might be that his sentiment of style and his mastery of hand would tell even in these, and make him quite as useful and elevating a guide to the aspirations and labours of the school which he has done so much to improve as a strained idealism and overwrought smoothness'. The last phrase refers to Leighton's main exhibits in 1879, Elijah and Countess Brownlow, which the writer had already criticised for their striving after effect and relentless perfectionism.
These comments are still valid. The comparison with the portrait of Burton, also a half-lenght in profile to left with the head simply etched against a dark background, is repeated by Rhys and Staley in their early monographs and developed by Stephen Jones with an art-historical reference in the catalogue of the Leighton exhibition held at the Royal Academy last year. 'There is a remarkable freedom and strength of characterisation in both pictures', he writes, 'though Costa was, of course, a very different personality [from Burton]. Comparison of the two portraits suggests that Leighton was, consciously or unconsciously, recalling the purtiy of outline of Renaissance profile portrait medals in both works'.
Nor would many disagree that the Costa comes as a welcome relief after Leighton's more high-flown and rhetorical works. Even the Burton, a likeness of a well-known man of action destined for the National Portrait Gallery, has a public aspect. But the Costa makes no such concessions. The most intimate, sympathetic and understated of all Leighton's pictures, it is clearly painted con amore and seeks to please no-one but the artist and his sitter, old friends, fellow workers, and the most severe of critics.
The friendship between Leighton and Costa, which lasted for nearly half a century, was vital to the development of the Etruscan School. Costa was born in Rome in 1833, and although his involvement with the cause of Italian liberation led to periods of exile during his early career, he spent most of his life in his native city and derived his deepest inspiration from the Campagna. He met Leighton in the spring of 1853 when the young Englishman, who was three years his senior, was living in Rome and painting Cimabue's Madonna (Royal Collection, on loan to the National Gallery). Costa was later to describe their meeting as follows. 'In the month of May the usual artists' picnic took place at Cervara, a farm in the Roman Campagna. There used to be donkey races, and the winner of these was always the hero of the day. We had halted at Tor de' Schiavi, three miles out of Rome and half the distance to Cervara, for breakfast. Everyone had dismounted and tied his beast to a paling, and all were eating merrily. Suddenly one of the donkeys kicked over a beehive, and out flew the bees to revenge themselves on the donkeys. There were about a hundred of the poor beasts, but they all unloosed themselves and took to flight, kicking up their heels in the air - all but one little donkey who was unable to free himself, and so the whole swarm fell upon him. The picnic party also broke up and fled, with the exception of one young man with fair, curly hair, dressed in velvet, who, slipping on gloves and tying a handkerchief over his face, ran to liberate the poor little beast. I had started to do the same, but less resolutely, having no gloves; so I met him as he came back, and congratulated him, asking him his name. And in this way I first made the acquaintance of Frederic Leighton'.
The two artists became close friends. Leighton revisited Italy almost nearly year, and they would always have a few days' tour, looking at the Old Masters they both passionately admired. Costa also paid visits to Leighton in London, and was one of the very few intimates who were allowed to stay at 2 Holland Park Road (now Leighton House). Leighton did much to promote Costa's work in England, encouraging patrons to buy his pictures, buying them himself, seeing that they were exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery (which became something of a forum for the Etruscans), and helping to arrange one-man exhibitions at the Fine Art Society (1882) and Agnew's (1894). But Costa's success was never proportionate to his talents, and in the 1880s Leighton found himself supporting him financially, as he did so many artists who were less fortunate than himself. They met for the last time in the autumn of 1895. Leighton was a sick man by this time, but he managed to paint a still-life in the courtyard of the Palazzo Odeschalchi, where Costa had a studio, using it as a study for his last painting, Clytie. Characteristically, he was more concerned about Costa's welfare than his own. 'I had a very pleasant time with dear old Nino', he told his friend W.C. Cartwright, 'first in Rome and then in Siena and Florence. I wish he were stronger in health as well as more prosperous!' When he died three months later, he left Costa £3,000. Costa paid a touching tribute to Leighton in an account of their friendship published in the Cornhill in March 1897.
The present portrait, apparently Leighton's only likeness of Costa, was painted at Lerici, on the Ligurian coast, in the autumn of 1878, during one of the artists' annual tours. It was on this occassion that Leighton received the news that was to lead to his enormously successful presidency of the Royal Academy. 'I remember', Costa wrote, 'that when Sir Frances Grant died in 1878 Leighton was staying with me at Lerici, and while we were at dinner a telegram arrived with the news. I exclaimed: "The President is dead; long live the President!" alluding to him; and he answered, "Certainly I will not deny that I have every probability of being elected"'. Costa also described how Leighton painted the portrait as an 'experiment' in technical procedures which the two artists decided to adopt from then on. 'For this portrait he had four sittings - one for the drawing and the monochrome chiaroscuro, one for the local colours; then, having covered all with grey, he painted the lights with red, white and black, making use of the thoroughly dried grey beneath for his half-tints. With scumbles he completed the colour and the modelling'.
The picture was given by Leighton to Costa at the time it was painted and has remained in Costa's family ever since. Both the latest monographs on Leighton describe it as 'untraced', but it is discussed in all the older literature and illustrated by Rhys and Mrs Barrington. It was one of eight works that Leighton showed at the Academy in 1879, the first time that he appeared in the role of president. Its companions were Elijah in the Wilderness (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), a vast and formal exercise in academic values that had already been seen at the International Exhibition in Paris the previous year; a full-length likness of Countess Brownlow (National Trust, Belton House), an ambitious and not altogether successful interpretation of the English portrait tradition at its grandest; and a group of the pictures in which pretty female models masquerade under fancy titles that Leighton produced as pot-boilers in such numbers.
Everyone liked the Portrait of Professor Costa. This 'fine, masculine' likeness, wrote F.G. Stephens in the Athenaeum, 'is one of the choicest examples of brush power in the whole exhibition, bold and strong without bravura - a work of the same kind as Sir Frederic's portrait of Capt. Burton, and even finer'. Stephens was not alone in comparing the portrait to that of the explorer Richard Burton (National Portrait Gallery), exhibited at the Academy in 1876 and to this day regarded as one of Leighton's masterpieces as a portraitist. 'Remembering the President's powerful head of Captain Burton last year [sic] and his present portrait of Signor Costa', wrote the art critic of The Times, 'we cannot but wish that Sir Frederic would oftener condescend to the natural treatment of real personages, certain as he might be that his sentiment of style and his mastery of hand would tell even in these, and make him quite as useful and elevating a guide to the aspirations and labours of the school which he has done so much to improve as a strained idealism and overwrought smoothness'. The last phrase refers to Leighton's main exhibits in 1879, Elijah and Countess Brownlow, which the writer had already criticised for their striving after effect and relentless perfectionism.
These comments are still valid. The comparison with the portrait of Burton, also a half-lenght in profile to left with the head simply etched against a dark background, is repeated by Rhys and Staley in their early monographs and developed by Stephen Jones with an art-historical reference in the catalogue of the Leighton exhibition held at the Royal Academy last year. 'There is a remarkable freedom and strength of characterisation in both pictures', he writes, 'though Costa was, of course, a very different personality [from Burton]. Comparison of the two portraits suggests that Leighton was, consciously or unconsciously, recalling the purtiy of outline of Renaissance profile portrait medals in both works'.
Nor would many disagree that the Costa comes as a welcome relief after Leighton's more high-flown and rhetorical works. Even the Burton, a likeness of a well-known man of action destined for the National Portrait Gallery, has a public aspect. But the Costa makes no such concessions. The most intimate, sympathetic and understated of all Leighton's pictures, it is clearly painted con amore and seeks to please no-one but the artist and his sitter, old friends, fellow workers, and the most severe of critics.