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Title: The Whistler Book - A Monograph of the Life and Position in Art of James McNeill - Whistler, Together with a Careful Study of His More - Important Works
Author: Hartmann, Sadakichi
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Whistler Book - A Monograph of the Life and Position in Art of James McNeill - Whistler, Together with a Careful Study of His More - Important Works" ***
THE WHISTLER BOOK
WORKS OF SADAKICHI HARTMANN
Shakespeare in Art $2.00
Japanese Art 2.00
The Whistler Book 2.50
A History of American Art 2 vols. 4.00
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
53 BEACON ST., BOSTON, MASS.
[Illustration: _James McNeill Whistler From the painting by Boldini_]
The
Whistler Book
_A Monograph of the Life and Position in Art of James McNeill Whistler,
together with a Careful Study of his more Important Works_
BY
SADAKICHI HARTMANN
Author of "A History of American Art," "Japanese Art," etc.
With fifty-seven reproductions of Mr. Whistler's most important works
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
BOSTON * * * MDCCCCX
_Copyright_, _1910_,
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY.
(INCORPORATED)
Entered at Stationer's Hall, London
* * * * *
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, October, 1910
_Electrotyped and Printed by_
_THE COLONIAL PRESS_
_C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A._
TO
THOSE PAINTERS
UPON WHOSE SHOULDERS
THE BLACK MANTLE OF
WHISTLER'S MUSE
MAY FALL
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Introductory--White Chrysanthemums 1
II. Quartier Latin and Chelsea 6
III. The Butterfly 39
IV. The Art of Omission 58
V. On Light and Tone Problems 81
VI. Symphonies in Interior Decoration 100
VII. Visions and Identifications 121
VIII. In Quest of Line Expression 147
IX. Moss-like Gradations 168
X. Whistler's Iconoclasm 182
XI. As His Friends Knew Him 209
XII. The Story of the Beautiful 233
Bibliography 253
Principal Magazine Articles 259
Principal Paintings 262
Nocturnes 265
Index 267
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Portrait of James McNeill Whistler, by Boldini
(_See page 230_) _Frontispiece_
The Self Portrait of 1859 8
Pen and Ink Sketch, Made at West Point 11
Drawing Made for the United States Coast and
Geodetic Survey 12
Portrait Sketch of Fantin-Latour 14
"Hommage à Delacroix," by Fantin-Latour 17
The Woman in White 19
_Owned by John H. Whittemore._
Arrangement in Black: F. R. Leyland 22
_National Gallery, Washington._
Jo (Etching) 28
Wapping Wharf (Etching) 36
Harmony in Green and Rose: The Music Room 44
_Owned by Frank J. Hecker._
Lange Leizen of the Six Marks: Purple and Rose 49
_Owned by John G. Johnson._
The Princess of the Porcelain Land 50
_National Gallery, Washington._
Symphony in White, II: The Little White Girl 53
_Owned by Arthur Studd._
On the Balcony: Variations in Flesh-colour and Green 54
_National Gallery, Washington._
Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket 58
_Owned by Mrs. Samuel Untermyer._
Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge 67
_Tate Gallery, London._
Nocturne in Gray and Gold: Chelsea, Snow 70
Nocturne in Blue and Silver 74
Lady in Gray 83
_Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York._
"L'Andalusienne" 86
_Owned by John H. Whittemore._
Sir Henry Irving as Philip II 90
_Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York._
Arrangement in Black and White: Lady Meux (No. 1) 94
Arrangement in Black: Senor Pablo Sarasate 97
_Carnegie Art Institute, Pittsburg._
Shutter Decoration, Peacock Room 104
Arrangement in Gray and Green: Miss Alexander 109
Eagle Wharf (Etching) 118
At the Piano 122
Arrangement in Black and Brown: Miss Rose Corder 128
_Owned by Richard A. Canfield._
Arrangement in Black: Lady Archibald Campbell
(The Yellow Buskin) 137
_Wilstach Gallery, Philadelphia._
Arrangement in Black and Gold: Comte de Montesquiou 142
_Owned by Richard A. Canfield._
Arrangement in Black and Gray: Thomas Carlyle 144
_City Art Gallery, Glasgow._
Arrangement in Black and Gray: the Artist's Mother 146
_Luxembourg Gallery, Paris._
"La Vieille aux Loques" (Etching) 149
Street in Saverne (Etching) 150
Portrait of Drouet (Etching) 153
Black Lion Wharf (Etching) 154
Wapping, on the Thames (Etching) 160
Old Hungerford Bridge (Etching) 162
The Silent Canal (Etching) 164
View of Amsterdam (Etching) 166
Nocturne (Lithograph) 170
Little Rose of Lyme Regis 175
_Boston Museum of Fine Arts._
Study of Nude Figure (Chalk Drawing) 176
Pastel Study 178
_Owned by Th. R. Way._
Archway, Venice (Pastel) 182
_Owned by Howard Mansfield._
The Japanese Dress (pastel) 186
_Owned by Howard Mansfield._
Mr. Kennedy: Portrait Study 192
_Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York._
The Lime Burner (Etching) 198
Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé (Lithograph) 209
Arrangement in Flesh-colour and Black: Theodore Duret 214
The Unsafe Tenement (Etching) 220
In the Sunshine (Etching) 226
The Pool (Etching) 232
Arrangement in Black and White: "L'Américaine" 238
The Fiddler (Etching) 246
Nocturne in Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge 248
The Whistler Book
CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTORY
WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUMS[1]
[Footnote 1: Published originally in "Camera Work," 1903.]
The white chrysanthemum is my favourite flower. There are other flowers,
I grant, perhaps more beautiful, which I cannot help admiring, but the
white chrysanthemum somehow appeals to me more than any other flower.
Why? That is more than I can tell. The unconscious movements of our soul
activity cannot be turned into sodden prose. What would be the use of
having a favourite flower if one could give any reason for liking it? It
merely reveals that part of our personality, not to be logically
explained, which rises within us like the reminiscences of some former
soul existence. There are colours and certain sounds and odours which
effect me similarly. Whenever I gaze at a white chrysanthemum, my mind
becomes conscious of something which concerns my life alone; something
which I would like to express in my art, but which I shall never be able
to realize, at least not in the vague and, at the same time, convincing
manner the flower conveys it to me. I am also fond of displaying it
occasionally in my buttonhole; not for effect, however, but simply
because I want other people to know who I am; for those human beings who
are sensitive to the charms of the chrysanthemum, must hail from the
same country in which my soul abides, and I should like to meet them. I
should not have much to say to them--souls are not talkative--but we
should make curtsies, and hand white chrysanthemums to one another.
Whistler was busy all his life painting just such white chrysanthemums.
You smile? Well, I think I can persuade you to accept my point of view.
You are probably aware that Whistler was opposed to realism. The
realists endorse every faithful reproduction of facts. Also, Whistler
believed all objects beautiful, but only under certain conditions, at
certain favoured moments. It is at long intervals and on rare occasions
that nature and human life reveal their highest beauty. It was
Whistler's life-long endeavour to fix such supreme and happy moments,
the white chrysanthemums of his æsthetic creed, upon his canvases. Have
you never seen a country lass and thought she should be dressed up as a
page--her limbs have such a lyrical twist, as George Meredith would
say--she should stand on the steps of a throne, and the hall should be
illuminated with a thousand candles? Have you never met a New England
girl, and thought that she was ill-suited to her present surroundings,
that she would look well only standing on the porch of some old Colonial
mansion, in the evening, when odours of the pelargoniums and gladioli
begin to fill the garden? Have you not noticed that a bunch of cut
flowers which looks beautiful in one vase may become ugly in another?
And how often has it not happened to all of us that we were startled by
a sudden revelation of beauty in a person whom we have known for years
and who has looked rather commonplace to us? Suddenly, through some
expression of grief or joy, or merely through a passing light or shadow,
all the hidden beauty bursts to the surface and surprises us with its
fugitive charms. Whistler's "At the Piano," "The Yellow Buskin," "Old
Battersea Bridge," "Chelsea: Snow," are painted in that way. Could you
imagine his "Yellow Buskin Lady" in any other way than buttoning her
gloves, and glancing back, for a last time, over her shoulder, as she is
walking away from you into grey distances! That peculiar turn of her
body reveals the quintessence of her beauty. And that is the reason why
Whistler has painted her in that attitude. Thus every object has its
moment of supreme beauty. In life these moments are as fugitive as the
fractions of a second. Through art they can become a permanent and
lasting enjoyment.
The ancient Greek believed in an ideal standard of beauty to which the
whole universe had to conform. The modern artist, on the other hand,
sees beauty only in such moments as are entirely individual to the forms
and conditions of life he desires to portray. And as it pains him that
his conception of beauty will die with him, he becomes an artist through
the very endeavour of preserving at least a few fragments of it for his
fellow-men. With Whistler, this conception was largely a sense for tone,
a realization of some dream in black and silvery grey, in pale gold or
greenish blues. A vague flare of colour in some dark tonality was, to
him, the island in the desert which he had to seek, unable to rest until
he had found it. He saw life in visions, and his subjects were merely
means to express them. In his "Lady Archibald Campbell" he cared more
for black and grey gradations and the yellow note of the buskin than for
the fair sitter. The figure is, so to speak, invented in the character
of the colour arrangement. Whistler once said he would like best to
paint for an audience that could dispense with the representation of
objects and figures, with all pictorial actualities, and be satisfied
solely with the music of colour.
And why should we not profit by his lesson, and learn to look at
pictures as we look at the flush of the evening sky, at a passing cloud,
at the vision of a beautiful woman, or at a white chrysanthemum!
CHAPTER II
QUARTIER LATIN AND CHELSEA
During Jean François Raffaelli's sojourn in America I had occasion to
ask him the rather futile question of how long it took a painter in
Paris to become famous. Of course I referred to a man of superior
abilities, and meant by fame an international reputation. He answered
twenty years at least, and I replied that about twenty years more would
be needed in America.
Whistler had a long time to wait before fame knocked at his door,
although he had a local reputation in London and Paris at forty. He was
known as a man of curious ways, and an excellent etcher; but, with the
exception of two medals, he had received no honours whatever for his
paintings. His work still impressed by its novelty; but he had not yet
captivated the public. He still had to fight for recognition, and, as
long as a man has to do that, he is neither a popular nor a successful
man.
Toward the middle of the seventies recognition appeared to come
more readily. He seemed to know everybody of note, and everybody seemed
to know him. His writings and controversies attracted considerable
attention, his supremacy as an etcher had been admitted, and his
pictures became more widely known. He had gathered around him a number
of wealthy patrons, who were connoisseurs and keen appreciators of his
talents. He was so successful financially in the latter part of his life
that he had residences and studios in Paris as well as in London. At
Paris his headquarters were in the rue du Bac. In London he had various
quarters,--on Fulham Road, Tite Street, Langham Street, Alderney Street,
St. Regents Street, The Vale, etc. Going from one place to the other as
his moods dictated to him, with an occasional sketching trip to Venice,
to Holland or the northern parts of France, he lived the true life of
the artist, quarrelled with his friends, delighted his admirers with the
products of his fancies, and astounded the intelligent public on two
continents with the caprices of his temper. Strange to say, even at that
time, his best work had already left his easel. He was busy with minor,
but not less interesting, problems and devoted most of his time to
etchings, pastels and lithographs. But it was at this time that his
"Ten O'clock" and "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies" were published; and
when his "Carlyle" found its way to the Glasgow City Gallery, and "The
Portrait of the Artist's Mother" was purchased by the Luxembourg Gallery
at Paris.
Comparatively little is known of Whistler's private life. I wonder how
many of his admirers, excepting his personal friends, were acquainted
during his life-time with the fact that he was married, and could tell
whom he had married. He remained a bachelor until his fifty-fourth year,
when he married the widow of his friend E. W. Godwin, the architect of
the "White House." She was the daughter of John Bernie Philip, a
sculptor, and was herself an etcher. They were married on Aug. 11, 1888.
Eight years later his wife died, May 10th, 1896.
How this man of moods and capricious tastes got along in married life
the general public has never found out. His friends assure us that it
was a happy union and that he was deeply devoted to his wife. He has
painted her repeatedly, but the pictures do not betray any domestic
secrets to the public. Although Whistler was fond of notoriety, and
managed to keep himself continually before the public,--in the
fullest limelight, so to speak,--he never allowed personal news and the
details of his everyday life to claim the attention of the public. All
his innumerable feuds and press displays were related to his work,--to
his completed pictures and theories of art. He liked to play upon his
personality, but only as far as the artist was concerned. He was
peculiarly free from the taint of exploiting his own domestic affairs.
He hated biographies and all references to his family life. Even in his
feuds with his old friends, F. R. Leyland, and his brother-in-law,
Seymour Haden, when he brutally dragged apparent private matters into
the glare of publicity, the discriminating observer will notice that his
controversies, sarcasms and interpretations refer solely to "art
situations" and never descend to the low depths of personal abuse.
[Illustration: THE SELF PORTRAIT OF 1859.]
James McNeill Whistler was born on July 10th (some say July 11th), 1834,
at Lowell, Mass. One of his ancestors, a Dr. Whistler, is frequently
mentioned in Pepys' delicious diary. He was baptized James Abbott
Whistler in the Church of St. Anne, at Lowell. His father, Major George
Washington Whistler, was a civil engineer and, during the first eight
years of James' life, moved from Lowell to Stonington, Connecticut,
thence to Springfield, Massachusetts, and, finally, in 1842, went to
Russia to superintend the construction of the railroad from St.
Petersburg to Moscow. The following year the family sailed from Boston
to make their home in St. Petersburg.
This was the first impression the boy Whistler received from the outside
world, and no doubt the trip across the Atlantic and the sojourn in a
foreign country made a lasting impression upon him. Russia, with its
quaint old civilization and touches of barbaric splendour, was the
country to excite the imagination of any boy, and the change from a New
England village life to the metropolitan turmoil of St. Petersburg would
have left imperishable traces in any receptive mind. The father was paid
lavishly and the boy was brought up in luxury.
The first report of any art talent in the boy can be found in the
reference, mentioned by several biographers, to his taking lessons at
the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg. It had probably no
particular bearing on his career, since art teaching in Russia was
traditional, and probably consisted of nothing but drawing from wooden
models and plaster casts. It informs us, however, of the fact that he
became familiar with the rudiments of drawing at an early age. Of by
far greater importance to his development were his visits to the
Hermitage. There he saw for the first time Velasquez and he learnt to
differentiate between painters who could paint and such who could only
tell a story in line and colour.
[Illustration: PEN AND INK SKETCH, MADE AT WEST POINT.]
On the death of the father, April 7th, 1849, the family returned to the
United States and settled in Stonington, Conn., and young Whistler
attended school at Pomfret, Conn. In 1851, seventeen years old, he
entered the United States Military Academy at West Point and was
enrolled as James McNeill Whistler, taking his mother's maiden name as a
middle name. Like Poe, he does not seem to have been over-fond of a
routine military career. No doubt something of the artist's temperament
had awakened in him, and, like all young talents, he objected to
regulated study, and tried to satisfy the vague aspirations of his
unsettled consciousness with work that was more congenial to him.
He left West Point in July, 1854. The technical discharge was
"deficiency in chemistry," but it was probably general unfitness for a
career of discipline and exactness. Through some influence he received
an appointment in the drawing division of the United States Coast and
Geodetic Survey at Washington, D. C., at the salary of $1.50 a day, but
he resigned two months later. The government records show that he worked
only six and a half days in January and five and three-quarter days in
February. He apparently had no taste for map designing and bird's-eye
views. It is said he paid more attention to the deliberate drawing of
little trees and detail than to the typographic facts.
[Illustration: DRAWING MADE FOR THE UNITED STATES COAST AND GEODETIC
SURVEY.]
His military career had come to an end; he had to do something else, and
he felt that he had to become an artist at any price. Money was not over
abundant in the Whistler family, but there was sufficient to allow him a
few years' leisure to study art wherever he chose, and so he went to
Paris, and joined the youthful band of artists, who fought for modernism
and a new technique, and the glory of the _métier_, with an enthusiasm,
a bravery and devotion that has rarely been encountered. There he lived
the regular student life for four years. He entered the atelier of
Charles Gleyre, but only stayed for a short while. He preferred to look
about for himself. At one time he and young Tissot made a copy of
Ingres' "Angelique."
Whistler arrived in France shortly after the _coup d'état_. Paris was
not then what she is to-day. None of the chain of boulevards around
the centre of the town, not even the boulevard of St. Michael, which
became the great thoroughfare for artists, were in existence in their
present condition. But Whistler had come at the time when Paris was
being reconstructed into one of the most beautiful cities of the world,
and, when the Imperial régime unfolded its full splendour. Paris became
intoxicated with its own beauty, and the social life blossomed forth in
all its elegance and frivolity.
During 1857-58 Whistler had a studio in the rue Compagne Première,
boarding in Madame Lalouette's pension in the rue Dauphine. For some
time he also shared quarters with Fantin-Latour, who, with Legros, was
his most intimate friend during his student years. They saw each other
daily, and it was on one of these occasions that he made the humourous
sketch of Latour, depicting him on a cold winter morning seated in bed,
drawing, all dressed, with a top hat on his head.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT SKETCH OF FANTIN-LATOUR.]
They were the days of Henri Murger's "La Vie Bohême," of _bon
camaraderie_, eccentric days when every man sought to make his mark by
peculiarities of dress, soft felt Rubens' hats, velvet cloaks with the
ends thrown over the shoulders, and other exotic garments. In one
exhibition, in sheer audacity of youth, Whistler appeared dressed in a
Japanese kimono. Think of a man in a kimono in 1855! Whistler at that
time was a true Bohemian. His little studio was his workshop, his
temple, his parlour, his playhouse and his dormitory. He frequented the
queer, interesting quarters that students seek,--quaint old _cafés_
where food was good as well as cheap, and character abundant.
What is there so fascinating about the Bohemian's life? The Philistine,
I fear, generally considers him an eccentric, indolent man, with no
thought for the morrow, no notion of economy, no home save the place
which affords him temporary shelter. He never stops to think that the
Bohemians are the men who make our songs, who paint our pictures, chisel
marvellous creations out of wood and stone, compose our sweetest poems
and write our newspapers. It is a grievous mistake to assume that they
are merely a lot of idle, luckless fellows. They are men with brains of
good quality, and hearts in the right place. All classes and trades of
men have burdened the world with their wants and woes. Not so the
Bohemian. He, too, has his heartaches and bitter disappointments, but
who ever hears of them? The humourous tale over which you laugh so
heartily, recounting the adventures of a poet in search of a
publisher, had the author's personal experience for a basis. He could
not sell his poems, but needed bread; so, out of his misfortune, he had
good cheer. The ordinary man, rebuffed by fortune, would sit down and
mourn himself into illness. The Bohemian utilizes these very reverses,
and both he and the world are the merrier eventually for them. He lives
in a world distinct from that of common men. Talent, love of
comradeship, a sunny disposition--these are the magnets that will draw
one toward it. It has its obligations, its trials, its code of honour,
rigid as the most unbending militarism; but there is charm of
companionship and an absence of jealousies and pettiness within it that
makes you powerless to rid yourself of its enchantments. The Bohemian's
life is apart from yours, but why chide him for it? He builds on the
ruins of no other man's life, he feeds on no man's scandals, he exults
in no man's misfortunes, but goes on his way, imbibing the sweetness of
life from every flower, and, in his own way, scattering the perfume
broadcast. He does half our thinking and originates two-third of all the
movements for the social reclamation of the world. He is no hypocrite
before the mighty, nor heartless in the face of the unfortunate. He
covets no man's goods, but lives his own quiet, interesting, exquisite
life. He asks only a share of the sunlight of life. In du Maurier's
"Trilby" we find a sympathetic description of the art life of that
period, but also a rather despicable type of a man, "Joe Sibley," by
name, who always pretends but never does a thing and who was meant for a
ludicrous satire on young Whistler (a character which was eliminated on
Whistler's request from the second edition).
It is easy to draw a mental picture of him as he looked at that time. I
see him studying in the Louvre, in a loose black blouse with low turned
down collar and a soft black hat on his long, slightly curled hair, lost
in wonder before a painting by Leonardo; or strolling along the
Boulevards, cane in hand, ogling the beautiful women, and dreaming of
designing some dress for the Empress Eugenie, passing by in an open
phaeton. And how enthusiastic he got, no doubt, over some Japanese print
or Chinese vase in some curio shop.
A certain trigness, smartness, acquired very likely at West Point where
the cadets change their white duck trousers several times a day, induced
him, even at this time, to take special care over the fit of his coat.
[Illustration: "HOMMAGE À DELACROIX," BY FANTIN-LATOUR.]
In 1859 he went with several fellow students, Fantin-Latour, Legros, and
Ribot, to Bonvin's studio to work from the model, under the
direction of Courbet. At that time he was interested in types. He
painted a "Fumette," a little grisette of the Quartier Latin, and the
"Mother Gerard," who in her younger days had been a maker of pretty
verses, but, reduced in circumstances, had become a flower vender at the
Bal Bullier. Among his friends and associates we find the names of
Legros, Cordier, Duranty, the etcher Bracquemond, inventor of the "pen
and ink" process, de Balleroy, Champfleury, Manet and Baudelaire. They
were all young men of talent, _plein d'avenir_. Fantin-Latour made a
group-portrait of them, including Whistler and himself, seated and
standing, assembled about a portrait of Delacroix. The canvas was
exhibited at the Salon of 1864 as an "_Hommage à Delacroix_."
Whistler's step-sister had married Seymour Haden, the etcher, and
Whistler, paying them a visit in 1859, stayed in London. The four years
in Paris had matured him, and he knew how to accomplish something beyond
the routine studio work. In 1862 he exhibited for the Royal Academy. It
was his "At the Piano," which, if not a masterpiece, is already a true
and individual work of art.
Courbet still had a strong hold on him. He spent two summers with him in
Trouville and may have derived his first lessons as a _mystificateur_,
which part he played so successfully during life, from the French
painter, for Courbet was a _poseur_ throughout, who assumed a particular
kind of dress, and who was not satisfied merely with painting pictures
that offended the Academy and conventional taste, but made a special
effort and took special pleasure in shocking the _bourgeoisie_.
Whistler also made his first trip to Holland during these years, and
became enchanted with Rembrandt and Vermeer, but took a great dislike to
Van der Helst. In 1859-60 youthful efforts of his had been refused at
the Paris Salon; the same happened again in 1863, but he was one of the
men who scored a success at the _Salon des Refusées_. A number of
talented painters, and among them men of genius like Manet, Cazin,
Degas, Harpignies, Vollon, Pissaro, Jongkind and Bracquemond, tired of
the cliquism and jury of the regular Salon,--a story which repeats
itself everywhere,--decided to arrange their own exhibition. Napoleon
III, in his nonchalant way a true patron of art, issued an order to
arrange the exhibition of "revolt" in the same building as the official
exhibition. The exhibition was a success, and even the Empress Eugenie
and the court came to see it. This is really of no significance, as
nobody bought anything; but it sounds well, and biographers should never
neglect to mention such incidents.
[Illustration: _Owned by John H. Whittemore_
THE WOMAN IN WHITE.]
One thing is certain: Whistler's picture, "The White Girl," even with
Manet's "Dejeuner sur l'Herbe" in the same room, attracted an unusual
share of attention. Zola, in "L'[OE]uvre," says that the crowd laughed
in front of "La Dame en Blanc." Desnoyers thought it "the most
remarkable picture, at once simple and fantastic with a beauty so
peculiar that the public did not know whether to think it beautiful or
ugly." Paul Mantz wrote in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ that it was the
most important picture in the exhibition and called the picture a
"Symphonie du Blanc" some years before Whistler adopted that title.
The exhibition of this picture represents, in a way, the turning point
in Whistler's career. It was a steady ascent ever after. Before this he
was unknown, and exposed to the manifold privations and vicissitudes of
an artist's career. Many a day he had gone hungry and frequently could
not paint for lack of material. Now things began to run a trifle
smoother, although sales were still rare and money scarce. His lodgings
in 7 Linsey Row (now 101 Cheyne Walk) were extremely simple and his
studio consisted of a second-story back room.
During the next three years he worked hard, and finished a number of
pictures that since then have made history. They are all in a lighter
key and of brilliant colouring. The problem he seemed to be most
interested in was to reproduce in relief the charm of diversified colour
patches as seen in Japanese prints.
He continued to see things in this way until he made a trip to South
America in 1866. Feeling, perhaps, slightly discouraged, or in need of
some recreation, he and his brother set out for Chili, under the
pretence of joining the insurgents à la Poe and Byron, although I hardly
believe that a man of thirty-two really capable of such a wild goose
chase. At all events, when they reached Valparaiso the rebellion had
ceased and instead of handling a musket "our Jimmie" opened his paint
box instead.
The result was startling. Impressed by the new sights of southern
scenery, and in particular of the translucency and subdued brilliancy of
the sky at night, he painted one of his finest nocturnes, the
"Valparaiso Harbour," now at the National Gallery of Art. The darkness
of night to a large extent bars colour, and furnishes a kind of tonal
veil over all objects; but in southern countries the nights are clearer
and brighter and, although forms and colours are indistinct, they remain
more plainly discernible than in the blackness of our Northern nights.
After his return to London he worked hard at solving the problem of
creating tone which would suggest atmosphere with as little subject
matter as possible. Four years passed before he held the first
exhibition of a "Variation" and "Harmony." He now began to feel his own
strength. He felt that he had done something new and had the courage to
coin his own titles. The method of classifying his pictures as Harmonies
and Symphonies, Arrangements, Nocturnes, Notes, and Caprices, was
entirely his own invention and in his earlier career did much to attract
attention to his work. One year later, in 1872, exhibiting several
symphonies, he included for the first time an impression of night under
the title of "Nocturne." The years 1870-77 were probably the busiest and
the most important ones of his whole career. They produced not only the
"Nocturne," but also the "Peacock Room" and the painting which is
generally conceded to be his masterpiece, the "Portrait of the Artist's
Mother."
Success and fame at last knocked at his door. Mr. F. R. Leyland, the
rich ship-owner of Liverpool, proved a generous patron. Between 1872 and
1874 he ordered portraits of himself, Mrs. Leyland and the four
children. Whistler made long visits at Speke Hall, Leyland's home near
Liverpool. His paintings began to sell more readily than heretofore and
several orders for interior decoration had come in, among them the
decoration of the music room of the famous violinist Sarasate's home in
Paris. He was willing to work at anything as long as he could carry out
his own ideas. He invented schemes for interior decoration and also once
tried himself as an illustrator, when he made exquisite drawings of the
vases, plates, cups of blue and white Nankin for the catalogue of Sir H.
Thompson's collection of porcelain. (Ellis and Elvey, London, 1878.)
[Illustration: _National Gallery, Washington_
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK: F. R. LEYLAND.]
After leaving 7 Linsey Row, during the years 1866-1878, Whistler lived
in several other houses situated in the Chelsea district, for like so
many of us that have got used to a certain part of the city, he could
never get away from it. The most pretentious of these abodes was the
"White House" which became one of the centres of attraction in the art
life of London.
There he gave his famous Sunday morning breakfasts, which Mr. Harper
Pennington describes so amusingly: "They were always late in being
served, outrageously delayed without apparent cause. It was no uncommon
thing for us to wait an hour, or even two, for the eggs, fish, cutlets,
and a sweet dish of which the meal consisted. A bottle of very ordinary
white wine was our only drink." The whole thing, in fact, was an
"arrangement"--just a colour scheme in yellow to match his "blue and
white" porcelain and his "yellow and blue" dining room. The room itself
was unique in its effective and independent style of decoration. It was
entirely carried out after his own designs, even to the painting of the
exterior. And the environment, the Thames, the old church of Chelsea
with its square tower, the peculiar shaped bridge of Battersea, the
lights of Cremorne in the distance, all furnished interesting pictorial
topics and played an important part in the painter's _mise en scène_.
His neighbours added to the lustre of this period. In the same district
at that time lived Rossetti, Swinburne, George Meredith and Carlyle, and
Whistler was on friendly footing with all of them.
Exhibitions of his work were now a regular occurrence. In 1874 he held
his first "one man's show" of thirteen paintings and fifty prints at
number 48 Pall Mall, London. In 1877 he arranged an exhibition in the
Grosvenor Gallery. Among the exhibits were "The Falling Rocket"
(Nocturne in black and gold) which brought about the Ruskin attacks, and
consequently the famous libel suit, Whistler v. Ruskin. One can hardly
imagine, to-day, why the picture should have created so much commotion;
but it was a decided innovation at that time, an event in a way ushering
in a new era of art. Now this particular style of representation has any
number of disciples, and we have accepted it as one of the principal
assertions of modern art.
Strange, that history always repeats itself. We should know by this time
that our tastes and the tastes of time are not absolute, and that our
sense of beauty is likely to be affected by circumstances to an extent
which we cannot realize. There was a time, and not so long ago, when
Gothic buildings were regarded by the man of culture much as dandelions
are regarded by the gardener. For years the very name Nocturne was a
reproach. It was supposed to be the product of idiosyncrasy and
nonchalant audacity, the work of a decadent period in art, which,
because it was decadent, could not be good, for everything that looked
like a Whistler was regarded as a note of decadence. It was an argument
in a circle, no doubt; but such arguments seem most convincing when once
a prejudice exists in the art world. Only gradually did people begin to
see more than cleverness in his products.
Oscar Wilde was a constant friend of Whistler's at this time. The
friendship was still young and, for a while, the two were inseparable.
The author of "Dorian Gray" spent hours in Whistler's studio, came
repeatedly to the Sunday breakfasts, and presided at Whistler's private
views. Whistler went out and about with him everywhere. But Whistler
gradually came to feel that Wilde, in spite of his brilliancy and wit,
lacked fundamental purpose. Wilde talked constantly about art, but, in
the end, Whistler concluded that Wilde, like most modern authors, knew
very little about it.
The days of the Renaissance, of versatility, of talent and appreciation
seem to have passed. Whistler easily tired of his friends and, although
this friendship had lasted for years, he finally dropped Wilde without
much ado. A critic of "The London Times" has summed up the difference
between the two in the following words:
"With a mind not a jot less keen than Whistler's, Oscar Wilde had none
of the convictions, the high faith for which Whistler found it worth
while to defy the crowd. Wilde had posed to attract the crowd. And the
difference was this, that, while Whistler was a prophet who liked to
play Pierrot, Wilde grew into Pierrot who liked to play the prophet."
Like most artists who have suddenly sprung into fame, Whistler had lived
beyond his means. He was fond of comfort and elegance, and allowed
himself the fulfilment of any whim as long as it granted him genuine
pleasure, as "art and joy should go together."
The auction sale of the contents of his home in 1879, and the sale of
his paintings at Sotheby's in February, 1880, were perhaps not entirely
caused by financial difficulties. They may have been prompted in an
equal degree by a desire to make a change and break the routine of the
studio life. He told, however, to his friends in his inimitable way how
the sheriff's officer called upon him with a writ, and the last bottle
of champagne was brought out of the cellar for that worthy's
delectation. In Venice, where he went in September, 1879, he seems to
have been in straitened circumstances for quite a while. He lived in
modest quarters and dined in cheap, dingy places. These were his
"polenta and macaroni days," and, in a way, a repetition of his Paris
student's life, only much harder to bear as he was older (forty-five)
and used to luxury.
No matter what his reason may have been for breaking up his bachelor
establishment it was the second turning point in his career.
Painting did not play quite as important a part in Whistler's life after
his Venetian sojourn. He still painted a number of portraits, among them
the "Sarasate" and "Comte Montesquiou," but he was more active as an
etcher, lithographer, pamphleteer, lecturer and teacher. Orders were
scarce at all times. The only regular portrait orders he had in the
first half of the eighties were those of Lady Archibald Campbell, wife
of the Duke of Argyll; and of Lady Meux, who liked her first portrait,
in a black evening gown with a white opera cloak against a black
background, so well that she had herself painted three times in
succession. Whistler's sense of beauty was a strong feature in his work.
Maybe it was not the sense of beauty an Englishman would like. He looked
for a pictorial aspect, rather than the "lady" in his sitter; and in
England the "lady" is the thing to secure in a portrait of a woman.
He returned to London in 1880, but stayed only a short while. During
the next ten years he had no permanent home; like a nomad he flitted
from city to city, from studio to studio through England, France and
Belgium. Finally he found some sort of a resting place in the rue du Bac
110, for many years his Paris home. It was a two-story house with a
garden enclosed by a wall, as secluded a spot as one could find in the
gay and noisy city. He was always fond of gardens of flowers. "In the
roses of his garden he buried his sorrows," one of his most talented
pupils, E. H. Wuerpel, tells us, in his little brochure "My Friend
Whistler."
In the meanwhile his London Exhibitions became more and more numerous.
During the next fifteen years the following eight exhibitions are on
record.
1881--Jan.--An exhibition of fifty-three pastels at the Fine Art Society
in Bond St., London.
1883--Feb.--Fifty-one etchings and dry points exhibited in Bond St.
Gallery, London.
1884--May--Harmonies--Notes--Nocturnes--shown at the Dowdswell Gallery,
London. At the same time an exhibition took place in Paris and Dublin.
They were arranged according to his own idea of exhibiting.
[Illustration: JO (ETCHING).]
1884--Nov.--Twenty-five works sent to the exhibition of the Dublin
Sketching Club.
1886--May--A second series of Notes--Harmonies--Nocturnes shown at the
Dowdswell Gallery.
1889--The most representative exhibition of his works, since that of
1874, at the College for Working Women, Queen Sq., London.
1892--Mar.--An exhibition of forty-four nocturnes, marines and chevalet
pieces for which Whistler prepared the catalogue. At the Goupil
Galleries, Bond Street, London.
1895--Dec.--Exhibitions of seventy lithographs, London.
In the years following his death, as is usually the case, 1904-05,
occurred the most important assemblage of his works--the memorial
exhibition of Glasgow, Boston, Paris and London.
Of special interest are Whistler's first American exhibits. At the first
exhibition of the Society of American Artists at the Kurtz Gallery, New
York, 1878, he was represented by a "Coast of Brittany." In the autumn
of 1881 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts he exhibited the
portrait of his mother, which was also seen the following spring at the
Society of American Artists in New York. Sheridan Ford once asked him
why he did not exhibit more frequently in America. Whistler answered: "I
don't know, they will not allow me to take them across the ocean. You
see, I don't own my pictures. I sold most of them long ago to people who
think more of them than they do of me. I wrote and asked for two or
three of them to take over, and the answers I received were to the
effect that I could have them to exhibit here, but not to exhibit in
America. Why? Because the owners are afraid of the ocean. I said I would
insure the pictures, at which of course they laughed. I may go and I may
not. A good many people in America don't like me, and I am not there to
fight them as I can fight my enemies here. I don't mind having enemies
where I can get at them. I like the pleasure of whipping them; but these
fellows in America have it all their own way. There is no record, and I
am at a constant disadvantage."
In 1884 he was elected President of the Royal Society of British
Artists, but soon quarrelled with the old-fashioned element among its
members, and the whole affair degenerated into one of those disputes
upon which such copious light has been shed in "The Gentle Art of Making
Enemies."
The enforcement of the Whistlerian policy of elimination and
arrangement brought disaster upon the Society. The annual sales fell
from £8,000 in 1885 to under 1,000 in 1888. It was time for the ideal
exhibitor and manager of _mise en scènes_ to retire. And so he did, if
not accompanied by a cavalcade of buglers blowing a blast with, at
least, as much noise and controversy as he could conjure up in these
art-forsaken and colourless days.
It is not until towards the close of his life, in 1898, that we find him
again at the head of an artistic corporation, when the International
Society was proud to acknowledge his leadership. In 1880 Whistler made
his début in Germany at the International Art Exhibition of Munich. The
result was not a flattering one. The jury officiating on that occasion
established a peculiar claim to the affectionate recollection of
posterity by awarding a Second Class medal to the "Portrait of the
Artist's Mother," now in the Luxembourg. Of course a jury has perfect
rights to make awards as it pleases as long as the verdict is a
competent and impartial one, but Whistler by this time was too
well-known, and one can hardly blame him that he wrote the following
sarcastic but unusually dignified letter to the Secretary of the Central
Committee.
"SIR: I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, officially
informing me that the committee awards me a second class gold
medal. Pray convey my sentiments of tempered and respectable joy to
the gentlemen of the committee, and my complete appreciation of the
second-hand compliment paid me.
"And I have, Sir,
"The honour to be
"Your most humble obedient servant,
"J. MCNEILL WHISTLER."
After 1895 Whistler ceased to hold exhibitions. The death of his wife
brought about a long silence, and little was heard of Whistler. He had
laid aside his jester's bells and cap and ceased pamphleteering and
posing in public. He had become a kind of recognized institution in the
art world, occupying a place apart from the masses of his
contemporaries. Men of very dissimilar æsthetic convictions agreed in
regarding him as a painter of exceptional ability, and he had a solid
and appreciative following.
We in America wondered what had become of him. Occasionally a newspaper
notice informed us that he had taken up teaching, or false reports
crossed the ocean that he had become a symbolist. He himself was
inactive, as far as the public was concerned.
I suppose he was at last tired of notoriety and the cares of public
life. He had played his part and had played it well. Intimate friends
tell us that he worked as hard as ever. He still had many problems to
solve, if for nobody else but himself, and was satisfied that he could
afford to devote his time to them. Financially he was fairly well
situated; but he spent money extravagantly, and the two residences and
various studios he kept up in Paris and London proved at all times a
heavy drain on his income, which was derived entirely from his art
products. He left about ten thousand pounds, a rather small sum,
considering the prices he received for some of his paintings.
His school in the Passage Stanislaw, opposite Carolus Duran's home, was
neither a necessity nor a particular pleasure to him. He opened it for
the sole benefit of one of his favourite models, Mme. Carmen Rossi, who,
as a child, had posed for the painter. She received the entire profits
and it is said that during the three years that the school existed she
made enough to retire in comfort. The school was opened in the autumn of
1898 and closed in 1901. He was too impatient to be a good teacher; he
simply came there and painted and the pupils saw him paint and learned
what they could, just as did the apprentices of the Old Masters. He
taught solely the science of painting, neither colour nor composition.
He had an abhorrence of talking art, and one of the anecdotes he liked
to relate was that he had known Rossetti for years and "had talked art
many, many times but _painting_ only once."
He even refused to discuss technicalities. There was no talk of
pigments, mediums, varnish or methods of applying them. He worked with
his pupils, that was all. Like the apprentices of old they had to pick
up their knowledge themselves, and if he found something that he liked
his usual praise consisted of "Go right on," or "_Continuez,
continuez_." On the wall was tacked his second series of propositions
which endorsed his constant advice to pupils: "If you possess superior
faculties, so much the better, _allons_, develop them; but should you
lack them, so much the worse, for despite all efforts you will never
produce anything of interest." Good common sense, but, after all, a
slight return for the tuition fee. It should have induced most pupils to
pack up their paint boxes and return home.
As Leon Dabo, in his lecture on "Whistler's Technique" at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, has so well observed: "Nothing is more
absurd than the notion, so widely promulgated by elderly maiden ladies
who misspend their energies writing about paintings and painters from
Cimabue to Whistler, that a work of art is produced as the logical
result of an apprenticeship served in an art school. There probably is
much juxtaposition of this belief--we all know the painters whose only
reason for lowering intensely blue sky is because it is _too blue_; the
painters who labour, heaping up chunks of paint until it looks 'right;'
but with Whistler a canvas advanced in an entirely different manner. He
knew scientifically that he could use only so much of a given tone if he
wished to produce _colour_, and he knew what other tone to place in
juxtaposition, what parts of the canvas must hold the spectator's eye,
in varying degrees of interest, in order to obtain the effect he desired
to give and its use in the butterfly, the exact spot of a sail on the
ocean, a light on the horizon, all these, to many insignificant objects
and spots, nevertheless do their work, either to re-vivify an otherwise
large surface or to hold the eye momentarily interested, until the
ambience was obtained. And this science--the effect of line and colour
on the eye,--is practically unknown to painters, is untaught in our art
schools. This mastery over his means and material Whistler possessed in
a higher degree than any other modern painter."
In 1902 he once more took a house in London and selected Cheyne Walk, an
old mansion covered with ivy, near the Thames in the Chelsea district,
where he had spent so many years during the beginning of his career.
Friends could not imagine why he came back from Paris to London, as he
disliked the place, its climate and its art. They simply forgot that he
was a lover of atmospheric effects, and that London fogs and the Thames
were, after all, nearest to his heart. In the summer of 1902 he
contemplated a short trip to Holland in the company of Mr. Ch. W. Freer,
but was taken sick in Flushing. After consulting some doctors in The
Hague, he recovered sufficiently to return to London and set to work,
but only one year in the old haunts was granted him.
He had just entered upon his seventieth year when he died suddenly on
July 17, 1903. He suffered from some internal complaint, the exact
nature of which is unknown. He had felt ill for several days, but on the
seventeenth his condition had so improved that he ordered a cab for a
drive. On leaving the house he was seized with a fit, but recovered; a
short while later he had another spasm, which killed him. He was
interred (on the 22nd) in the family burial plot in the churchyard of
the old church at Chelsea (which his mother had regularly attended),
near the grave of Hogarth. The coffin, covered with purple pall, was
carried to the church followed by the honorary pall-bearers and
relatives on foot. The pall-bearers were: Sir James Guthrie (president
of the Royal Scottish Academy); Charles W. Freer, George W. Vanderbilt,
Edwin A. Abbey, John Lavery (of the R. S. Academy) and the art critic,
Theodore Duret; all personal friends of Whistler's.
[Illustration: WAPPING WHARF (ETCHING).]
The relatives present included the Misses Philip and F. L. Philip, Mr.
and Mrs. Cecil Lawson, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Whibley and Edwin W. Godwin.
Although no announcement of the funeral was made in London papers many
distinguished friends and acquaintances crowded the church. Beautiful
wreaths were sent by Vanderbilt, Lawrence, Alma Tadema and various
federations and societies. Those present were: George W. Vanderbilt, Mr.
Joseph Pennell, Rev. H. C. Leserve of Boston, Johnson Sturges, R. F.
Knoedler and I. M. B. MacNary of New York City; M. Dumont of the
International Society of Painters; Marcus Bourne Huish, editor of the
"Art Journal;" Thomas Armstrong; and Alfred East (A. R. A.).
When a reporter called at the house July 18th he was informed that the
artist had left stringent instructions that no information whatever
regarding his illness or death should be given either to his friends or
the newspapers. He remained true to his eccentricities, or rather to his
peculiar personality. Even in his exit from this life to the thrones of
glory beyond, he endeavoured to make it as odd and picturesque as
possible. He played his part to the last. And it was one of the noblest
parts ever played by man.
CHAPTER III
THE BUTTERFLY
The famous butterfly monogram, originally a decorative combination of
the letters "J. M. W.," which evolved into a decorative design of a
butterfly, enclosed in a circle, as it appeared in his "Sarasate" and
"Carlyle," and, frequently, a mere stencil-like silhouette as seen in
his correspondence, began to appear in Whistler's pictures in the late
sixties. The "Symphony in Gray and Green--The Ocean" (painted in 1866)
was probably the first important canvas in which it was introduced. In
his earlier pictures he had made use of an ordinary written signature as
most painters use. It is strange that it took an artist of Whistler's
sensitiveness so long to realize the incongruities of these crude
calligraphic displays. They disfigure many a good picture and smack of
the materialism of this age. Every picture should have a signature, if
for no other reason than to prove the authenticity at some future time.
But surely it can be treated with more discretion than it is to-day.
The Old Masters frequently handled it with ingenuity and some degree of
modesty. It was the Japanese artist who gave it a decorative
significance. The red cartouches of Hiroshige are known to every print
collector. He considered it a part of the picture, a colour note or
vehicle of balance in an empty space, as important a detail of
composition as any other.
Whistler treated his monogram in the same conscientious and picturesque
fashion. He used it with preference in his symphonies, nocturnes and
large portraits, but, at times, also in white, as on a rail post in the
lower right corner of his "Bognor." He handled it with more than
ordinary reverence, as everything that pertained to the exploiting of
his own personality. He often introduced it at the first painting to
judge the effect, and, of course, he wiped or scraped it out over and
over again until he procured the desired effect. He continually made
slight changes in the design, he toyed with it as with some curio,
elaborated it in many ways, and, eventually, even bestowed a sting upon
the insect, as it appears in his "Gentle Art of Making Enemies."
The butterfly teaches a lesson. It proves that an artist can be
self-assertive, arrogant and yet refined. Whistler thus introduced a
method of picture signing that should be generally adopted. Every artist
should have his own monogram, and use it with discretion.
But it has even a deeper significance in Whistler's life. It is in a way
a symbol of his evolution as a painter. As we study his work we find
that the butterfly monogram does not appear before Whistler freed
himself from foreign influences, and invented an individual and
independent style of his own. The butterfly may well stand for the full
awakening and realization of his own faculties. Did he not say himself:
"In the pale citron wing of the butterfly, with its dainty spots of
orange, he saw the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender
saffron pillars, and was taught how the delicate drawing high upon the
walls should be traced in slender tones of orpiment and repeated by the
base in notes of graver hue."
Like all painters Whistler had to learn his trade, and then find his
peculiar way of expression. It took him well nigh a quarter of a
century. He entered the studio of Gleyre in the summer of 1855 as a
young man of twenty-one, and was nearly forty-seven when he had finished
the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" and had painted a few nocturnes.
All his earlier pictures remind us of some other master. "The Music
Room" recalls Stevens, "The Blue Wave: Biarritz" the forceful style of
Courbet, and "The White Symphony" even the light manner of Alma Tadema.
Charles Gleyre was an excellent draughtsman of the Ingres school, but
all he could teach his pupils was to draw. That he had once been capable
of some finer appreciation of colour and atmosphere, students of art may
notice in his "Evening," painted in 1843, but he became, like so many
other painters of this period, the victim of the academic style. Outline
drawing reigned supreme, there was room for nothing else, and it was
surely not a congenial environment for young Whistler, who, even at that
time, differed with the prevalent ideas of art. Drawing, however, is one
of the most important factors of the technique of painting. Velasquez
even thought it was the most important one, and Whistler, with the
peculiar tendency of his art, was, no doubt, fortunate that he reached
Paris while draughtsmanship was still honoured and not neglected, as in
the later days of the impressionists. A student in Paris either becomes
an enthusiastic worker from the nude, making one study after the other,
like all those Julian and Colarossi pupils--or he gets so imbued with
the art atmosphere that he sets about on conquests of his own, and the
city of Seine, with its museums, monuments, artists, population,
pleasures and sights is just the right place for "free lance" education.
Whistler chose the latter way.
The canvases of this period show strong influences of Stevens and
Courbet. He must have been enamoured with the style of that great
painter of woman, as he was undoubtedly with the rude sincerity of
Courbet. If any man could paint at that time it was Courbet. He was the
simplifier of planes and values, who advocated frankness and freedom of
expression, and detached painting from all the absurdities and
abstractions of the classic and romantic periods. From him Whistler
learned to put on his pigments in a bold, vigorous way. He was never
fond of brushwork, but at that time he liked to pile it on in a flat and
solid manner. Only gradually his brushwork became thinner and thinner,
invisible and almost untraceable, carrying out his maxim: "A picture is
finished when all traces of means used to bring about the end have
disappeared." As is the case with all great paintings, one must forget
all about technique.
From Stevens he learned, as he often said in later years, all that
could be learned from him. I believe that the influence was subtler and
more spiritual, and one that lasted all his life. Stevens was for him
what the chart from which we learn history in school days remains for
us. We can never forget it and entirely get away from it. In the
beginning, of course, it was a technical preference. Like Stevens, he
used precise outlines, a profusion of details and yet with all a poetic
atmosphere that is produced principally by a beautiful juxtaposition of
colour values. Even to-day few of Whistler's earlier canvases have more
admirers than the "Harmony in Green and Rose," perhaps better known as
"The Music Room" (in the possession of Frank J. Hecker). It was painted
in 1860, in the London home of Haden, the painter-etcher. This picture
was first known as "The Morning Call." In the corner of the room a
mirror reflects the profile of a woman, who is not represented in the
picture. This is a portrait of Lady Seymour Haden, Whistler's
stepsister, with whom he was lodging at the time. In front of the window
hang a pair of white curtains with a green and red flower pattern. A
young woman (Miss Booth, a relative of the Hadens) in a black riding
habit, which she holds up with her gloved hand, stands on the dark red
carpet. In the background sits a little girl reading.
[Illustration: _Owned by Frank J. Hecker_
HARMONY IN GREEN AND ROSE: THE MUSIC ROOM.]
Another more exotic influence became palpable in his work soon after,
and exercised an almost despotic control for several years. At the Paris
_Exposition Universelle_ of 1863 Whistler became acquainted, for the
first time, with Japanese art. The Parisian artists, particularly the
set with which Whistler was acquainted, got colour mad. The
suggestiveness of Oriental composition, which accentuates detail here
and neglects it there; the peculiar space arrangement and the decorative
treatment of detail, captivated all modern spirit.
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, the æsthetes of the Empire, and the
forerunners of the Japanese enthusiasts, and specialists like Cernuschi,
Regamey, Guimet, and Bing became the spokesmen for Japanese _bibelots_.
Paris was deluged with little art objects fashioned out of bronze,
porcelain, cloisonne, jade, ivory, wood and metal. Everybody started a
collection, and became a member of the "Societé du Jinglar," with annual
meetings at Sèvres, which was fanatically devoted to the worship and
exploitation of Eastern art.
The harmonious arrangement of the Japanese colour prints in particular
fascinated the cognoscenti. The application of colour in Japanese art
is somewhat different to ours. It is more primitive, and based on the
decorative principle of simultaneous contrast. It deals solely with flat
tints with occasional gradations on the outer edges, and vibration is
produced by the simple method of letting the paper, or silk, shine
through the pigment. If Japanese colouring does not directly recall the
polychromic designs of primitive people, of pottery decorations, wall
designs, carpets and mats, Scandinavian wood ornamentation, etc., the
reason is entirely to be found in its refinement and finish. It has the
same origin; a totem pole is the beginning, and a Japanese print about
the end of the development.
True enough, coloured prints were classified as vulgar art. They were
considered ordinary pictorial commodities of no more importance to the
natives than coloured supplements to our Sunday readers. But they were
of such exquisite finish that we wonderingly ask ourselves if the nobler
branches of art in this country really reached a higher standard of
perfection. It is hardly possible. It was rather their application than
their art value which offended the nobility. Many of the most cherished
prints of Kiyonaga, Sharaku, Shunsho, and Outomaro, depicting teahouse
scenes, actors, wrestlers and ladies of the Yoshiwara, were drawn for
no other purpose than to serve as souvenir cards and advertisements.
The colour appreciation of the Japanese clerk, labourer and peasant must
have been developed to an exceptional degree, if these designs, that
were so cheap that everybody bought them as we do newspapers, could
arouse nothing but ordinary appreciation and matter-of-fact comment.
The Japanese used colours in combinations that seem strange and unusual
to us. They did not seem to care about any complementary laws, but
introduced yellow with pink, purple with green, brown with red without
the slightest hesitation. This may be explained by the restraint of
their palette. Their old hand-made colours are all keyed in middle
tints; they did not lack decision or strength, but they were never loud
or vehement. Thus arrangements were possible that would look crude with
the use of Western colours. Cheret's and Toulouse Lautrec's posters,
even when of three-sheet dimensions and seen in open air, seldom
expressed more than contrast and animation. They worked on the principle
of the Japanese colour print, but in a very crude and superficial
fashion. They wished to startle, not to please.
If colour is seen in flat tint patches it produces a more vivid image
on the retina than a pictorial representation of mixed pigments, as flat
tints are more favourable to the brilliancy of colour. Each separate
soft tint creates a complementary image, and the eye would be easily
fatigued if the colours were strong. In the Japanese colour print they
are softened and blended together not so much by the skilful and
harmonious juxtaposition, as by the suavity of the medium, the
introduction of neutral tints, the mellow white foundation of the paper,
and the arrangement of shapes encased in precise lines.
The European painter had a different idea. Although recognizing the
supremacy of colour, he took visual appearances as they were and
actually appeared in life as guiding models for his representations.
Colour became submerged in other qualities almost equally important, as
those of line, perspective, chiaroscura, relief drawing and minute
observation. The Eastern artist applied colour for colour's sake, and
kept all other elements, notably those of line, feeling, shape and space
arrangement independent--not independent as far as the tonality of the
final effect was concerned, but independent in their function as
vehicles of expression. They were never diffused in the same way as in
an Old Master. Each line, shape and colour had to tell its own story,
while in Western art composition, colour and idea often became
inseparable by the application of the blurred outline.
Whistler, at this stage of his development, was interested simply in
recreating Japanese colour arrangements, to paint local values in such a
way that they would reflect the beauty, contrast and variety of an
Outamaro print. The pictures of this period remind one of that
capricious Chinese princess, of whom Heinrich Heine speaks, whose quaint
and solitary pleasure consisted of tearing costly silks into tatters, to
scatter the rags to the winds and to watch them flutter like rose, blue
and yellow butterflies to the lily ponds below.
Already in his "Woman in White" Whistler had shown some preferences for
colour, but not until after he had taken his first house in London, when
his mother came to live with him, did he show those peculiar outbursts
of colour that were a direct outcome of the study of Japanese prints. In
later years it was all tone, but in the years 1863-66, it was all
colour, with a preference for white. The principal pictures of this
period were "Lange Leizen of the Six Marks: In purple and rose" (in the
possession of John G. Johnson); "The Little White Girl" (owned by Arthur
Studd), "The Golden Screen," "The Princess of the Porcelain Land," and
"The Balcony: Variations of Flesh Colour" (owned by Charles W. Freer)
and "The White Symphony" (owned by John G. Whittemore).
Whistler clothed his English models in Eastern dress, and reproduced the
beautiful colours with Japanese detail. He was among the first to
appreciate the beauty of Chinese porcelain, of which he owned many
choice pieces. In his "Lange Leizen" is shown a young woman in a
Japanese costume, seated and holding with her left hand on her lap a
blue and white vase of the shape known in Holland as the "Lange Leizen
of the Six Marks" (referring to the potter's mark on the bottom of the
vase). Her right hand, covered by the sleeve of the kimono, is raised
and holds a brush. Her skirt is black with a delicate design in colours.
The kimono is cream white, decorated with bright flowers and lined with
rose colours. Around her hair, which falls over her shoulders, is tied a
black scarf. On the floor are several blue and white vases and an
Oriental carpet. To the right is a red covered table, and behind the
figure is a chest. The painting is signed "Whistler, 1864," in the upper
right-hand corner. The frame was designed by Whistler himself and
decorated with Chinese fret and six marks. It was shown in the Royal
Academy of 1864.
[Illustration: _Owned by John G. Johnson_
LANGE LEIZEN OF THE SIX MARKS: PURPLE AND ROSE.]
Another picture of this period is the "Golden Screen." A young woman in
Japanese costume is seated on a brown rug, her head seen in profile, as
she examines a Japanese print. She wears a purple kimono decorated with
multicoloured flowers and bordered with a vermilion scarf, and a green
obi tied around her waist; her outer kimono is white with a red flowered
design. To the left is a tea box, some roses and a white vase with
pansies. Hiroshige prints are scattered over the floor. The background
consists of a folding screen with Japanese houses and figures, painted
on a gold ground. These two pictures are far from being satisfactory.
The composition is restless, the colours do not harmonize, and the
figure is one of that peculiar nightmarish type which some artists
affect; a being belonging to that peculiar class of humanity who wear
slouch drapery instead of tailor-made costumes, and carry crystal balls,
urns and sunflowers as an æsthetic amusement, I suppose, about their
person.
The model for both these pictures was Joanna Heffernan, an Irish girl,
neither particularly handsome nor well educated; but she was a good
model, who adapted herself easily to a painter's idea, and her native
wit and willingness to learn atoned for any lack of knowledge. She
generally read while she was posing for Whistler, and as she talked with
his friends, posed for other artists and visited picture exhibitions,
she played quite an important part in the painter's life during his
early years in London. She went to Paris in the winter of 1861-2 to pose
for "The Woman in White," in his studio on the boulevard des
Battignoles. He painted her in a number of other pictures, notably as
"Jo" and "The Little White Girl." Although different in each picture,
now young, now more mature, in one case a lady and in another a buxom
girl, she is really beautiful in none, though always attractive. He
probably merely used her as a suggestion. He liked to have her in his
studio even when he did not paint her form or features. There is also a
dry point of "Jo," dated 1861, which shows her with streaming hair,
which is probably the nearest approach to a likeness. It is a beautiful
bit of drawing and interesting as a space arrangement. It shows how a
head can almost fill the entire space of a picture without becoming
obtrusive or looking too large. The line work is excellent in its purity
of design and apparent carelessness.
A change of method is noticeable in "The Little White Girl," the colour
scheme of which is exquisite. The white dress of the young girl, in
profile, with loosened hair, leaning against a mantelpiece, and her
reflection in the glass, are accentuated in a beautiful manner by the
brilliant colour notes of a red lacquer box, a blue and white vase, a
fan with a Hiroshige-like design and a decorative arrangement of pink
and purple azaleas. The painting is thinner and there is greater repose
in the composition. Swinburne saw the picture before it was sent up to
the Royal Academy in 1865, and expressed his admiration by writing
"Before the Mirror. Verses under a Picture:"
"Come snow, come wind or thunder,
High up in the air
I watch my face and wonder
At my bright hair.
Naught else exalts or grieves
The rose at heart that heaves
With love of our own leaves, and lips that pair.
"I cannot tell what pleasures
Or what pains were,
What pale new loves and treasures
New Years will bear,
What beam will fall, what shower
With grief or joy for dower.
But one thing knows the flower, the flower is fair."
[Illustration: _Owned by Arthur Studd_
SYMPHONY IN WHITE, II: THE LITTLE WHITE GIRL.]
"La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine" (Whistler apparently was fond of
using elaborate titles) is perhaps his finest work in vivid colouring.
The colour differentiations are well placed, but the canvas, after all,
looks too much like a huge Japanese print, painted in the Western style,
which represents objects round and in relief, and not merely in flat
tints. The placing of the screen with the face looming above it is as
peculiar as it is attractive, but it is an arrangement that is strictly
Japanese in character. Whistler began with painting detail, and only
gradually learned to see life in a broader and more mysterious way. It
is a portrait of Miss Christie Spartali, a real Rossetti type, daughter
of the Consul-General for Greece in London in 1863. Her father did not
like it; but Rossetti did, and sold it from his own studio to help
Whistler along. Later it came into the possession of F. R. Leyland, and
was used to decorate the "Peacock Room." It was first exhibited at the
Paris Salon of 1865. It is really a combination of Rossetti and
Outomaro, with a slight flavour of Whistler's individuality.
[Illustration: _National Gallery, Washington_
THE PRINCESS OF THE PORCELAIN LAND.]
"On the Balcony" (exhibited first in 1866) of the Freer collection is a
peculiar combination of models masquerading in kimonos and a background
of English river scenery. He essayed the same task as Chavannes in
his mural decorations, i. e., to determine the local tints of each face
or arm by the surrounding colours. The problem was made still more
difficult by showing each face in a different illumination. One face is
silhouetted in profile against the river, another shaded by a fan and
the form of a standing figure, the others are seen in front light. I do
not believe he has ever attempted a more ambitious problem, and he
solved it in a most subtle and convincing fashion. It is a delightful
harmony in colour, and exceedingly well-balanced; it reminds one of the
Japanese, but the colour and vibrating atmosphere is Occidental. Pity
that he found it necessary to introduce Japanese costumes. I perfectly
realize that one of the principal charms of this picture is the
incongruity of the ensemble. Yet who ever saw in a London town such a
balcony with Japanese awnings, and English girls dressed up like
geishas, whiling away the early hours of the night. The figures belong
neither to Japan nor Great Britain. They are simply there for colour's
sake, but, after all, such associations of thought, no matter whether in
paint or poetry, never constitute the greatest art. The composition is
more restful and simpler than in his earlier works. When Whistler began
to realize this shortcoming of his earlier style, he turned away from
"orchestral explosions of colour" and "volleys of paint," and began that
wonderful process of elimination which helped him to become one of the
greatest painters of the nineteenth century.
[Illustration: _National Gallery, Washington_
ON THE BALCONY: VARIATIONS IN FLESH-COLOUR AND GREEN.]
In his later work Whistler returned once more to vivid colouring. It was
solely in pastels and water colours, never in oils. And the butterfly,
the symbol of Whistler's individuality, fluttered gaily from picture to
picture, from print to print, and letter to letter; now disappearing in
greyish mists, then peeping forth from a dark olive background, and
again asserting his existence at times as a mere shadow, as a dark or
coral red silhouette. Changing his colour and size on every canvas; he
is now shaded blue, brown, rose, red, violet or peacock blue and then,
suddenly assuming unusually large proportions, he spreads his wings in
full flight to be lost once more as a grey, almost imperceptible spot,
in some twilight atmosphere. At one moment he appears on a vase, a rug,
or a curtain. He floats on the sea, rest on doorposts, wings his way
over flowers and rocks, shifts sportively from the lower left to the
right corner, thereupon rises to almost the middle of the canvas,
flutters around the figures, even touches their forms delicately, as a
dainty creature may do, and continues his endless variations and
gyrations; ever ready to assert the _final approval_ of the master.
CHAPTER IV
THE ART OF OMISSION
A Blue-black night, broken by sparks of bursting skyrockets and weird
forms of light, in which two illuminated towers are vaguely indicated.
To the left a cluster of foliage and a crowd of people, felt rather than
seen. Such is the subject matter of this little 17 x 23 canvas which
probably excited more controversy and discussion than any other of
Whistler's pictures. It was scarcely noticed when it was first exhibited
at the Dudley Gallery in October. But in 1877 the storm broke loose, and
the famous libel suit against Ruskin, and the record of all details of
the trial in a brown-covered pamphlet, under the title "Whistler v.
Ruskin, Art and Art Critics" (in 1878), were the immediate results. And
the discussion con or pro has not ceased to this very day. Some call it
merely a clever sketch; others consider it one of the highest
expressions beauty is capable of.
What is there so remarkable and fascinating in this picture, that it can
exercise such an influence! Technically it is not perfect, the blacks
are rather opaque, and it does not possess the haunting charm of the
"Old Battersea Bridge" or even of the "Valparaiso Harbour."
Is it the subject matter? Fireworks were never painted before, or, at
least, did not constitute the sole motif of a picture. Yet this should
be no objection. Fireworks are one of the modern amusements that enjoy
great popularity. There should be no objection to their representation,
as little as to a baseball game, a prize fight or any realistic phase of
our personal life. The curious interest of this painting, or any of
Whistler's nocturnes, does not lie merely in the novelty of the subject
(i. e. novel to pictorial representation), nor that it depicts the
mystery of night in an unusual manner, as some artists and writers
claim.
Its significance lies much deeper. It actually represents the beginning
of a new way of painting, not merely of atmospheric conditions, but of
an art different in its _intentions_ from any previous form of
representation.
During the trial Whistler himself gave the following definition of a
nocturne:
"I have perhaps meant rather to indicate an artistic interest alone in
the work, divesting the picture of any sort of interest which might
have been otherwise attached to it. It is an arrangement of line, form
and colour first, and I make use of any incident which shall bring about
a symmetrical result. Among my works are some night pieces, and I have
chosen the word 'Nocturne' because it generalizes and simplifies the
whole set of them."
After Whistler had stated that he had worked two days on the "Falling
Rocket," the General Attorney said:
"The labour of two days, then, is that for what you ask two hundred
guineas?"
To which Whistler replied:
"No--I ask it for the knowledge of a life-time."
[Illustration: _Owned by Mrs. Samuel Untermyer_
NOCTURNE IN BLACK AND GOLD: THE FALLING ROCKET.]
This is hardly a satisfactory explanation. It merely informs us that the
consideration of line, form and colour is more important than the
incident depicted. Have not all painters worked in that way! The actual
manipulation of the pigment on the canvas is the supreme pleasure of
every genuine painter. But the source of inspiration after all lies in
the incident that is in the line, form and colour indicated by the
incident. Or does Whistler wish to convince us that he mentally invented
a colour scheme and then set out to find the incident? He might have
said to himself, "I want to paint a night scene, in blue and gold, and
I want such a silhouette to dominate the scene," but, after all, the
incident had to furnish, or rather suggest, the possibilities of the
mental vision. He, more than most painters, saw poetry in nature. His
wonderful description of a river scene at night in the "Ten O'clock"
vouches for that. Read these lines that are worthy of any poet:
"When the evening mist clothes the riverside with 'poetry' as with a
veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky and the tall
chimneys become campanile, and the warehouses are palaces in the night,
and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and the fairy land is before
us--then the wayfarer hastens home, the workman and the cultured one,
the wise and the one of pleasures cease to understand as they have
ceased to see, and nature, who for once has sung in tune, sings her
exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her master; her son in
that he loves her, and her master in that he knows her."
A man who wrote like that surely received his inspirations from nature,
and was dependent on the incident as much as anybody else. No, the true
significance of his nocturne, as remarked before, lies in the original
intention, not in the final effect of the subject he wished to produce.
For conventionalist and impressionist alike, nature is the source of
symbols for their mood. With them the standpoint is remarkably different
from that of the superficial realists, who imagine that the mere copy of
a scene must give the emotion that the scene itself arouses; who forget
that the artist's emotion is as much a selective factor as his vision of
the objective signs needful for the communication of his feeling to his
public.
He probably wished to remain under cover, and not come out boldly and
say: "This is the Japanese way of doing things. I disengage the poetical
significance from an object or fact in Eastern fashion. I have learned
this from the Hiroshige prints."
Few artists are willing to lay bare the mechanism of their individual
way of interpretation. They would be misunderstood anyhow. Painters
would have rejoiced to call him a downright imitator. And that is just
the point where he differed from the average artist who followed the
Eastern trail of art. He succeeded in combining the two great art
elements of the world, those of the East and the West. In the sixties he
was interested merely in a phase of Japanese art, that of colour.
Hiroshige prints were hung on the wall or scattered on the floor of his
studio, as can be noted in several of his earlier paintings. The
Japanese artists were virtuosos of colour. They combined the most
contradictory colours into a harmony, nuances which for centuries had
escaped the appreciation of the European eye. After many experiments
Whistler realized that this refined sense of colour was only one of the
external accomplishments of Japanese art, that its true soul was
revealed in its suggestive quality.
The Japanese artists work without perspective, shadows and reflections,
and even when they apply them they do so in a purely decorative way.
They rely entirely on design, on line and the juxtaposition of flat
colour shapes. They do not care to produce an illusion, as if the frame
afforded a view on a scene of actual life. They are satisfied with
making a mere delineation, a suggestion of a beautiful gown or mountain
view.
In literature, or even in such a simple matter as the naming of things,
the Japanese invariably give play to the exercise of their imagination
to bring out a suggestive effect. The same tendency extends into their
fine arts. In treating objects of nature, however insignificant, the
Japanese artist strives to suggest or indicate some sentiment beyond
what is conveyed by the facts represented, just as the poet strives to
store up a mine of thought in the thirty-one syllables of an ordinary
verse, the Tanka, or in the still shorter Haikai of seventeen syllables.
In short, the Japanese artist exerts himself to produce more than beauty
of form or colour. This quality is less apparent in the coloured wood
print so popular with Westerners. An Outomaro is really lacking
suggestiveness. It runs too much into technical detail, and just for
that reason perhaps we more readily understand the European artists.
Take for instant a simple representation of summer plants, merely a few
stalks. The artist is not satisfied to show us the actual facts but
endeavours to indicate something beyond what is actually represented,
the delight of a flowery field in summer or the cool refreshing breeze
under which the plants are bending and swaying.
The Western artists hitherto entertained a different ideal and though
there were many schools, each advocating a different ideal, they all
agreed on one point: that they had to create an illusion, with
modelling, rotundity of form, light, shade and distance. Suggesting a
fact is subtler than actually representing a fact. A sketch has
something, a virility and freshness that a finished painting rarely has.
We prefer Courbet to Ingres, Israels to Leighton. There must be
something left to imagination, to our emotions and æsthetic
consciousness. The Japanese leave most to imagination. Their method
lacks strength but is capable of conveying finer poetic sentiments.
Their vision is clearer, more rapid and less disturbed by intellectual
preoccupations than ours. They are perhaps more perceptual than
conceptual. Not that they lack deep poignant expression, but that they
are deficient in intensity and depth of representation. The grandiose
unity of effect of a Titian, Tintoretto or Rubens is beyond the kakemono
and colour print. They succeeded in some instances in adumbrating in
lines of conventional severity and precision strange and mystical
intimations of spiritual existence. But we find it difficult to discern
these qualities as we need more than suggestion to arrive at such
conclusions.
Whistler tried and succeeded in translating this suggestiveness in such
a manner that the Western mind could understand and appreciate it. How
did he accomplish this task! He realized that he could not abandon
atmosphere, light and distance. He had to apply the Eastern principle
without deteriorating the Western technique. To proceed like the
Japanese would have resulted in a failure. His "Princess of the
Porcelain Land" must have taught him this. He strove for something else
than a mere resemblance. He adopted certain ideas of space arrangement,
certain forms of design and the elimination of detail. The underlying
composition reminds of the Japanese, but not the finish.
Hiroshige was the first designer of Japanese colour prints who devoted
himself largely to landscapes with figures, and with Eastern ingenuity
almost exhausted the subject. His "Hundred Views of Fusi-yama" contain
the most startling designs and problems of composition that have ever
been attempted, and they are treated with incomparable boldness, and
solved with astounding skill. The rarest aspects of nature are treated
with perfect balance. It is a play of curves and geometrical shapes that
bewilders the Western mind that has been content with comparatively few
formulæ.
The vista idea of representing a scene as if viewed through the frame of
a doorway, which Whistler so frequently used in his etchings as in "The
Lime Burner" and "The Garden," is strictly Japanese. One of his friends
said that Whistler never objected to any one trying to copy his way of
painting, but looked upon filching of ideas as grand larceny. This
proves how ignorant we all are about our conduct of life. If anybody
ever plagiarized ideas it was Whistler. The "T" shape of the "Old
Battersea Bridge," in his nocturne of blue and gold, is almost an exact
copy of a Hiroshige design. The same can be said of the branch of leaves
protruding like a silhouette from the margin of his "Ocean," and the
composition of several other nocturnes. But Whistler added something
which no Japanese print suggests. He added light, atmosphere, distance
and mystery.
[Illustration: _Tate Gallery, London_
NOCTURNE IN BLUE AND GOLD: OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE.]
Hiroshige relied entirely upon design and line, and he was not a good
draughtsman at that, at least not in his figures. His human figures
frequently look like miniature caricatures or curious little insects.
His line lacks purity and sweep, but is more realistic and less
conventional than that of his predecessors. His colour is crude in
comparison with the older artists. His prints that were executed after
the introduction of European aniline colours in 1850, with their streaks
of vivid red and blue, are almost offensive to the eye. His earlier
ones, when he was content in working in pale colours, in pale blue and
black with just a suggestion of pink, are vastly superior. Later on he
tried to learn from the Europeans, and strove for atmospheric effects,
but always suggested it rather by design than colour. If he used colour
for that purpose it went never beyond a simple wash.
Whistler sacrificed line almost entirely. He worked in big masses,
shapes and silhouettes and made colour the principal attraction. The
simplicity of design he borrowed from the Japanese, but the intimate
charm of his colour he got from another art, the art of music. Many
paintings of the latter half of the nineteenth century show this musical
tendency. Chavannes, Cazin, our American landscape painter Tryon, even
the Impressionists, try to produce with colour something similar to the
effect of sound. It is either a resemblance of feeling in execution, or
the desire to deliver us over to a mood like music. Generally both
desires go hand in hand.
The painter, to accomplish this, must go back to the emotional elements
of things, to view objects with primitive enthusiasm and to disregard
all cumbersome detail. These qualities must dominate his conception, and
his treatment must be slightly decorative. He must see things flat, in
curious shapes, and then juxtapose and complement his colours in such
fashion that they produce instantaneously a pleasant retinal image. In
most paintings the subject matter attracts our attention first, and the
appreciation of its technique reaches our emotion through a mental
process. A Chavannes fresco and a Cazin landscape, on the other hand,
appeal directly to our emotions. Henner, Corot, Carrière are musical,
Leighton, Dagnan-Bouveret, Böcklin are not. Chavannes and Tryon
construct their compositions like a composer his score. By applying
parallelism of line and repetition of form and colour shapes with slight
variation, they attempt to transpose musical conditions to the sphere of
colour.
Cazin goes further than either. He comes nearest to Whistler. He
actually tries to make the colour _sing_, not a composition of
diversified interests, but a simple sweet melody that instantaneously
produces a distinct lyrical emotion. In his best pictures he reproduces
successfully the perfect harmony of a few fugitive tints, such as occur
so frequently in nature by a combination of the evening sky and a
shimmering surface of water, by a white cottage in moonlight, or
desolate marshes against a starlit sky. In this, Whistler excelled. He
advanced another step by using the smallest limit of colours possible,
without obliterating form and subject matter. Although Whistler
accentuated the breadth of vision, divided his space arrangement into as
few planes as possible, juxtaposed rarely more than two colours, and
made all objects appear shadowy and weird against a glimmering sky, it
is astonishing how vibrant he kept his colour; the more so as his
colours are laid on rather flatly, and, occasionally, so thinly that the
canvas shines through. This, of course, helps the vibrating quality, but
the colour tints contain so many subtle variations that they scarcely
become discernible to the eye but merely conscious as a vague shimmer,
like that of night and atmosphere themselves.
The colour combinations are frequently the same. Blue and silver, and
blue and gold appear most frequently. Then there is brown with gold or
silver, and a crepuscule in flesh colour and green, which was also the
theme of "On the Balcony."
His subjects were chosen with great discretion. Outside of the
"Valparaiso Harbour" picture, a "Southampton Water" and a "St. Marks,
Venice," most were devoted to London. There is a Chelsea embankment in
winter, a Chelsea in snow and ice, the Westminster Bridge, the Trafalgar
Square in snow, and the old Battersea reach and bridge in three
versions. Whistler never stopped work at a picture until it was as
perfect as he could make it. Many of the pictures that are now on the
market, mere scraps and fragments at ridiculous prices, he would not
have allowed to go out of his studio. He had the conscience of the true
artist, but he never went to the extreme. He knew when to stop, a
quality which is exceedingly rare. He would never have spoiled a canvas
as Maris and Ryder do. He worked very hard on most of his pictures, but
they do not show it. The difficulties and deliberate slowness of
execution are lost in the final result. "To say of a picture, as it is
often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to
say that it is incomplete and unfit for view." He followed this maxim
out to the letter. Industry was with him a necessity--not a virtue. Were
you to ask me to define the charm of his nocturnes, I should say, I
fancy that it lies in the delicious purity of their expression. The
emotions which Whistler wishes to excite are those of visional pleasure,
of subtle speculation and vague emotional joy. In him inspiration always
prevailed over caprice. The picture had first to express the arrangement
of colour entrusted to it, and was scarcely allowed any dash or
extravagance of brushwork or form, unless they would form a part of his
original plan and serve as a contrast or dissonance. He never added
anything in his repaintings, but cut out one passage after another; he
did not graft on, he pruned, for he meant nothing should remain but the
most essential. If there was ever a man tormented by the accursed
ambition to put the whole world into one picture, the whole picture into
one tonality, and the whole tonality into one colour note, it was
Whistler. It is difficult to understand why his work was ever criticized
as being unfinished. When Burne-Jones, in a spirit hostile to Whistler's
work, declared in the witness box at the Ruskin trial: "In my opinion
... a picture ought not to fall short of what has been for ages
considered as complete and finished," Whistler retorted effectively: "A
picture is completely finished when nothing more can be done to improve
it."
[Illustration: NOCTURNE IN GRAY AND GOLD: CHELSEA, SNOW.]
And for this finish he tried incessantly. There was never an artist who
was more conscientious and more ardently striving for perfection than
he. He sometimes tried experiments with different mediums in oil
painting. At one time he used benzine to thin the colours, another time
kerosene. He would cover a large canvas all over with the latter, in
order to bring out the dried tints, before he started to repaint or
overpaint. And he said to Clifford Adams, his last apprentice, "In the
morning we may not succeed in getting the direct relation of colour, but
at noon it may become more harmonious and at sundown we might strike
just the right thing." And so he worked, day after day and year after
year, on his pictures, until every trace of labour was obliterated and
the picture had become a masterpiece. "A masterpiece that would appear
"as a flower" to the painter--perfect in its bud as in its bloom--with
no reason to explain its presence, no mission to fulfil; a joy to the
artist, a delusion to the philanthropist--a puzzle to the botanist--an
accident of sentiment to the literary man."
This flatly contradicts the general idea rampant among painters that he
furnished his paintings _au premier coup_. His friends endorse the
denial. Mr. R. A. Canfield has seen not less than sixteen changes of
background to one portrait, "and heaven knows how many more that were
not counted." Whenever he was dissatisfied with a painting, he started a
new canvas until he finally realized the task he had attempted. In that
sense his colleagues are right, his pictures look as if they were
painted _au premier coup_ but it was a roundabout way. It is impossible
to advance any theory about his technique. All his pictures are painted
in varying thicknesses of paint, in varying degrees of liquidity of
paint, in varying smoothness and roughness, in few or many sittings, in
fact, in the varying technique which alone can correspond to moods of
so great a painter and the circumstances of each picture.
The only thing which has any semblance to a constant method is a
moderate adherence, in his portraits at least, to the old way of
painting from dark to light which, in the final painting, in overlapping
pieces of paint, as in the case of most oil paintings until recently,
results in the thickening of the paint towards the light.
There are scarcely more than sixteen finished nocturnes on record. Of
these, most are masterpieces, or would pass as belonging to the best of
his works. And as he worked at them ever since he returned from
Valparaiso in 1866 and held the first important exhibition of nocturnes
at the Dowdswell Gallery, and in Paris (in the Rue Sèze) not previous to
1883, when quite a number were still unfinished, we are astonished at
the small output. But masterpieces are scarce. And if a painter can be
credited with two or three every year he is a hero in his profession.
The importance of the nocturne in Whistler's own career, everybody must
realize who is familiar with his work. They add to his personality a
delicious flavour that even his lithographs and large paintings do not
grant in the same manner. It was to him an instrument that obeyed his
slightest wishes. It was art, at once aristocratic, delicate, of high
finish and moreover imbued with an individual rhythm and the poetry of
nature.
[Illustration: NOCTURNE IN BLUE AND SILVER.]
What wonderful rain and snow this man has painted! What vast expanses of
water as mystic as the night! And those vagrant mists, that envelop
everything and blot out the very existence of things! There has not been
anything in art since Turner that could be compared with it. There are
no banal sunsets, no glaring moonlights, only the more intricate moods
of nature, snowfall, mist, late evening and night. Also in the choice of
his subject he added a new note.
The art of a landscape painter is determined by a thousand influences
upon his mind other than those of nature. The essence of Monet's art is
one of an hour, but with such a painter as Daubigny or Rousseau it is
one of a place. There is the sense of the atmosphere of the moment given
by one school of landscape painters, of locality by another, poetry by a
third and of the historic associations of a place by yet another school.
These things are, of course, determined by temperament, and schools of
painting may be classified in this way more adequately than they are.
Human association creeps into landscapes in various degrees, and also
in other ways than the historical way which we feel,--as in F. E.
Church's pictures, for instance,--but landscape, generally subordinate
to the human interest, now sometimes tries to free itself from this
influence entirely. It has become like poetry, simply the record of an
emotion or mood remembered in colour. This is Whistler's peculiar
innovation.
And yet the final significance of the nocturne in the world of art is
still an open question. Time alone can decide its value. The rest is
mere hypothesis. Many--and I only talk of people who understand--argue
that despite its perfection, the nocturne represents a minor phase of
art. Of course, a nocturne, no matter how beautiful, cannot compete in
importance with the "Portrait of Carlyle," or "The Artist's Mother."
Size does not mean much, but it means something. A small painting can be
as exquisite in workmanship as a large one, but it can never rise to the
same dignity of expression. A frescoe by Chavannes would lose much if
executed in the size of the average easel picture.
But the nocturne stands for something in modern art which lends it
special importance, aside of all workmanship and beauty of pictorial
treatment. It represents a return to the art of painting for painting's
sake. Every art, may it be music, poetry, dancing, sculpture or
painting, has its own peculiar technique, which the technically ignorant
person cannot appreciate. Poetry which has no formal conventions is
inconceivable. And, in a similar manner, painting has the charm of
texture and brushwork, the charm of how the paint is actually put on and
displayed on the canvas. The æsthetic satisfaction derived from an art
is in exact proportion to one's knowledge of the art's technique.
This largely explains the general public's indifference to art. And the
everlasting fight between the artist and the public has been on these
lines. The plea of the modern experimentist that all poetry of painting
should be in the paint, which also Whistler advanced, is a just one if
not carried to extremes. Absolute paucity of idea is as unfavourable as
story-telling. The intrinsic beauty of a painting lies in the method of
painting, and the only guide for the painter is colour and the general
arrangement--not a method learned by rote, not an arrangement garroted
by a thousand rules which others have invented, but that personal style
or rhythm which is inveterately the painter's own. So Whistler's style
is beautiful because it is personal. His revolt was against
story-telling, against the genre pictures, which adulterated painting
with the skill of the novel writer. It is for future æsthetics to decide
whether the introduction of musical ideals is not just as dangerous as
the intermixture of any other art. There is no doubt, however, that the
new combination grants a higher pleasure to the connoisseur at present.
Music is the most fashionable and, perhaps, most widely understood art
to-day.
This be as it may, Whistler did a great service to modern art. By
realizing its limitations he bestowed upon it a new vitality and glow.
His art, far from being lawless, is the expression of a new law. Make
any kind of pictures you like, dear painters, provided they are
beautiful. For each age there is a different beauty. Old forms and old
perfections wither.
There has been too much story-telling. The David school, with its
pompous historical, allegorical and mythological representations, has
become intolerable to us. David, Vernet, etc., up to Ingres and
Delaroche all seem lifeless. Also the Romanticists, who were the
interpreters of poets, appear highstrung to more recent art ideas. The
reaction was inevitable. The Impressionists--and their merit lies
principally in that their work represents a technical reaction--went too
far, inasmuch as it allows scarcely any scope to intellectual
expansion. It is based on immediate vision, and occupies itself only
with the consideration of light and colour, and keen observation of
modern life. All the great painters met the public half way. The great
painters, we need only to recall Rembrandt, Velasquez or Leonardo, were
painters as much as they were poets, but each in equal measure. The
qualities balanced each other, and they did not, like the modern
painters, sacrifice one for the other.
Whistler has to be classified as an Impressionist, but he remained true
to the old tradition. He was as much a reactionist against classic and
romantic painting as any of them; but he had no use for the new
technique. Like Monet, he went back to Velasquez and Goya, Franz Hals,
Van Dyke and all the Old Masters who could paint. Like Courbet, he
reduced a scene to three or four broad tones, but he was more exact in
the grade of tones, and invariably endeavoured to explain the sentiment
inspired by them. His work was never _anti intellectual_. On the
contrary he was a true visionary.
He protested against literary elements, but emphasized the psychological
and symbolical qualities of painting. Nobody was further remote from
gross superficial realism. Like Flaubert and the Goncourts, he proved
that realism can go hand in hand with refined form and delicate
psychology. He was sane throughout. And that is why the æsthetic
revolution, produced by him, is not yet at an end.
The first principle for the painter is to acquire a personal mode of
feeling and thinking, and the second that he should find an adequate and
personal method of expressing himself. The painter must choose his
method. If he has only the old themes to paint the old forms will suit
him well enough--portraits and single figures, landscapes and marines,
cattle pictures and still life--but if he has anything special to say,
he must find for himself a special and unique form of expression. The
only criterion is beauty.
CHAPTER V
ON LIGHT AND TONE PROBLEMS
In his "Art in the Netherlands," and his various books on Italian art,
H. Taine has maintained that the hand of the mediæval painter was
largely guided by optical sensations. And, following this rather
suggestive, than conclusive, trend of argument, we will readily perceive
that the peculiar lighting conditions of those days, the semi-darkness
of the interiors, the play of sunlight dying in the obscurity of
shadows, and the absence of strong artificial lights have done much to
disclose to the genius of a Titian and a Rembrandt the manifold
harmonies of chiaroscura, of colouring, modelling and emotion. The
tallow candle, the oil lamp, the torch and the open fire-place were the
only artificial light appliances known to the Middle Ages, and they were
all only like solitary rays of light in universal darkness. Illumine a
room by night, by placing a candle on the table or on the floor, and
judge for yourself. The effects obtained, no doubt, would appear to you
as weird and picturesque. The flickering light is uncertain, the shadows
are intensely dark and pronounced, almost crude and vacillating, as if
engaged in a continual combat with light. The contrasts are startling,
yet not discordant, the vague train of light mingled with shadows
accentuate only a few places with vivid spots, perchance the polished
surface of a piece of furniture, a glass or pewter mug on the table, the
collaret or jewelled belt of some fair lady. The eye is led to noticing
gradations of obscurity, the darkness grows animated with colour and
form, and we see the objects as through a glaze of Van Dyke brown.
No wonder that the painter of the Middle Ages, having become sensible to
the beauty of transparent darkness and the brilliant passages of light,
dared to unite extremes and to show every form and colour in its full
strength. The vagueness of chiaroscural effects was the great modifier
which enveloped all adjacent objects in clair obscure and tempered them
with a warm and mellow radiance.
How different are the conditions in our time. There are no more
Schalcken or Rembrandt effects. We have succeeded in banishing darkness
from our homes. We have become very sanitary, we want light and air, the
walls of houses are built less substantial, and through the increased
largeness and transparency of panes, the daylight streams in with
dazzling vehemence. It penetrates into the remotest nooks and corners.
Even at dawn the shadows are only vaguely dark, of an uncertain and
mixed bluish grey. Lenbach, the portrait painter, realized this
deficiency, and found it necessary to construct a special studio, where
the light was only sparingly admitted through deep casements, and where
the sitters for his old-master-like interpretations of modern characters
were placed far away from the windows.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York_
LADY IN GRAY.]
The greatest havoc among chiaroscural effects, however, has been played
by modern light appliances. Gas and electric light, with their various
modifiers and intensifiers, have killed all the old ideals. There are no
longer any striking chiaroscural contrasts or strong accentuations. In
the Middle Ages dress and drapery showed depth of folds and recesses
which are absolutely unknown to-day. Now, everything is diffused with
light. Nothing is steady and fixed, and yet objects stand out in painful
relief. The modelling has lost much of its tonal variety, and all
objects vaguely reflect the imprint of all-pervading light. The values
of colour appear bleached and vary incessantly. Our eyes are
perpetually moving in a restless manner from one part to another, and no
longer find any place to rest in the depth of shadows.
Luckily for us, we have been rendered unconscious of these dangers, we
have grown accustomed to them, but their influence on modern painting
has been a most palpable one. Chiaroscural composition underwent a
complete transformation. Saliency of object induced the modern painter
for a time, at the beginning of the last century, to strive solely for
fixed and precise conceptions of form and to utterly neglect the beauty
of light and shade. When he discovered his error, he went to the other
extreme, and not merely softened contours, but blotted them out
completely. At a loss how to meet this difficulty he lost himself in an
intenser and more varied study of illumination, with the aim to reach a
higher pitch of light. Lamplight and firelight effects and the contrasts
of commingling light rays from two, or even three, sources became the
order of the day. Sargent studied the effect of Japanese lanterns on
white dresses in twilight. Harrison tried to fix the play of sunlight on
the naked human body. Dannat experimented with flesh tones and
electrical arclight and magnesium flashlight illumination. Zorn
endeavoured to solve in his Omnibus picture the conflict of various
lights in a glass-encased interior. Degas and Besnard became enchanted
with illumination from below, in the cross lights and the lurid
unnatural lights of the stage, and his disciples introduced the effects
of footlights into interiors by placing the lamp on the floor.
All these studies address themselves most powerfully to the modern mind,
as they depict contemporary conditions. The eye may be offended or even
repelled by unnecessary trivialities at times, but the underlying
aspiration is, after all, the truth. From an æsthetic view-point it is
less satisfactory, as this modern substitute of light and shade
composition, consisting of an opposition of colours, rather than of
masses, does not afford, in the speech of Herbert Spencer, "the maximum
of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue." It contains a discord, a
lack of normal gratification, and this shortcoming, in conjunction with
the deterioration of the crafts, which were replaced by factory labour,
and the hopelessly prosaic aspect of modern dress, as far as colour is
concerned, directed the painter into other fields of investigation. He
realized that nature had remained unchanged, that the colour-symphony of
sea and landscapes, of dawn and sunset, were as beautiful as ever, and
he went out of doors for inspiration. And then, to his great
astonishment, he discovered that the optical sensations afforded by
nature were very similar to those he had experienced in his home life,
also how everything was diffused with light, and forms rendered
uncertain by the vibration of light.
The famous colour harmony of Italian painters, red, green and violet,
which aroused action successively in the whole field of vision without
exhausting it, seemed meaningless. Strange, apparently discordant
combinations of green and blue and yellow, orange and red, which
stimulate only certain portions of the retina at the expense of others,
obtruded themselves upon his optical consciousness. It became apparent
that light does not emphasize, but that it generalizes, and that colours
and tones, although more varied, are less decisive than in the painting
of the Old Masters. The charm of pictorial illusion seemed to have
shifted from the juxtaposition of contrast to the more subtle and less
powerful variety of half tones. It is not so much the richness and
fullness of colour the modern painter strives for, as Raffaelli has
pointed out, but the combination of colours which yield a sensation of
light, which, in a way, is a reflection of our temporary light
conditions. That the Impressionists banished black from their palette
is significant itself.
[Illustration: _Owned by John H. Whittemore_
"L'ANDALUSIENNE."]
Ever since the semi-darkness of the Middle Ages was dispelled, the minds
of painters had been occupied with the invention of a new method of
painting. Chardin and Watteau, who crosshatched and stippled pure
colours in their pastels and water colours, were really the forerunners
of impressionism. Delacroix was the first master-painter who
scientifically concerned himself with light and colour notation, as
Turner (_viz._ Ruskin) introduced the emphasis of the colour of shadows
at the expense of their tones. But not before science came to the
assistance of the painter, was he able to perfect his system of open air
mosaics, of producing tone by the parallel and distinct projection of
pure colours.
And it is Chevreul, Young, Helmholtz and Ogden Rood, who, after
analyzing colour sensations from a physiological viewpoint and tracing
them to their causes, supplied the genius of Manet, Monet and Degas with
a new pictorial revelation of light and colour. The modern style of
painting is a direct outcome of the environment in which we live. With
the decline of candlelight parties the new era was ushered in, and the
kerosene lamp was the last harmonizer of light and darkness. As it went
slowly out of fashion, the reign of half and quarter tones, or, in other
words, a new reign of light, of light transposed into tone, set in.
It set in, however, at the expense of everything else. It is largely
technical, and the representations are photographic, prosaic, crude and
often without the slightest suggestion of sentiment, not even that which
an ordinary scene out of doors produces in an imaginative mind. This,
more than any other course, estranges art from the approval of the
general public.
The subject of an Old Master, although mostly of a religious order and
legible to the ordinary mind, at times may have soared beyond the
ordinary faculties of comprehension, but the object represented
invariably appealed to the sense of sight, as it was painted in such a
way as to create an illusion. The Old Masters succeeded in suggesting on
a flat surface the roundness and actual colouring of things. The modern
painter depicts objects in which the beauty is not always palpable to
the layman, and in a manner which is less convincing, as he suggests
form rather than actually representing it, and adheres most stubbornly
to individual colour interpretation. It needs connoisseurship and
technical knowledge to understand and appreciate the paintings of
to-day. The paintings of a Degas, Besnard or Renoir remain a myth even
to the people who are fond of art. Comparatively few persons are versed
in the thought-transference from colour to sentiment.
Whistler did not believe in the constant mechanical mixture of seven
solar tones, which make the eye perform the work which should be done by
the painter. He tried hard for the dissociation of tones by endeavouring
to translate the flat tints of the Japanese into oil paintings executed
in Western fashion, but was not satisfied with the result.
Living in London, with a view on the Thames, he realized that the
aspects of modern life have turned grey. They have nothing to do with
Oriental embroideries. Our large cities with their smoke and manifold
exhalations (not to speak of communities subjected to the use of soft
coal) have acquired a dust-laden, misty atmosphere. This peculiarity of
city atmosphere, however, to be noticed in London and Paris as much as
in Chicago and Pittsburg, is a wonderful subduer and eliminator of
detail, and should prove a valuable ally in conquering new suggestions
of light effects. This Whistler realized, and he used it to express what
the inner life of things in modern art needed most to express, the
poetry of paint expressed in tone and light. "The study of light _per
se_" as Leon Dabo says, "had become a creed with Monet, Manet and their
followers. Somehow Whistler's contribution to this _naissance_--for it
was a real birth, first successfully carried out by Constable--has been
entirely neglected for the more obvious quality of full sunlight
produced by the so-called Impressionists. Whistler's paintings prove
conclusively that where there is harmony of colour there is vibration of
atmosphere, and, therefore, the illusion of light."
When we stand before the "Mona Lisa" of Leonardo da Vinci and before his
less famous, but almost equally fascinating woman of the Liechtenstein
Gallery, we do not marvel merely at the lifelike representation, which
seems to actually vibrate; but at something evasive and unfathomable
that we find difficult to express in words. We experience something
similar when we contemplate Whistler's "Mother" or some portraits of
modern masters like Blanche, Lavery, enigmatic Khnopff, or the grey men
and women of Carriere, who rise so softly and mistily out of the
background. Although they have not attained the mastership of the former
in the representation of the living, breathing people, there is the
same mysterious mood in their paintings. They seem to quiver with
something that is essentially modern, and cannot emanate alone from the
charm of momentary expression which is one of their main attractions.
The modern figures have a less corporeal effect than those of the
Renaissance; they resemble apparitions which have suddenly taken shape
in the greyness of life only to dissolve again into shadows. This is
more than a technical change, it is a new way of thinking. We concede a
new attribute to these painters and call their achievements the
"psychological style" of painting. Robert Henri's "Young Woman in Black"
is an interesting attempt in this direction.
By this we wish to convey that the figures tell us something of the
inner life, and that the way in which this is accomplished impresses us
like a commentary on their souls. Of course this is nothing new. All the
masterpieces of portraiture, no matter how different technically they
may be, whether clear and sharp or soft and diffused, whether by a
Raphael or a Rembrandt, Titian or Franz Hals, have the faculty to make
us dream and invent some psychical annotation to the figures
represented, but modern life is more analytical. We rejoice in
dissecting our thoughts, sentiments and moods, and some of our foremost
contemporaries, though they may wield their brushes as dexterously as
the Old Masters, concentrate upon the endeavour to reflect specifically
the spiritual qualities and to accentuate its functions as far as it is
possible in paint.
The modern painter is fond of specializing, not only in subject, but
technically, because he lacks the overflowing energy and strength to
conquer all the elements of his profession in one effort. This age, at
least in the upper intellectual strata, has become very skeptical. We
are not concerned so much about divinities and our future state as about
ourselves in the present. Religion no longer furnishes the emotional
staff on which we may lean on our pilgrimage of life, and yet we need
some spiritual support, some science for the soul, and we may look about
for something that may mystify us and lift us above the prose of
every-day existence. And this search is mirrored in the endeavour of
these men who would like to paint enigmatic figures, like "Mona Lisa"
and the woman of the Liechtenstein Gallery.
Conditions change, but not so much that they become entirely extinct.
The possibilities for emotional art are to-day as great as ever.
For portraiture, single figure representation and character delineation
gentle effects capable of subtler gradations are more desirable. They
may be found in many out-of-the-way places. A modern Ribera may find
endless suggestions for new light and shade combinations in an ordinary
cellar, and the picturesque "tavern atmosphere" of a Caravaggio or
Terborg can surely be substituted in some obscure nooks and corners of
our towns. Our living-rooms show a wealth of still life that, by the
play of light, could be turned into beautiful accessories. There is
nothing more gratifying to the eye than a bright, haphazard shimmer on
some objects while the remainder is lost in a vague, picturesque haze.
The student of light and shade will find the range of light is still a
very wide one. The vivid glow of firelight, here flickering brightly,
there vanishing in gloom, will always produce a striking effect. A pale
splendour caressing the human form with vague reflections could be
obtained by light streaming through stained-glass windows. The dazzling
illumination of the hour of sunset, which pales and subdues all objects,
and, concentrated on the human body, makes it look as if it had been
absorbed all in light and radiated it (which Prudhon has attempted and
Henner specialized), may fill our minds with new dreams of vision. Even
the ghostlike rays of shimmering moonlight (as Steichen has shown in
his versions of Rodin's Balzac) may open novel methods to render tone
and form in the broadest and softest manner possible.
Still I do not believe in the garish effects of certain modern painters,
who take special delight in reproducing the flaring vagaries of
artificial light. The trend of such works is towards an affected
æstheticism. They may be fascinating and "stunningly clever" but they do
not ring true. They are at their best only in colour experiments
specially made to startle the beholder. When Elsheimer painted his
"Christ Taken Prisoner," showing the pale light of the moon in the
background, while the nocturnal figures in the foreground are enveloped
by the glare of torches, he ventured upon a problem that was, after all,
logical and true to life. But to place a lamp on the floor merely for
the purpose of throwing interesting diagonal shadows upwards on a
woman's figure, is not far from being an absurdity.
The various aspects of electrical illumination, gaslight, flashlight
effects, searchlight, etc., no doubt can be solved pictorially, but they
should never be applied unless the character of the picture absolutely
demands them.
Tone is the ideal of the modern painter. It is his highest ambition.
It is the powerful subduer of all the incongruities of modern art.
But what painters strive for, in most instances are merely fragmentary
accomplishments. It is not tone in the large sense as the Old Masters
understood it. To Titian and Rembrandt and Velasquez "tone" meant a
combination of all pictorial qualities, the contrast of colour, the
balance of lighter and darker planes, the linear arrangement; all these
together produced tone. They do not sacrifice form or detail, correct
drawing, the physiognomy of the faces and the idea and conception of the
picture to it.
Do not misunderstand me. Tone is desirable; no picture should be without
it. But it is merely one of the elements that enter into the making of a
picture, and not the whole thing. There are light tonalities as well as
dark tonalities. A Renoir is as much in tone as a black-in-black Tissot.
What tonal painters see in tone is merely the appearance of old age. The
Old Masters have become famous, and the public has acquired a certain
predilection for dark-toned pictures. The modern painters try to
reproduce it, overlooking (perhaps wilfully) that the dark tonality is
entirely an artificial product, caused by dirt and dampness, the
chemical action of light, and the gradual change of colour, oil and
varnish.
The Old Masters painted in a low key, but they probably never thought
that some day their pictures would look as they do now. The modern
painters try to produce a quality that has nothing to do with art, they
cater to the taste of certain art patrons that have a liking for
old-looking things.
In portraiture the simplest scheme will always be most certain of
success. Variety is desirable, but no exaggeration or strained effects.
Of all modern painters Whistler and Carrière seem to have excelled in
conquering the modern limitations of light and shade composition and
making the most of them. They have enveloped their figures in
clair-obscure that is uncertain in form, mystic in tendency, but
suggestive of atmosphere, depth and space, some grey or dark interior
filled with struggling shadows, capricious gleams of light and tonal
gradations, tantalizing in their subtlety and power of suggestion.
All sharp lines are dissolved, each detail vanishes with soft delicacy
into the other and their light, falling from some unknown source,
quivers like a soft chord through the twilight.
The "Mother and Child" of Carrière has but little of the robust yet
sweet and seductive charm of the Madonna pictures. Its glimmer of light
is sad and dreamy, as if it were woven out of grey monotonies of
everyday life. And in Whistler's "Sarasate" we see in the plastic, but
solitary light passage, on face and shirt front a symbol of all the
glamour of romance and poetry that light can yield in our prosaic age.
Whistler translated all objects into flat surface planes, and, in that
way, sacrificed more to the realization of tone than any other painter.
His fragmentary visions are almost colourless but never give the
impression of monochrome. Looking at one of his enigmatic figures
receding into vague shadows, a strange association of thought occurs to
me: I see in one of the sunless courtyards of the Escurial the dark
figure of a woman standing near a fountain and holding a red rose in her
hand. At one of the palace windows is seen the proud face of Velasquez,
gazing absent-mindedly upon the scene. And the wind ruffles the flower,
carries one petal after another and scatters them upon the surface of
the water. Is this dark silent woman the personification of Whistler's
muse, and does she tell us that the splendour of light and shade
composition of the Old Masters has faded, that we know nothing of its
fervour that rose from the depths of a more picturesque age, and that
all we can do is to scatter a few colour notes across the darkness of
space? For the jubilant and passionate note is altogether missing in
Whistler's art, though it can claim profundity and some dreaminess.
[Illustration: _Carnegie Art Institute, Pittsburg_
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK: SENOR PABLO SARASATE.]
Light now flits phantom-like across the masterpieces of pictorial
delineation, but it is still the great elixir of art, that will give
life to any scene and animate any object. No special method can be
indicated. Every worker must be his own pioneer and pathfinder. The new
era of light is yet in a primitive stage. It is a lonely art whose
language is understood but by the few, though we have approached the
hour of dawn before the awakening. Life may seem dreary and colourless
to us, yet we should realize that only one beam of light is needed to
change it into a vision of beauty.
To Rembrandt even the Bree-straat in Amsterdam, resplendent in his time
of Oriental culture and Moorish pomp, may have seemed dull and
colourless. He had to create for himself a distant and enchanted realm
from out the prosaic world in which he lived. And so must every
ambitious artist dream himself far away from the grey of everyday life
and construct a poetic world for himself alone.
Light is, after all, objective and merely suggestive. The artist's mind
must serve as some Faustean retort, which will turn these suggestions
into the soft gleams and sparkling shimmers of art. Whistler was one of
the few to accomplish the task.
CHAPTER VI
SYMPHONIES IN INTERIOR DECORATION
William Morris demanded that our entire environment should be beautiful.
Only in moments of superior enjoyment do we realize the significance of
human life, and by a poem, picture or sonata we construct the symbols
that bring us closest to this appreciation. Why then not construct a
candlestick, a chair, the surface of a wall, in such a way that they
might be taken for symbols, to remind us of the existence of our soul?
The candlestick shall no longer be a mere stand and holder for a candle
but a souvenir of reminiscences. That is the philosophical idea that
underlies all interior decoration and furnishing.
As Sheridan Ford so aptly expressed it in an article in "St. Stephen's
Review" in 1889:
"There are in England two new, and in their origin, distinct methods of
interior decoration. Gradually they have coalesced to a degree, although
they will always retain their individual traits and differences.
These two methods may be termed the Whistlerian, and the English
or pre-Raphaelite; the one, spontaneous, fresh--simple, the other,
a revival--complex--reformatory. Through many years, from the
early days of the pre-Raphaelites down to the last meeting of the
Painter-socialists, an outside influence--a personality--has been making
itself felt in London in strange and subtle ways."
The Morris arts and crafts movement believes in patterned design and the
dominant force of the material. Every material speaks its own language,
and we must understand, before we can lend expression to it. When the
actual moment of designing arrives, the artist-artisan should work with
a piece of the material itself before his eyes--wood, stone, iron or
plain silk, linen or wool stuff, according to circumstances. This memory
of nature's forms, dominated by the momentary impression of the
material, with its requirements, capabilities and limitations, would
lead him to a more congenial and workmanlike result than all the
contents of a natural history museum, botanical garden or library. In
the same way as we can give to words a dramatic, epic or lyrical
significance, so has wood, leather and glass their own sphere of
expression. Harmony in every detail is the ultimate result. A room is no
museum, every object must be related to the other, the candlestick must
make a rhyme with the wall-paper, with the woodwork, the hangings, the
table and chairs.
Whistler, on the other hand, was the apostle of Japanese simplicity, of
suggestion rather than realization. He tried to express his own æsthetic
creed, and that consisted of restful expanses of unbroken wall, of
decorative devices and ornamental motifs, individual caprices
accentuated by black, and, finally, by colour. Colour in interior
decoration meant to him the same thing as tone in painting. It reigned
supreme. Our feeling of beauty varies; it may find its expression in a
certain flower, a certain hour of the day or season, in a certain poem
or song or, as it was the case with Whistler, in a certain delicate
colour tint, that would make a room look gay and cheerful. He tried to
bring the sun into the house, even in a land of fog and cloud. Pale
pink, brown, pale turquoise, primrose, saffron, sulphure and
lemon-yellow were his favourite colours. These he endeavoured to
express. It was the gesture of his soul translated into every object and
material.
A colour is like a special metric form, and all lines, and every
combination of tint--the sofa, the lamp, wall-paper--take the place of
stanzas in a finished poem. In such a house we would see mirrors
everywhere reflecting our own personality. Such were Whistler's
creations. They reflected his own face, and echoed his own song.
Whistler arrived at these conclusions early in his life. During his
Stevens-Japanese print period he interested himself a good deal with
decorative schemes. He had painted "The Princess of the Porcelain Land,"
which was purely decorative, and, in a way, served as inspiration for
the Peacock Room, as the design for the latter was really invented to
find a proper environment for the painting.
In a diary of William Michael Rossetti, the ever busy biographers have
found a note referring to six schemes or projects of practically the
same size. It reads: "Whistler is doing on a large scale, for Leyland,
the subject of women with flowers." They were never executed, although
some of the sketches are still in existence. He abandoned decorative
schemes entirely in later years, but became more and more engrossed in
the problems of interior decoration. In later years he intended to paint
a grand decoration with full orchestration that he would call "The
Symphony of Colours--Full Palette." This would have been indeed
interesting, but I fear he went too deep into blacks to have
accomplished it. In most instances he abstained from mural
decoration,--the panels over the chimney-place, and the shutter and
ceiling decoration of the Peacock Room for the Leyland home at Prince's
Gate, London, were his only supreme effort in that direction. They show
the right idea about decorative painting. He agreed with all decorative
painters from Gozzoli to Bob Chanler, that it should be an arrangement
of colours which, within its frame, affords a pleasant visual
entertainment.
There is no intention to give food for thought. The peacocks in blue on
gold and gold on blue relate as little as does an Oriental carpet. He
merely wished to please the eye by depicting them more beautifully than
they were in nature. But why did he select peacocks? Do they not convey
an idea? Figures usually are story-telling symbols, but not necessarily
so; with him they were vehicles of colour, to invent a pattern for their
luminosity. Peacock designs occur frequently in Japanese art. No doubt,
Whistler studied them. There is a certain resemblance, but he
individualized them in his own way. The sharply silhouetted forms of the
birds are a happy invention of luminous colour and interesting design.
The Japanese would have made a more lavish use of gold, that is they
would have left larger spaces untouched by any additional colour.
Blank spaces of gold (or any colour) act in such instances like the
musical silence of a pause between music, they represent the birth of
beauty from luxury. But the Leyland room was overcrowded, with its
elaborate ceiling, bulky chandelier and collection of blue and white
porcelain on walnut shelves, broken by an endless repetition of
perpendicular lines. He could not change the architecture of the place,
so he went to work and decorated the few spaces that were available. To
decorate the inside shutters with a peacock design was a unique
performance, and to cover the moulding of the chandelier and the entire
ceiling with conventionalized peacock feathers, utilizing the eyes of
the feathers as accents, was even more marvellous. In the elegance of
its scheme, and its individual perfection, splendour and restfulness it
has no equal.
[Illustration: SHUTTER DECORATION, PEACOCK ROOM.]
When Whistler moved into houses of his own, he had, like all ambitious
house-owners, the desire to create a comfortable and beautiful home.
None of his houses were ever completely decorated and finished; they had
a look, as Pennell tells us, as if he had just moved in, or was just
moving out; often there were packing cases and trunks about, but as much
as was finished was always beautiful.
The "House Beautiful" or "White House," was a three-storied house with
many windows of various sizes, a green slate roof, bluish-grey door,
Portland stone facings and fantastic wood ornamentation. A queer looking
house, was the verdict of the neighbours, and yet it was rather
unassuming, so that it escaped the attention of the ordinary passer-by.
While various schemes for each room were in his mind, a friend, Mr.
Sutherland, director of the P. O. Company, called one evening in the
spring of 1873 to ask Whistler if he would help him in the decoration of
his home. Whistler entered upon the idea with enthusiasm and prepared
the plans. The novelty of the schemes was first approved of, but, as
they developed, Mr. Sutherland began to doubt their plausibility.
Whistler relieved him from all obligations, and determined that he would
use the ideas in his own home. He went at once to work and three weeks
later gave a dinner to celebrate the event. It was a revelation of
simple delicate colour schemes--everything was artistic from the
mahogany woodwork in the "gold and yellow" room down to the single
flower in some bit of Kaga porcelain. In the room everything was yellow,
gold or brown. The walls were tinted yellow, the cabinet and
chimney-piece in one structure were of a bright yellow mahogany, with
gilt panels. The tiles before it were of a pale sulphur colour. In some
niches there was a display of orange coloured vases. The peacock designs
were seen in some panels, but they were carried out in yellow and gold.
The chairs were covered with yellow velvet, the table had brass legs and
rested on a brown rug.
One may say that Whistler established three simple rules for decoration,
which interpreted in words, might read like this:
First: That a house should be a dainty and complete thing--from the
door-knocker to the ridge tile.
Second: That each room should be restful, with ceiling, walls and floors
so treated as to give a sense of shelter, freedom and completeness,
terminating in the floor at the base.
Third: that pure, tender colours scientifically used give ease and
infinite suggestion, and should be allowed to play about a room without
coming into boisterous contact with another.
Harper Pennington, a friend of Whistler's, has given a humourous but
sympathetic description of the "White House:" "His furniture was limited
to the barest necessities, and, frequently, too few of those." Indeed,
some wit made what he called his "standing joke" about poor Jimmy's
dearth of seats. Once Dick (Corney) Grain said, when shaking hands
before a Sunday luncheon, "Ah! Jimmy, glad to see you playing before
such a full house!" glaring around the studio with his large protruding
eyes in search of something to sit on. "What do you mean?" said
Whistler. "Standing room only," replied the actor. The studio could
boast of only four or five small cane-seated chairs (always
requisitioned for the dining room on Sundays), and the most
uncomfortable bamboo sofa ever made. Nobody, except some luckless model,
sat upon it twice. Never a book or any instrument of music in his room,
nothing that would not constantly be in use, nothing superfluous; all
his cares were centred on the wall and woodwork, painted in graduated
monochromes, of which he held the secret.
The strangest thing about these rooms of his was, that they always
looked complete. There was no space, apparently, for more than he put in
them. So great was the art in his arrangements of colour and a few
pieces of ordinary furniture--a spindle-legged table and three or four
small painted chairs--that it seemed impossible to add so much as a book
without disturbing the harmonious whole. Curtains, a little mirror, one,
two, three at the most, perfectly placed pictures, a vase, perhaps a
pair of them, upon the mantel, and matting on the floor, were literally
all that any room I ever knew him to occupy appeared _able_ to contain.
There was a sense of finish and finality about it which a piano and
stuffed furniture would have disturbed. In the vases, as in two square
hanging pots upon the wall of the dining-room, there were always a few
yellow flowers, and in a huge old china bowl, that formed the
centrepiece of the dining-room table, swam some tiny gold fish--the
whole thing was carefully composed so as to make the "symphony" complete
at those historic Sunday breakfasts.
His various abodes became a topic of conversation, and a place of
pilgrimage, and made Whistler, for a while at least, a recognized leader
in decoration. He developed a style, the influence of which has been
felt all over Europe. The beauty of one colour in the decoration of a
room, the division of space into simple lines and masses, the scarcity
of furniture, leaving large empty spaces, the use of flowers or a few
choice pieces of bric-a-brac, we owe largely to Whistler. The
backgrounds of his "Miss Alexander," "Carlyle" and "The Artist's Mother"
offer vague glimpses into the realm of individualized decoration, and,
in a way, better information about its character than a hundred pages
of explanation.
[Illustration: ARRANGEMENT IN GRAY AND GREEN: MISS ALEXANDER.]
Among the houses that were decorated under Whistler's supervision are
the Aubrey house, Kensington; Carlyle cottage, Chelsea; the home of Mr.
D'Oyly Carte, on the banks of the Thames, the music room of Sarasate in
Paris, for whom it is said, he also designed the furniture, and the
"Pink Palace," where he lived with his favourite model "Maud," in 1885.
Occasionally he may have designed the furniture as a particular favour
to a friend, but it was not his habit. All he did was to give advice or
to make the selection. Now and then he may have made a hasty sketch to
make his idea clear to others, but it is not known that he ever made a
regular design that could have been used by a skilful cabinet-maker to
work from. He merely suggested, and, if conditions allowed, to establish
beauty of proportions. Beauty of design should exist, no matter whether
it be in the vault of the Sistine Chapel, or a writing desk, but colour
is imperative. His "style" consisted of little more than selecting a
special colour scheme. He took pride in mixing the colours, but never
put them on himself. An ordinary house-painter served the purpose just
as well. He looked at a room, decided what parts should be dark or
black, and then proceeded, in his most scientific manner, to find a
colour, delicate and luminous, that would brighten the walls. No doubt,
he laboured under favourable conditions. But we should not forget that
he himself created these conditions, in which his artistic personality
perhaps found its happiest and most characteristic expression.
Exquisite colour and simplicity and the desire to gain the possible
effects of light were the leading characteristics of the Whistler style.
Whistler committed one great error. He invariably preferred beauty to
comfort. He frequently lost sight of the practical, with the result that
use and beauty were not always combined in due proportion. He had little
regard for physical requirements--he himself was always active, he had
no time to lounge, consequently decorative possibilities alone
interested him. It is the same trouble with _L'Art Nouveau_. Although
infinitely superior to the soulless copyism of different styles as
practised by sterling bronze and artistic furniture companies, it lacks
that true artistic feeling for ornamentation, which makes the designer
at once realize the proper limits of his materials and show proper
judgment in the uses to which he puts them. Whistler was so sensitive
to any discord of line or colour, that he, no doubt, would have endured
inconvenience rather than have destroyed the harmony of an effect. Most
of us do not care to exist that way.
A house is built to live in, with as much grace as possible, but
primarily with a feeling of comfort. Most people would prefer a modern
apartment to an old palace at Fiesole. The material demands of the owner
should determine the construction of the house. The American architects
begin to realize this more and more. What principle rules the
construction of a window? The dimensions of the room. The windows are
not made for the street, to be looked at from the outside; they are
there for the room, to distribute light and emphasize any special use
they may be put to. In a parlour, for instance, people are more apt to
look out a window than anywhere else; for that reason the parlour
windows should be wider than in other rooms to enable several people to
look out comfortably at the same time.
A chair is made to sit upon comfortably, not merely to look beautiful.
The most beautiful design in a chair will not condone the torture that
may be caused by a shape that does not adapt itself to the human form.
The chairs in the Sarasate music room were exquisite but too stiff to
allow any repose. Imagine listening to a concert sitting erect, without
being able to stretch out one's limbs. The main reason for not having
any comfortable chairs in his own studio was one of self-protection. It
was his work-room, and he wished to prevent visitors from making it a
hall of gossip. He preferred to have it empty; a promenade to
contemplate the next master stroke on one of his paintings.
When Whistler was forced to give up the "White House," and all its
beautiful contents were dispersed, he was enraged that the succeeding
owner, "Arry" Quilter, took liberties with the facade. Quilter had added
a bay window, and, to Whistler's idea, destroyed the entire effect.
After that he never wanted to look at it again. On one occasion he
expressed his anger in a most amusing manner. "To think of Arry living
in the temple I created," he said. "He has no use for it. If he had any
feeling for the symmetry of things he would come to me and say: 'Here,
Whistler, is your house, take it, you know its meaning, I don't. Take it
and live in it.--But no, he has not sense enough to see that.'"
Harry Quilter, no doubt, got as much enjoyment out of the house as
Whistler did, although in a different way. Extreme sensitiveness in
regard to line, colour and form produces a beautiful result, not unlike
a handsome painting, but I fear it would prove monotonous in the long
run. A beautiful room is like a simple melody, but if the melody has any
striking individuality, we soon tire of it. If the decoration could be
kept entirely neutral the problem could be solved satisfactorily. But
pink and lemon-yellow are not neutral. Not everybody would feel happy in
a blue room decorated with purple fans. Even a woman in a certain gown
would destroy the harmony, and a definite colour seen all the time, even
if unconsciously, would soon disturb our mental serenity. The Whistler
rooms were beautiful when no human being moved in them. They were there
for the photographer, but not for congenial habitation.
I believe most people will agree that the most beautiful bed is the one
in which one can sleep most peacefully; the most beautiful chair the one
which allows perfect relaxation of the body; the most beautiful glass
that which lends itself most gracefully to convey to our lips the
special beverage it is intended for. This may sound unæsthetic, but it
is common sense. Comfort comes first, whenever ordinary living purposes
are concerned. There is plenty of opportunity for the exploration and
exfoliation of beauty, but it should be subordinated to the primary
causes.
Whistler's influence, in my opinion, was most beneficial in the
arrangement of exhibitions. An exhibition of paintings, or any work of
art, is solely an æsthetic venture, and should be harmonious at any
cost. It is just in this that most exhibitions fail. They show the most
incongruous backgrounds, frames of the most incredible malformations,
floors that are either bare or loudly carpeted and pictures that are
hung without the slightest consideration for their colour values. With
the simple use of distemper, matting and muslin Whistler performed
wonders. During his short reign as president of the Society of British
Artists he transformed the Suffolk Street galleries from a barn into a
dignified exhibition hall. Pictures, frames, walls, floors, lighting and
decorations, each element had its due place, the one supplementing the
other, and harmonizing, instead of conflicting with it, as is so often
the case.
Every year saw some fresh assertions of his leadership. He took a great
deal of interest in the arrangement of his own exhibitions, making some
of them occasions for the exploitation of his views in new and original
ways. His initial exhibition in Pall Mall, 1874, where, for the first
time, walls were brought into harmony with the pictures upon them, and
successes in Bond Street, at the Fine Arts Society, and at Dowdswell's,
are accepted facts in the art history of London. Each one of these
exhibitions especially embodied the demonstration of a colour scheme or
problem of decoration. So there came to pass, in their turn, the
arrangement in "Flesh Colour and Grey," the harmony in "Gold and Brown"
and the arrangement in "Yellow and White," and others, equally
characteristic and original.
With scrupulous love of detail, he neglected nothing and devoted unusual
attention to the make-up of the catalogue. The brown-covered paper
catalogue of the exhibition of etchings held at the Fine Art Society
Gallery, in 1883, was issued with the imprint of the artist's home in
Tite Street, Chelsea, and represented his peculiar views of typography
as well as the art of slaying incompetent and hostile reviewers with
their own weapons. After the title of each etching was printed a
quotation from some criticism, under the general motto (on the title
page) "Out of Their Own Mouths Ye Shall Judge Them."
"Prodigious amateur--there are years when Mr. Whistler gives great
promise--In this instance criticism is powerless--Mr. Whistler is
eminently vulgar--General absence of tone--Mr. Whistler has produced too
much for his reputation"--are some of the quotations. The Gallery, on
this occasion, was hung with white and yellow, had yellow matting on the
floor, yellow chairs and yellow flower pots. The attendants at the door
were in yellow and white livery, while the artist wore yellow socks, and
his assistants yellow cravats.
For the catalogue of the exhibition of paintings held in 1884, Whistler
prepared a page of "propositions" called "L'Envoie," which we quote
elsewhere, and he repeated in the catalogue of "his heroic kick in Bond
Street" in 1892, the use of quotations from the critics, for each title
entry. The mottoes on this occasion were: "The Voice of a People" and a
sentence from the speech of the General Attorney at the Whistler v.
Ruskin trial, "I do not know when so much amusement has been offered to
the British public as by Mr. Whistler's pictures." The artist triumphed,
the success of the exhibition proved the futility of the early
judgments. A perusal of this queer document, even to-day, elicits a
smile; it is delicious humour and at the same time a splendid assertion
of artistic power and self-adulation.
The first New York exhibition of work by Whistler was held in the old
Wunderlich Gallery, on Broadway, in March, 1889, when sixty-two "Notes,"
"Harmonies" and "Nocturnes" were shown, with some accessories of yellow
hangings, flowers, furniture and footmen imitation of the London
exhibition of 1883. But this sort of thing is rarely successful in this
country. It is apt to be misinterpreted, and somehow looks out of place.
One of the finest achievements of the painter is the frame which rightly
bears his name. The official exhibitions still insist on the usual
monotony of gilt frames, and the painters seem to have neither any
particular inclination nor the opportunity to create frames of lovely
forms and well-balanced repeating patterns of their own. The
frame-makers and art-dealers are masters of the situation, and their
interests are strictly mercenary ones.
"Attractive enough at first sight, hopelessly inartistic on further
inspection," is the verdict which one has to give of the average frame
of to-day. Only a few of our painters oppose the mechanically
manufactured frames. They have their frames specially designed for each
picture, Stanford White having been the designer of quite a number of
them. Their frames are wide and flat, without corners and centrepieces,
the repeating pattern is generally a simple, classic ornament, with a
tendency toward parallel lines. The architectural designs, with Greek
columns in the upright sides, are rather heavy and less recommendable.
Whistler's frames, which served as inspiration to all these later-day
designers, were conceived in simple planes, broken with parallel grooves
that were restful to the eye as sole ornamentation. They were original
inventions, free from any taint of imitation. The gaudy burnished gold
effect was substituted by pale gold and bronze that could be tinted and
glazed according to the principal colour note of the pictures the frame
was designed for. They are so simple that it is difficult to improve
their design. But he did not make them for general use, he merely
suggested to other painters the advantageousness of designing their own
frames, as is now largely customary.
[Illustration: EAGLE WHARF (ETCHING).]
Whistler has performed a brave deed. If he had done nothing else but to
improve our taste in the arrangement of exhibitions he would be
remembered for many years. He has done far more. He has set up the big
ideal of simplicity. His eccentricities and harmonies of decoration may
not live. There are many men working on the same problem all over the
Western hemisphere, and his peculiar style will undergo many
modifications and improvements, but we should never forget that he was
one of the first who opened our eyes to a practicable and inexpensive
way of beautifying our home and everyday life.
CHAPTER VII
VISIONS AND IDENTIFICATIONS
Although remarkably sure, efficient and successful in various branches
of art, Whistler has to be ranked primarily as a figure painter. In
these efforts centre his greatness. He is, however, only a figure
painter in a modified sense. We look in vain for large and elaborate
compositions. He achieved his fame as a portrait and single figure
painter.
It is strange that a man who had the science of painting at his finger
ends should limit himself to single figures. Perhaps he knew his
limitations, or, the limitation of his peculiar view-point as to what
painting should be and could accomplish. Possibly he went too far in his
elimination. Who can say? An artist must be true to his own convictions,
and the public and critics must accept, and, in time, learn to
appreciate them. Analysis of an artist's work is interesting only as far
as it helps one to find the right view-point for contemplation.
Whistler, of course, had no use for ordinary portraiture, as it has been
practised for centuries. He felt, no doubt, that the time for
idealization as well as realistic interpretation of likenesses had
passed. No painter can surpass Van Dyke in the elegant delineation of
men and women, or Franz Hals in the representation of instantaneous
expression. Whistler wanted a characteristic attitude that expressed in
a simple pose or movement an entire personality. But the purely
technical problem fascinated him even more, to express himself
forcefully in black and dull colours, to paint broadly and yet so
delicately that no brushwork became visible, and to create the illusion
of atmosphere and space around the human form.
His first picture of importance (started in 1859), "At the Piano," was
also the first true Whistler, not only the Whistler we admire and
cherish to-day but the Whistler who has exercised an influence on modern
painting and who will live as one of the prominent figures in the
history of art. I have rarely seen a modern interior treated with more
charm and simplicity. A woman, apparently Lady Haden, in a quaint black
old-fashioned gown, is seated at the piano, from which she seems to
elicit some vague melancholy chords, while a little girl in white, in
a pensive attitude, stands opposite her, in the curve of the instrument.
The dark silhouette of the mother is beautifully balanced by the white
form of the little girl. There is an astonishing number of horizontal
lines in the composition, but somehow they are not noticed, at least
they do not offend the eye. I believe the diagonal tendency of the
figures counteracts all other lines. One peculiarity of Whistler's
interiors and backgrounds is that they nearly always represent a
straight wall. He rarely indulged in perspective arrangements. His aim
was breadth and simplicity, and he avoided all cheap pictorial effect.
Technically, it still shows the Stevens' influence--it could almost pass
for a genre picture--but in poetical conception and the suggestion of a
mystic atmosphere it already predicts all the accomplishments of the
artist's prime.
[Illustration: AT THE PIANO.]
In his earlier career Whistler occasionally made use of more elaborate
accessories, as in his "Little White Girl," "The Princess of the
Porcelain Land," and the "Woman in White." The latter I consider one of
his weakest compositions. The figure is rather stiff and too high up in
the picture. The carpeted floor looks as though it were sloping. The
bottom of the dress is too distinct. The same could be said of the
entire contour, the lines are not sufficiently graceful to permit such
clearness of line. Also as a painting of a white figure on a white
background it is not unsurpassed. "Katherine Emmerich," by Gabriel Max,
at the Pinakothek, Munich, and the Raffaelli's "Sleeping Woman," in the
Wilstach Gallery, Philadelphia, treat the same theme but are technically
superior.
Whistler developed slowly. Only gradually he learned to avoid detail as
much as possible, and only occasionally accentuated it here and there,
as a note of contrast to the larger planes. The years 1870-90 were the
most active and important years of his career. Nearly all his portraits,
those of Frederick Leyland, Florence Leyland, Miss Alexander, Rose
Corder, Sarasate, Sir Henry Irving as Philip II, The Fur Jacket, Lady
Archibald Campbell, The Artist's Mother, Carlyle, Theodore Duret, Mme.
Cassatt, Mrs. Huth, Lady Meux, etc., were painted in that period.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York_
SIR HENRY IRVING AS PHILIP II.]
All these later pictures were painted under the ban of Velasquez. In
Whistler's paintings Velasquez's art was revived and rejuvenated. He
repeats the same inspirations but in an etherealized, modernized and
individualized manner. Whistler was triumphantly himself.
There is much conjecture as to how Whistler acquired his knowledge of
Velasquez. Joseph Pennell claims that Whistler never went to the Prado
in Madrid. Duret tells us, that during a trip to Spain in 1882, he
intended to go to Madrid, but on the way was fascinated by the scenery
around Guethary (north of Biarritz) to such an extent that he prolonged
his stay until it was time to return, without having crossed the
Pyrenees. Others, with a quizzical mien, say that he might have gone
without letting anybody know of it. It is hardly credible that he did
not see the "Dwarfs," the "Spinners," the "Mercury and Argus," the
"Maria Theresa," "La Meninas," "Æsop," the "Menippus" and the "Surrender
of Breda."
However it really matters little. He had seen the portraits of the
Hermitage at an early age, and was thoroughly acquainted with the
various portraits of Philip II at the London National Gallery. In this
age of handbooks one can study Gozzoli in a New York garret. Of course a
trip to Florence might prove profitable, but the right man, with the
proper amount of imagination, knows no obstacle. His intuition will help
him to get thoroughly imbued with any subject he is bent upon knowing.
The portraits are all single figure studies, with a plain or simple
background. They do nothing. They merely convey the charm of a
personality as seen in an arrangement of colour. Whistler was a keen
observer of facial expression and gesticulation and still more so of
that other no less telling kind of expression, which depends upon our
general bearing, and upon the way we move our limbs and body while we
are trying to convey our thoughts and intentions to our neighbours. But
this was not the principal theme, as it is of so many portrait painters.
To him the very soul of art was elimination: to leave out all that could
be left out. He realized that he could not proceed in the elimination
process as gaily and liberally as in his nocturnes. He needed a more
convincing sense of form, a certain regard for detail--no matter how
broadly rendered--and a feeling for accurate line. This fragmentary
representation of a human being requires the keenest artistic feeling,
to know exactly when one has to stop in the process of reducing the
multiplicity of nature to simple forms, of discarding superficial traits
of the figure and retaining only the essential ones. For elimination is
only half the game; selection makes up the rest. The sureness with which
Whistler stops just upon the border line proves his genius. However
vague and enveloped his line may have become, it has never been pushed
beyond the point where it falls into meaningless and spiritless
formlessness.
Whistler's portraiture may be summed up as a never-ceasing study to
express a human personality in the subtlest way imaginable. At bottom of
all that he creates, there lies the desire to make his figures betray
their character, emotions, and their whole personality by means of a
tonal vision.
In the portrait of Frederick Leyland, the "Medici of Liverpool" (painted
1873), Whistler, for the first time, introduced the plain background
without accessories, endeavouring to subordinate it to the figure. In
the portrait the figure occupies the entire length of the canvas, and
yet is enveloped in atmosphere. I believe this is largely due to the
vagueness of outline and the accentuation of the principal points of the
human form by touches of light, as the headlights on the silver buckle
of the shoe, the hand on the hip and the gray overcoat over the left
arm. The blacks in this picture have a marvellous quality. The painting
of a black evening suit against a pitch black background is one of the
masterpieces of modern technique, over which future ages will not cease
to marvel. Also the shadow on the grey floor helps. The pose is dignity
itself, but it seems to me that the artist did not quite succeed in
carrying out his own ideal. The figure makes the impression as if it
were stepping out of the picture, like a Rubens.
The same problem occupied him for years. He succeeded much better in the
"Rose Corder" and "The Fur Jacket;" and in the "Lady Archibald
Campbell," also called the "Yellow Buskin," he actually solved the
problem. The picture is at the Wilstach Gallery, Philadelphia, and
everybody who has seen it will realize, or feel, at least, that the
figure is represented as if actually moving in space.
Most of his pictures were painted in ordinary rooms, without a top
light, partly, no doubt, because he wanted to paint his sitters under
natural, not artificial conditions. Also the "Rose Corder" portrait,
painted in 1876, carries out this sensation. This portrait, which
was purchased by Richard A. Canfield from its former owner, Graham
Robertson, is entitled "An Arrangement in Black and Brown." The
differentiation of brown in the hair, fur, felt hat, feather and
floor are so subtle and beautiful, that it would be almost impossible
to go any further in the exploitation of one colour. The person who
can appreciate the subtleties of these cool, almost neutral colours,
appreciates Whistler. It was his main ambition, even to that extent
that he wished the beholder to know of his intention. And that is
no doubt the main reason why he called his portraits "Arrangements
and Harmonies," even as other artists call their portraits
"Interpretations," and their sculptured busts "Versions." Titles
are really of no importance. They are, at the best, only annotations,
but, as long as they are deemed necessary, they ought to give a vague
suggestion of the subject matter or reveal the technical aim of the
painter. Whistler's titles are frequently too long, but they generally
convey some direct and valuable information to the beholder.
[Illustration: _Owned by Richard A. Canfield_
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND BROWN: MISS ROSE CORDER.]
The "Florence Leyland" portrait, painted in 1873--at The Brooklyn Museum
of Art and Sciences,--is also much liked by painters. It always seemed
to me a trifle dismal in tone. The greys have a muddy look and the
background is too black and opaque. It is a study in greys and blacks.
The dress, the floor, and the feather of the hat are grey. The hat
itself, the gloves and the bow are black. Even the handkerchief and the
white ruffles that fall over the gloves are grey. The design is elegant
and visible, but swallowed up in the colour. Its success or failure
depends upon your psychological appreciation of colours. If you like
that particular combination you will admire the picture, and otherwise
you will not, and no argument will persuade you to accept it as a
masterpiece.
Whistler's unusually low key in the majority of his portraits strikes us
as peculiar, even to this day. There are no gold, rose and mauve flesh
tints of a Titian to be found on his canvases. "There is no bloom of
flesh which emulates the gleam of a pearl or the luminous grain of a
camelia." But the fault-finding is largely the effect of our being
accustomed to high-keyed portraiture. Whistler explained this, in his
drastic manner, in an article in the London World, July, 1886, which we
quote in full:
"The notion that I paint flesh lower in tone than it is in nature is
entirely based upon the popular superstition as to what flesh really
is--when seen on canvas; for the people never look at nature with any
sense of pictorial appearance--for which reason--by the way--they also
never look at a picture with any sense of nature, but unconsciously from
habit, with reference to what they see in other pictures.
"Now in the usual 'picture of the year' there is but one flesh that
should do service under all circumstances, whether the person painted be
in the soft light of the room or in the glare of the open. The one aim
of this unsuspecting painter is to make his man stand out from the
frame--never doubting that on the contrary, he should really, and in
truth absolutely does, stand within the frame--and at a depth behind it
equal to the distance at which the painter sees his model, and nothing
could be more offensively inartistic than this brutal attempt to thrust
the model on the hitherside of this window. Lights have been heightened,
until the white of the tube alone remains--shadows have been deepened
until black alone is left. Scarcely a feature stays in its place, so
fierce is its intention of 'firmly' coming forth; and in the midst of
this unseemly struggle for prominence, the gentle truth has but a sorry
chance, falling flat and flavourless and without force. Whereas, could
the people be induced to turn their eyes but for a moment, with the
fresh power of comparison, upon their fellow creatures as they pass in
the gallery, they might be made dimly to perceive, though I doubt it, so
blind is their belief in the bad, how little they resemble the impudent
images on the wall! how 'quiet' in colour they are, how grey and low in
tone. And then it might be explained to their riveted intelligence how
they had mistaken meretriciousness for mastery and by what methods the
imposture had been practised upon them."
People on the whole prefer brightness to æsthetic gloom, and refuse to
accept the unadulterated truth. "A beautiful picture! But I would not
like to see my wife or mother painted that way," is the general verdict
at a Whistler exhibition. And it includes people who should know better.
Do not even learned critics excuse the low-keyed, ash grey tints of
Velasquez faces by asserting that he wished to symbolize the doom of
Spanish feudalism by their paleness? Ridiculous! A proud Spanish
cavalier himself, such a thought would never have entered his head. He
painted them with a bloodless enervated complexion, because they had
that kind of complexion and because he, as a realistic painter, objected
to any idealizing process.
It can, however, be safely stated that Whistler frequently went too far
in his search for dark tonalities. But there was a reason for it. No
primary colour is agreeable with black. If black is the favourite colour
he must exclude yellow, red, and blue or paint them exceedingly low as
Tissot has done in his "Prodigal Son" series. Yellow is the easiest
colour to manage, as black impoverishes its tone. The secondary colours,
like orange, green, and violet, lend themselves more readily to any
scheme where black furnishes the prominent note, but they must be dull,
obscure and possess no brilliancy. White, on the other hand, as Whistler
so fully realized in his "Lady Meux, No. 1," will always produce by its
extreme difference a harmony of contrast.
[Illustration: ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND WHITE: LADY MEUX (NO. 1).]
The most suitable colours for a combination with black are the neutral
colours, like grey and brown, or delicate tints, like pink and olive,
russet and citrine. At these conclusions every student of the harmony
and contrasts of colour must naturally arrive. And Whistler conquered
his knowledge by actual experiments. It was no whim. As long as he
favoured black he could not change his colour schemes. His colouring had
to be kept cool and the few tones of luminous colours that he introduced
had to be broken and neutralized. The scientific facts underlying his
colour moods should answer all futile questions of why he selected such
deep and sombre colour combinations. We all realize that he is no
colourist in the sense of Memling, Pinturicchio, Titian, Rubens,
Fragonard, Delacroix, Makart or Roybet, he does not even show us as
much variety as Constable or Israels or an Impressionist.
I say Impressionist, because an Impressionist's canvas can be deprived
of colour (and how many are) as much as any black-in-black arrangement
of a Tissot or Ribot. The high key does not save a picture from being
colourless. Colour means the full use of the palette, green, blue, red,
and yellow, on one canvas as distinct sensations and not modified into a
general tint. The majority of Impressionists are tonalists not
colourists. Franz Hals and Velasquez were fond of black and greys but
rarely lacked the sense of conveying a delicate colour impression.
Whistler, who, in his portraits is a great tonalist but never a
colourist, displays the same faculty in his best work, but in some
instances his subtle touch seems to have forsaken, him, and the result
was a dull tonality as in his "Florence Leyland." A similar colour
scheme but of great charm is represented in "La Belle Américaine" (the
only picture that in subject matter bears any relation to America). The
grey tight-fitting gown and the black boa around the neck in conjunction
with the assertive and yet so nonchalant pose have a singular charm. As
soon as the outlines of a figure are too much obliterated the charm of
colour seems to vanish. Colour alone cannot hold it. It demands form to
balance it. Whistler said that painting was every bit as much a science
as mathematics. I fear at times he considered it too much a science, at
least as far as his colour was concerned. He painted figures, indoors,
so low in tone that he could have added a streak of real sunshine at its
proper value to the picture. If his darkest canvases grow darker still
with age, they will be almost indistinguishable. But his scientific
attitude rarely played him false in composition.
Having painted only single figures, it has been doubted whether he had
any extensive knowledge of figure composition. This seems to be a futile
question. It is my contention that he limited himself to one figure
representation, because he knew all about "Old Master" composition.
He wanted one big total effect and did not see how it could have been
reached, or had been ever reached by anybody except by one single
figure. He had nothing in common with the representation of history,
legend or myth and much less of genre, realism of the gutter, or
descriptive painting. He wanted to represent modern men and women in the
costume of to-day. So he chose the single standing or seated figure.
Why did he never paint a group! Perhaps he had found it impossible to
obtain in a more elaborate composition the result that he cherished
most. A painter must paint from the model, to approach any degree of
verity. A Monticelli may "fake" or paint from imagination, but his
colour masses are a different proposition than life-size figures. The
fact must be before one's eyes to render them accurately. One figure in
modern costume offers such facts in a natural manner. An elaborate group
can be secured only with difficulty, and will never look quite natural.
Whistler knew his strength, and did not waste superior energy for a less
satisfactory result. This was scientific restraint.
And how he controlled the various forms of representation. He invariably
chose the most favourable position. A standing figure offers the widest
scope of characterization when shown in a full front view. Nearly all
his men, Sarasate, Duret, and Irving are drawn in that position. But a
seated figure is shown to the best advantage in a clear profile, every
student of composition must arrive at the conclusion, and there was
nothing else to do but to paint his "Mother" and "Carlyle" in that
attitude. Women on the other hand are more picturesque in outline, also
look well, standing, in profile with slightly turned face, viz.,
"Rose Corder," "Miss Alexander," "The Yellow Buskin," "The Fur Jacket,"
"Mrs. Huth," "Lady Meux No. 2." Also in the delineation of the human
face he preferred the simple full-face view, with just a slight shift to
the right or left to show the line of the nose. The three-quarter view
is undoubtedly more picturesque, and when he painted small heads, among
them his own, he frequently used it. In the larger portraits he wanted
dignity, breadth, and simplicity and he sacrificed everything to that
effect.
[Illustration: _Wilstach Gallery, Philadelphia_
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK: LADY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL (THE YELLOW BUSKIN).]
The portraits of Miss Cecily Henrietta Alexander (painted in 1872), and
Mr. Theodore Duret (painted in 1883), show perhaps in the clearest way
that he always worked on the same problem. They are, one may say, the
uniting link between the Japanese period and the "Carlyle" and "The
Artist's Mother," his most finished and perfect work. They have more
colour and grace than most of his pictures, and show the figures with
some accessories. Both linger in one's mind as a vision of select
refinement.
Little Miss Alexander, with her plumed hat in her hand and her white
dress relieved by grey and black accents against a general background,
depicts a "pose" such as the painter seldom indulged in. There is a
flavour of aristocratic coquetry, a flavour of Gainsborough and Boldini
in this attitude, an attribute that in this instance is as important to
the picture as the unusual colour scale. It took him years to finish
this picture, and nobody can appreciate how many weary hours of anguish
it cost the little model. More than once it reduced her to tears. One
day as she was entering the studio she met Carlyle, who was sitting also
for his portrait. "Puir lassie! Puir lassie!" he said. But Whistler had
no pity. He had but little consideration for his sitters or models; he
forgot their presence as soon as he became entangled in the intricacies
of his technique.
The Duret on the other hand shows superior characterization. It may be
because the figure is more clearly silhouetted, the outlines of the
gaunt figure are as plain as they can be. The painter tried to brighten
up the black suit problem with a light background and pink domino. The
strange combination of an awkward shape, with almost a touch of
brutality in its make-up, and the gay insignia of an opera ball, the
domino and red fan, arouse a feeling of grotesque drollery, and yet it
is all so forbiddingly proud that one is strongly fascinated by the
canvas.
One of the most important portraits that compete with the Leyland,
Duret and Miss Alexander is the "Arrangement in Black:--Portrait
of the Senor Pablo de Sarasate," painted about 1884.
Here we have the true Whistler atmosphere, the blurred contour of the
violinist's figure, which melts into the background without losing the
form, the elimination of all unnecessary details and accessories, and
the concentration of light on the face, shirt-front, hands and cuffs. It
is astonishing how few bright planes there are in most of Whistler's
portraits. In the "Sarasate" the lighted planes scarcely occupy
one-thirtieth part of the picture. The rest is all darkness, except the
vague shimmer on the floor, suggesting the footlight on the platform of
a concert hall. The light floor is one of the leading characteristics of
his single standing figures. It helps to suggest space. There is depth
in the background; it is not opaque like most backgrounds but vibrant
with subtle differentiations of values. The figure is standing in space.
One might think at first that this is brought about by the smallness of
the figure.
Joseph Pennell says that "what Whistler was trying to do was to paint
the man on a shadowy concert platform as the audience saw him."
Sarasate is intended to look small, less than life-size, as he would
appear upon the concert stage. I do not agree with this. I have heard
Sarasate play in Europe and America but never saw him on a shadowy
platform. To me the conception is a much bigger one. This is not the
Sarasate of ordinary life, nor is it the one we know from the concert
hall. The artist has attempted to suggest the whole atmosphere that
surrounds the life of musical genius. And he accomplished it by
introducing a male figure in an ordinary dress-suit with a shimmering
shirt front, the outlines of which are lost in vibrant emptiness. Only
the violin and bow occupy a certain prominence. "All is balanced by the
bow," as Whistler remarked to Sidney Starr.
The figure always seemed to me a trifle small. I personally prefer the
Leyland size, as it is more dignified. It does not seem logical to
sacrifice beauty and breadth to a mere illusion.
The whole tonal school and pictorial photography in particular have been
influenced by the "Pablo Sarasate," now at the Carnegie Art Institute,
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. It gives unparalleled joy to the followers of
dark tonalities. As usual the imitators--painters as well as
photographers--have exaggerated the extreme rather than normal aspect of
the painter's art.
For what is most to be admired technically in Whistler is the frugality,
the thinness of his brush work, that, despite the low pitch and flatness
of its colour tints, reveals an astounding variety, subtlety and
virility, a vibrancy that seems to radiate from the canvas. For
unobtrusiveness of paint Whistler has few rivals. In comparison with him
Monet seems a plebeian and Sargent a sleight of hand performer. He
combines the fanaticism of a perfect technique with the search for truth
and a desire to create new sensations, and expresses our breathless
modern life, with all its intricate moods. His art revels in the realms
of imagination unknown to Manet's realism, and Zorn's and Sargent's
pyrotechnical displays of technique look barbarous in comparison to
Whistler's smooth, fluid, unerring brushwork, which masters all the
optical illusions of this world with wizard-like dexterity.
He created a style for himself, and his space and colour arrangements
have exerted a deep and lasting influence on modern painting. Whether he
is as great a painter as some critics make him--whether he is as "big"
as Franz Hals, for instance, is still a matter of discussion. He will
always live in the history of art as being the first man who combined
the beauties of Eastern design with the principles of Western art. The
mysterious atmosphere of some of his canvases (from which solid forms
emerge or recede into), is a poetic translation of Japanese
suggestiveness--which does not care to create an illusion, but rather
suggests it. Whistler in his portraits was not an initiator of a new art
like Monet in his landscapes. He was the last and most perfect of an old
school. He merely pushed to their extreme consequence the principles
which all great painters since Velasquez have championed. He followed
more closely what one might call the thematic development of tone, and
discerned more plainly the significance and mystery that lie hidden in
blurred objects.
The portrait of the æsthete, Count Robert de Montesquiou de Fezensac,
who honoured this shore with a visit (painted in 1890-91), was one of
the last pictures of this series. Whistler undertook several portraits
of this peculiar, high-strung personality but finished only one. He
explained "that it was impossible to produce the same masterpiece twice
over--as difficult as for a hen to lay the same egg over twice." The
pose is one of _hauteur_ as becomes the author of "Les Hortenses
Bleus." He wears a dress-suit, and a dark overcoat with a grey lining is
thrown over his arm while the other arm thrusts forth a slender
cane-like sword. As it is so frequently the case with Whistler's
arrangement, it is more a play with colour than a character delineation.
A character delineation plus tone is surely more admirable than mere
tonality or mere character delineation. In his "Leyland," "Mother,"
"Duret," and "Carlyle" he accomplished both. In this one he only
excelled in one. I also fail to see why he called it "Black and Gold,"
as I cannot discover the slightest suggestion of gold. It is brown and
black. There is little use in reviewing each of his arrangements
separately as they all carry out the same principle.
[Illustration: _Owned by Richard A. Canfield_
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND GOLD: COMTE DE MONTESQUIOU.]
In his two, perhaps, most important pictures, which are generally
conceded to be his masterpieces, his "Carlyle" and "The Artist's
Mother," both arrangements in black and grey, the painter is a trifle
more precise in line. He depicted, as background, actual walls of a room
and made an unusual excursion to the domain of space arrangement. Had he
at the time arrived at the conclusion that a deep sentiment, no matter
how vague, as that of a great philosopher and an adorable woman, can be
rendered successfully by illusion rather than suggestion!
The "Carlyle" was exhibited as early as 1877, and purchased after many
weary negotiations by the Glasgow City Gallery in 1891. It is a
masterpiece of characterization, of tone and space composition. It is a
most formidable object lesson to any portraitist. Notice how purely
simple and well balanced the composition of "Carlyle" is, how all the
details of dress have been eliminated, how the outline has been
accentuated against the background, how naturally the figure is seated,
and how well it has been placed in space. There is an atmosphere around
the figure. One feels that the person is seated in a room.
[Illustration: _City Art Gallery, Glasgow_
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND GRAY: THOMAS CARLYLE.]
The same can be said of the composition in the portrait of "The Artist's
Mother," at the Luxembourg Gallery, Paris. It was first exhibited at the
Royal Academy in London. In the season of 1882 it appeared in America,
and then was shown at the Paris Salon in 1888. It was also seen in
Munich, and was finally purchased by the French Government in 1891. The
simple pose, the delicate way of handling detail in the lace cap and the
hands, the masterly space arrangement, produced largely by the
rectangular curtain and the silhouette of the figure, the fine sense of
values, and the clever way in which he utilizes a few frames to break
the monotony of the background all have been commented upon a hundred
times. No modern painting has been more talked about and more frequently
imitated than this one, but none of the adaptations has reached or
surpassed its "pathos and tender depth of expression." Technically it is
perfect.
It is not the technique, however, which principally interests us in the
picture. Just as in his "Sarasate," Whistler attempted in his "Mother"
to give us the whole atmosphere that surrounds a personality. Old Mrs.
Whistler was a stern Presbyterian and her religious views must have been
trying to her son. Yet "Jimmy," though he used to give a queer smile
when he mentioned them, never in any way complained of the old lady's
strict Sabbatarian notions, to which he bowed without remonstrance. This
differentiation of character between mother and son explains much of the
rigid Quaker-like and yet so sympathetic pose of the picture.
The artist does not merely represent his old mother. He endowed the old
woman, sitting pensively in a grey interior, with one of the noblest and
mightiest emotions the human soul is capable of--the reverence and calm
we feel in the presence of our own aging mother. And with this large
and mighty feeling, in which all discords of mannerisms are dissolved,
and, by the tonic values of two ordinary dull colours, he succeeded in
writing an epic, a symphony domestica, of superb breadth and beauty--a
symbol of the mother of all ages and all lands, slowly aging as she sits
pensively amidst the monotonous colours of modern life. Nothing simpler
and more dignified has been created in modern art.
[Illustration: _Luxembourg Gallery, Paris_
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND GRAY: THE ARTIST'S MOTHER.]
CHAPTER VIII
IN QUEST OF LINE EXPRESSION
"Artist, thou art king! Art is the true empire! When thy hand has drawn
a perfect line, the cherubims themselves descend to delight themselves
in it as in a mirror," wrote Mérodack Peladan, in his preface to the
Catalogue of the Salon de la Rose-Croix (1892). He expressed a great
truth, that macabre and cabalistic poet-artist.
There is nothing more exquisite, more enjoyable, perhaps, to the art
lovers than a perfect line. Pure line expression, as it is found in
Dürer, Harunobu, Raphael, and Ingres, is a pleasure apart from all other
pictorial representations. It is more intellectual and more remote from
all sensuous pleasure than colour, tone, light or shade. It is a
language of itself which enables the artist to convey an abstract
impression of his individuality.
And no medium expresses line in as pure and unadulterated a fashion as
etching. It makes the most of it. Etching is the true worship of linear
expression. In all other mediums there is a slight desire to hide line,
it merely serves as an accessory. In etching it reigns supreme. There
are no obstacles to the etching needle except incompetence. It
translates every wish of the artist, the slightest accent or deviation
with unerring precision and vitality. The Japanese, no doubt, achieved
the greatest mastery of the _drawn_ line that has ever been known to
history. Only the line form of the Greek competes with it. The Japanese
artists revelled in line expression, and it passed through all possible
variations, from the sweep of Tanyu's brush and the classic curve of
Harunobu to the angular Dürer-like twist of Hokusai. But even their
line, unless made by the brush, cannot rival in virility, delicacy and
precision the line of a master etcher.
In his paintings Whistler sacrificed line too much. He felt that he had
to find a medium in which he had absolute freedom to satisfy his desire
and so he alighted upon etching. A draughtsman so sure of himself, so
adroit at realizing by simple contrasts of black and white all the
effects of which that austere, monochromatic medium is capable of, did
not, one supposes, find himself unprepared to use the needle, and,
indeed, at the first attempt, Whistler proved himself a successful
etcher. True enough, his earliest work, like "La Vieille aux Loques,"
"La Marchande de Moutarde," "La Cuisine," and "La Mère Gérard," betrays
a keen sense of the beauty of material; but they are, after all,
conventional productions and show a slight influence of Rembrandt's
etchings and the Little Dutch Masters. They are attempts at realistic
picture-making, and, no matter how broadly the objects are conceived and
carried out, look spotty. The light and shade division could be more
scientific, and the tonality consequently a finer one. Too many little
things fill out the pictorial scheme. He still worked for the effect of
dignified completeness and had not yet learned to apply his later sense
of elimination. The certainty and freedom of his draughtsmanship is
always admirable. There is no academic pedantry in his drawing and no
laborious effort. The beholder is charmed by its fascinating
expressiveness and delightful flexibility. His perspective views and
figure subjects convey an impression of unhesitating knowledge of form
and contour and of an exact understanding of subtleties of modelling.
They show no struggle with difficulties of statement; everything seems
to come right, as a matter of course, and to fit together naturally
without any deliberate intention on his part.
[Illustration: "LA VIEILLE AUX LOQUES" (ETCHING).]
It was in 1855-58, during a trip to Alsace Lorraine with Delonney, an
artist friend, when he made his first attempts at etching. A few dated
prints like the "Scene in Alsatian Village" and "Street at Saverne" of
this period are highly treasured by collectors, and pronounced as good
as any that came after. A few years later, in the sixties, he took up
the process more seriously and remained its ardent disciple ever
afterwards. In the eighties he devoted more time to his etchings,
pastels and water colours than to larger paintings. His fastidious love
for rare and picturesque subjects made him select a number of favourite
sketching grounds. They were the Thames embankments, of which he never
tired, the French towns of Tours, Bourges and Loches, also Venice, and
the Netherlands. Of course, like every true artist, he etched everything
that appealed to him. There are numerous London and Paris sketches,
scenes from Ajaccio and Algiers, and many figure compositions, character
studies and portraits. But his French, Thames, Belgium, Holland and two
Venice series are probably the most interesting from a collector's point
of view, as they combine in a more pronounced manner direct
Whistlerian methods with the quest of line expression.
[Illustration: STREET IN SAVERNE (ETCHING).]
His first designs of the Thames series were made in 1859. Some few
themes recur with many variations, such as the battered shop-fronts of
Chelsea, "The Pool," the London bridges, the barges on the river, and
the wharfs, warehouses and factories, like "Price's Candle Works." A few
years later he made a trip through the northern part of France, and one
of the finest results was the "learned, spirited" "Hôtel de Ville at
Loches."
In 1879 he made his first trip to Venice, stayed fourteen months and
made forty-four etchings during the time, including "Little Venice,"
"San Biagio," and "The Garden." In later years Holland attracted him
almost as much as the city of the Adriatic. It is interesting to note
his absolute disdain of literary associations. To him Venice was not, as
to Heine, the city of Shakespeare. When he crossed the Rialto and
Piazzetta he did not hear the voice of Shylock lamenting for his
daughter, nor did he conjure up splendid visions of decayed power, as
did Ruskin in his "Stones of Venice." The Venice of Claude Lorraine and
Turner existed for him as little as the panoramic suavity of a
Canaletto. He was satisfied with sitting at a little trattoria near the
old Post Office, at Florian's, or in his simple sitting room at San
Barnaba, dreaming of some linear expression of an old bridge or archway,
of some enchanted fragment of vision, or a peculiar flush of colour over
the Grand Canal. To him Venice was a modern city. He only saw what was
actually there, and when it fascinated him, he seized his burin or
crayon and endeavoured, with frank directness, to record the pictorial
event. He invariably chose subjects that appealed to the experienced
collector rather than the general public. He never idealized or
conventionalized, nor did he belong to those who only see the ugly side
of life, its squalor and unpicturesqueness.
Some of Whistler's admirers have pronounced him not only the greatest
etcher of the day, but of all times, and compared him to Rembrandt. This
comparison is not without justification, inasmuch as Whistler was not a
professional etcher but a great artist who, like Rembrandt, took up the
etching point as an instrument for new expression. They both sketched
with wonderful freedom. They were no mechanics; under their hands the
point lost the engraving look and became wonderfully free. Still, to say
that Whistler was the best etcher of the day is rather a sweeping
expression. Lalanne, Jacquemart, Appian, Veyrasset, Meyrion, Zorn,
Pennell, Raffaelli, Rops and Klinger are all wonderful etchers. In
painting, his mastership is indisputable. In etching I do not feel it
quite as keenly. There is not the slightest doubt that etchings like
"Jo," "The Adam and Eve Tavern," "Chelsea," "Soupe à Trois Sous," "The
Lion's Wharf," the beautiful little still life "The Wine Glass," the
portrait of "Becquet," "Unsafe Tenement," the "Battersea Bridge" of
1879--"a masterpiece of masterpieces"--show uncommon ability, which
gives up everything to the right point and never beyond it. One of the
most ravishing designs is his "Girl on a Couch." "The Model Resting,"
quite different in execution, is scarcely less captivating. But much of
his work seems to be a little too elaborate, too overcrowded with line
work. I do not particularly admire prints like his "Southampton Docks,"
"Portrait of Drouet" or "The Silent Canal." This is more astonishing
when one compares them with the frugal technique of his paintings.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF DROUET (ETCHING).]
A rather just, though somewhat pedantic, criticism came from the pen of
Hamerton in 1881:
"Amongst living men Whistler may be cited as an etcher of rare quality
in one important respect, the management of lines, but his etchings owe
much of strange charm which they possess to Chinese disdain of tonal
values, and to wayward caprice, loving it here and scorning it there,
which, being strictly personal, can only be of use as an example in one
sense, that it shows how valuable in art is genuine personal feeling.
Whistler is an admirably delicate draughtsman when he likes; there are
passages in his etchings which are as striking in their way as feats of
execution, as the most wonderful passages of Meyrion."
There can be little fault found with this statement. I take objection
only to the "wayward caprice" and the "Chinese disdain." I think that
Whistler learned "loving detail here and scorning it there" only in his
later works. It came out strongly in compositions like "The Balcony,"
"Doorway," and "Palace" and obtained full mastery in his "Dutch" series,
above all the fascinating "Amsterdam Canal" piece, when the lines were
so vague and subtle that deep biting was impossible and a few
impressions would efface the design. As for the Chinese disdain of tonal
values, I think it is Whistler's particular merit that he gradually
abolished tonality altogether, and, in his later work, rarely resorted
to cross-hatching. He laid more stress upon the simplification of line.
Etchings can produce tonal sensations, but it is surely not the main
object to strive for. Whistler followed Haden's doctrine that the line
ought to be preserved as much as possible, and made the most of it. If
the linear expression is sacrificed in etching there is no executive
expression left; there is no brushwork to take its place; the etcher is
working with a point and not with a brush, and there must be primarily
_point expression_, that is line expression, or none.
[Illustration: BLACK LION WHARF (ETCHING).]
Otto H. Bacher has written a few analytical notes of Whistler's line
work. "Where it required accuracy he was minute. He used his needle with
the ease of a draughtsman with a pen. He grouped his lines in an easy,
playful way that was fascinating. They would often group themselves as
tones, a difficult thing to get in an etching. He used line and dot in
all its phases with certainty. Sometimes the lines formed a dark shadow
of a passage through a house, with figures in the darkness so
beautifully drawn that they looked far away from the spectator. These
shadows which so beautifully defined darkness were made only by many
lines carefully welded together and made vague as the shadows became
faint in the distance or contrasted with some light object. He made his
etched lines feel like air against solids.... If he etched a doorway, he
played with the lines and allowed them to jumble themselves into
beautiful forms and contrasts, but was always very careful of the
general direction they should run as a whole." Bacher saw a good deal of
Whistler in Venice, perhaps more so than any one else, and his
observations on Whistler's etching tools, how he ground and bit his
plates, are extremely interesting. "In grounding plates Whistler used
the old-fashioned ground, composed of white wax, bitumen, pitch and
rosin. He heated the plates with an ordinary alcohol flame, holding the
plate in a small hand vise. The silk covered dabber that spread the
ground over the plate was fascinatingly managed by Whistler.... When he
came to smoking the plate he preferred the old wax taper made for that
purpose. He kept his two etching needles, very sharp ordinary dentist
tools, in cork, to preserve their fine points. Whistler always had his
stopping-out varnish with him in a small bottle, applying it with a
brush in a most delicate manner. He did not make use of any mirror but
preferred the old negative process. When he bit a plate he put it on the
corner of a kitchen table, with his retouching varnish, etching needle,
feather and bottle of nitric acid, at hand, ready for instant use.
Taking a feather, he would place it at the mouth of the bottle of acid,
tipping bottle and allowing acid to run down the feather and drip on
plate. He moved bottle and feather always in the same position around
the edges until plate was covered,--would use feather continually to
wash acid backward and forward upon the plate, keeping parts equally
covered, and blowing away air bubbles."
Frequently Whistler sketched directly on copper plates. He carried the
prepared plates in his pockets or in a book and when he found a motif
sketched it in _improvisatore_ fashion. His sketches of the "Annual
Review at Spithead," in 1887, show his uncommon facility as a sketch
artist. He was the champion of dry point. Already during the Leyland
period he selected dry point as a favourite medium. And in this, to my
notion, lies the strength of Whistler as an etcher. "Whistler added," as
Joseph Pennell has so beautifully said, "a new scientific method to the
art of etching--that of painting on the copper plate with the needle."
As a printer of his own plates he seems to have been quite an expert.
He, no doubt, allowed himself great latitude and experimented with each
plate, so that few impressions resemble each other. Although he had
abolished blacks and dark tonal passages at an early date, he
frequently painted on the plate with printer's ink, and went through an
elaborate process of wiping. Of course this makes the excellence of the
impression uneven, but also makes a particularly good one a more
valuable possession.
The intention was always the same. From the very start he sought for the
same arrangement of lines and spaces, the same effect as in his Venetian
plates. He wanted breadth--not breadth of line itself, but breadth of
expression. After all it was a growth and slow development. He became
simpler and simpler, and well nigh reached perfection in his Parisian
series of 1892-93, of little shops, boulevard scenes, and public
gardens, and in prints like "The Little Mast," "The Riva," "The Barber,"
and "Zaandam" he acquired his wonderful sense for right workmanship on a
small scale. Some of his etchings of fragments of architecture have
never been surpassed in sketchy treatment; most noticeable perhaps in
the exaggerated simplicity of the "London Bridge" and in the Holland
series of the nineties. There we realize that great simplicity of motif
is dependent on great simplicity of genius. The effects are so
spontaneous and subdued that their value might well escape common
observation. The extreme sensibility is a matter of both touch and
vision. His plates look as if the rapidity of execution had been
extraordinary, and yet his line, as delicate at times as in silver point
drawings, is not exactly what we could call nervous, but of remarkable
freedom and unerring precision. It is piquant and sprightly, subtle and
alert.
The lines can almost be counted in some of his later etchings. He had
learned the truth of the proverb "Wise economy is everything." It was
even more than wise economy. It was the highest expression of artistic
wisdom, which had almost disappeared since the surface decorations of
Greek vases, in which mood, character and incident were reduced to a few
details, strong enough to incite in the imagination of the beholder all
that was eliminated.
Every art is at its best when it is most itself. Nobody realized this
more than Whistler, who invariably emphasized this. He had an absolutely
clear idea of what every medium could do. In his larger paintings it was
the exploitation of a few dull colours, of a silhouette in space
combined with psychological research; in his nocturnes, a play of
slightly differentiated tones; in his water-colours a mere suggestion of
reality; and in his pastels a certain joyousness of expression. Pure
line, caprice of detail, distance and atmosphere, he reserved for his
etchings; and a subtle expression of values of "moss-like gradations"
for his lithographs. His decision may not always appear right to others,
but it was right to him. How carefully he thought out these technical
problems is shown in his "Propositions," which he addressed to an
American etching club that had invited him to take part in a competition
of large plates. He wrote the following series of maxims that should be
posted on the wall of every studio:
"That art is criminal to go beyond the means used in its exercise."
"That the space to be covered should always be in proper relation to the
means used for covering it."
"That in etching, the means used, or instruments employed, being the
finest possible point, the space to be covered should be small in
proportion."
"That all attempts to overstep the limits insisted upon such proportions
are inartistic thoroughly, and tend to reveal the paucity of the means
used, instead of concealing the same, as required by art in its
refinement."
"That the huge plate, therefore, is an offence--its undertaking an
unbecoming display of determination and ignorance--in accomplishment
a triumph of unthinking earnestness and uncontrolled energy--both
endowments of the 'duffer.'"
[Illustration: WAPPING, ON THE THAMES (ETCHING).]
"That the custom of 'Remarque' emanates from the amateur and reflects
his foolish facility beyond the border of his picture, thus testifying
to his unscientific sense of its dignity."
"That it is odious."
"That, indeed, there should be no margin on the proof to receive such
'Remarque.'"
"That the habit of the margin, again, dates from the outsider, and
continues with the collector in his unreasoning connoisseurship--taking
curious pleasure in the quantity of the paper."
"That the picture ending where the frame begins, and in the case of
etchings, the white mount, being inevitably, because of its colour, the
frame, the picture thus extends itself irrelevantly through the margin
of the mount."
"That wit of this kind would leave six inches of raw canvas between the
painting and its gold frame, to delight the purchaser with the quality
of the cloth."
We may not agree with his conclusion on the margin and remarque. The
latter, no doubt, was introduced by the artist to please the purchaser.
It is therefore, if a fault at all, that of the artist as much as of the
collector. The question of margin is an individual one. There is little
difference between a mat and a margin, and the Japanese print and the
framing of black and whites in general have taught us the utility of
uneven spacing around the picture. The remainder of the argument is
excellent, theoretically as well as æsthetically.
Whistler's composition, excepting the French set, was strictly
impressionistic. One merely has to look at the "Cadogan Pier," "The
Little Pool," "Old Hungerford Bridge," "Little Wapping," "The Velvet
Dress," "The Dam Wood," "The Long Lagoon," etc., to come to this
conclusion.
[Illustration: OLD HUNGERFORD BRIDGE (ETCHING).]
The word impressionism is rather difficult to explain. It is on the
tongue of everybody, and yet few mean exactly the same thing when they
make use of it. The term applied formerly to every art expression--as
every artist endeavoured to render an impression--has been specialized
in the latter half of the last century. It has become the nickname of a
definite number of painters, who have adopted a new palette (as
suggested by scientific researches) and introduced a new method of
laying colours on the canvas. In recent years the term has undergone
another change--it has become a general claim for individuality of
subject and treatment.
First of all, let us determine what difference there really is between
the old and the new style of impressionism. The artist of the old school
received an impression and elaborated upon it. He embellished it with
all his art was capable of, and the original impression underwent all
sorts of changes. It was merely the first inspiration--the foundation
stone upon which the whole art structure was erected. The artist of the
new school, on the other hand, endeavours to reproduce the impression he
has received, unchanged. He wants the impression itself, and wants to
see it on his canvas as he has seen and felt it, hoping that his
interpretation may call forth similar æsthetic pleasures in others as
the original impression did in him. It is a singular coincidence,
indeed, that while the men of the lens busy themselves with imitating
the art of several centuries ago, those of the brush are seeking but for
the accuracy of the camera plus technical individuality.
The impressionist painters adhere to a style of composition that
apparently ignores all previous laws. They depict life in scraps and
pigments, as it appears haphazard in the finder or on the ground glass
of the camera. The mechanism of the camera is essentially the one medium
which renders every interpretation impressionistic, and every
photographic print, whether sharp or blurred, is really an impression.
How did the impressionistic painters arrive at this new style of
composition? Permit me two questions. When was impressionism introduced
into painting? In the sixties. When did photography come into practice?
In the early forties. Do you see what I am driving at? Photography in
the sixties was still a comparative novelty, and consequently excited
the interest of pictorial reformers more than it does to-day. Its
influence must have been very strongly felt, and the more I have thought
of the nature of this influence the stronger has become the conviction
in me that the impressionistic style of composition is largely of
photographic origin.
[Illustration: THE SILENT CANAL (ETCHING).]
Impressionistic composition is unthinkable without the application of
focus. The lens of the camera taught the painter the importance of a
single object in space to realize that all subjects cannot be seen with
equal clearness, and that it is necessary to concentrate the point of
interest according to the visual abilities of the eye. There is no lens,
as everybody knows, which renders foreground and middle distance equally
well. If three objects, for instance, a house, a tree and a pool of
water, stand at different depths before the camera, the photographer
can, at will, fix either the house, the tree or the pool of water, but
whatever one of these three objects it will be, the other two objects
will appear less distinct.
The human eye could have told the painter the same story, as the eye
naturally and instinctively rests on the most pleasing part of the
scene, and in so doing, puts out of focus more or less all the other
parts. It is a curious fact that all the compositions of the Old Masters
were out of focus. True enough they swept minor light and colour
notations into larger ones, but there seldom was any definite indication
in their work whether an object was in the foreground or middle
distance. This way of seeing things was, no doubt, a voluntary one--they
had a different idea of pictorial interpretation. In their pictures, as
in nature, we continually allow our attention to flit from one point to
the other in the endeavour to grasp the whole, and the result is a
series of minor impressions, which consciously influence the final and
total impression we receive from a picture. The impressionist is
satisfied with giving one full impression that stands by itself, and it
was the broadcast appearance of the photographic images in the sixties
that taught him to see and represent life in focal planes and
divisions.
In the catalogue of Whistler's etchings, arranged by Frederick Wedmore
in 1886, we find 214 prints enumerated and commented upon. In a later
edition the number had increased to 268. In the Catalogue of etchings of
James McNeill Whistler, compiled by an amateur and published by
Wunderlich in New York, 1902, and which claims to contain all known
etchings by the artist, the number is 372.
But as Whistler was working on copper all his life, it is difficult to
state how many etchings he really made. Joseph Pennell, who probably
knows more about this phase of art than any living man, makes a
statement as follows:
"I know little, and can say less, of the state of his plates,--and I
believe he himself knew little more about them,--how many were printed,
whether they exist or not, or what has become of the coppers. All I do
know is that in the case of the Thames set, long after Whistler or
Delâtre--I am not sure which--had pulled a certain number of proofs,
long after the plates had been steeled and regularly published, about
1871, and later still, after a Bond Street dealer had been selling them
in endless numbers to artists for a few shillings each, the idea was
suggested to another dealer that he should purchase the copper
plates, remove the lead facings and, if they were in condition, print as
many as the plates would stand, or, if they were not, destroy the plates
and sell them; for even Whistler's destroyed copper plates have a value.
The experiment was tried, and extraordinarily fine proofs were obtained.
I believe collectors resented this very much, but artists rejoiced, and
the world is richer by a number of splendid examples of the master."
[Illustration: VIEW OF AMSTERDAM (ETCHING).]
Whistler gave etching a new impetus, and a new significance in the use
of line; even as Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer has so well expressed it:
"in telling use of a line he has no superior among the modern and few
equals in any age."
His work is never dull, nor cold, nor commonplace. It is always
fascinating and capable of provoking æsthetic sentiments. At times it is
of "slight constitution," a mere passing fancy, leaving many objects in
the stage of mere suggestion, but it always has a finished look. And
finish, as he understood it, meant the carrying on of a technical
process until it had fulfilled to the utmost its mission and
explanation, until not a touch more was needed to make clear the
intention which the picture embodied.
CHAPTER IX
MOSS-LIKE GRADATIONS
Grey is the colour of modern life. There is some truth in the statement.
Modern civilization shuns the slashed doublet and purple cloak. Beauty
of colour, as a Titian and Veronese understood it, belongs to the past.
The brilliancy and splendour has faded out of it. The modern painter
uses a more limited scale of colour, and the tendency is toward grey.
Man's garb is monotone, and the life in large cities devoid of the rich
colour-bursts of mediæval life. The contrasts are all in lower, paler
and murkier tones, and grey, in most instances, furnishes the keynote
and general harmonizer. All the artists who have a fine feeling for the
arrangement of colours have realized that harmonies of red, green and
violet, which shone so resplendently from the warm brown tones of the
Old Masters, are the dreams of another age. Even the impressionists, by
the very character of their technical innovations, notably the abolition
of browns, the struggle for a higher pitch of light by the interaction
of purely applied colours and the exaggeration of the transparency of
shadows, are pursuing the grey phantom of modern art. Their ambition is
no longer a combination of bright colours, as in Veronese's "Marriage of
Cana," but a tonality of dull yellow or green, which pervades the whole
surface of the pictures. The flowing robes, flowers and gold ornaments,
once so radiant on the canvases of the Renaissance, have turned as pale
as ashes.
We take delight to-day in subtler gradations, in semi and quarter tones,
the losing of forms in mystic shadows, a restless, suggestive technique
of mobile touches, nervous sparkles, of delicate broken tints that show
a hundred differentiations. And this over-sensitiveness and fastidious
objection to strong contrast, this love for the externals of technique,
raising brushwork to a higher pedestal than the idea, has much to do
with the exclusiveness of modern painting and the keener appreciation
for monochrome.
In monochrome representation the eye has to deal only with one mode of
perception--that of form. The perception of colour depends upon the
differentiation of the effect upon the optical nerve fibres, that of
form on the numbers and relative position of the latter. The latter
mode of æsthetic perception is, in our times, more trained and
developed, as it is in constant usage. Reproductive processes, the
halftone and photography, have made monochrome a vehicle of expression
almost as popular as the spoken word.
To former ages only the various processes of engraving were known. With
the exception of etching and wood engraving, they were applied largely
to popularize the products of painters, and the independent etchers and
block-cutters generally adhered to a severe and classical style of art.
It was the nineteenth century with its principle of universal education,
newspapers, books and manifold publications, that brought about the
great change.
Texture constitutes to most collectors the principal charm of the
graphic arts. It is a rare and fantastic valuation, an appreciation of
preciosity, this occupying oneself with the fascination of the minor
arts. Art would be too austere if it were not for the makers of etchings
and lithographs, of pastels and water-colours.
Photography, the latest arrival in the ranks of the graphic arts, has
the widest range of expression, and its technique is interesting as far
as it can express mechanically and with comparative ease gradations
of tone that without visible touches, marks, strokes or lines melt
imperceptibly into each other. But this smoothness of texture will also
be its most formidable drawback. There is no chance for manual
expression without destroying the charm of photographic texture.
Chemistry is the only legitimate means to accomplish it.
[Illustration: NOCTURNE (LITHOGRAPH).]
Copper and steel engravings lack that freedom of expression, and are
restricted largely to reproductive purposes. Carried out by
cross-hatching, they are limited by the black of the ink and the white
of the paper, and the precise character of the line work. Modern
reproductive wood engraving, notably of the American school, is the only
medium which has conquered the subtleties of tone.
The scale in monochrome painting in colour is so limited that few
artists apply it. India ink and sepia, however, are much in favour, and
if handled by an artist, fulfil the requirements of painting. The only
short-comings are a certain transparency in the middle tints and an
artificial look in the texture.
Charcoal and chalk have a great similarity, and also lend themselves to
elaborate composition, although the more delicate and lighter greys are
frequently muddy. Pen and ink can merely give an impression of line,
and next to etching it is the best medium for sketching, only a less
pliable one, which is largely due to the unelasticity of the steel pen;
all subtler gradations are left out, as the brightest tints are lost in
the white and the darkest in the black.
In lead pencil sketches the lowest tones are grey as compared with
black, and consequently can not produce any decided depth. Crayon
lithography is capable of producing beautiful soft greys. As the
gradations from one tint to another are not continuous, the texture,
consisting of innumerable minute dots, does not permit clear
uninterrupted line work and even flow of tone. It does not lend itself
particularly well to faithful copying from nature. The very character of
its granulated line and surface suggests a sketchy and fragmentary
treatment. Whistler, who, with Fantin-Latour, shares the honour of the
happy revival of artistic lithography, readily realized this. He laid
special stress upon the texture; its detached shapes creep over the
paper like grey moss over a stone. They are all carried out in grey
monotonous middle tints but marvellously delicate and subtle in values.
Superficial but delicious in quality, his lithographic _croquis_ impress
us like the laborious trifles and harmonious _bagatelles_ of a Herrick.
Theodore Duret tells us that Whistler made his first series of six
lithographs during the years 1877-78 (republished in 1887 by Boussod
Valadon in Paris). They were drawn directly on stone, contrary to his
later method, when he used transfer paper almost exclusively. They were
rather large in size, and resembled his painted nocturnes in general
treatment. This is particularly the case with his "View on the Thames,"
the most beautiful print of the series. I do not believe that these
representations were of particular importance, as they contradict his
own theory. What can be and has been perfectly expressed in one medium,
can not reach equal perfection in another medium. It was really nothing
but a translation of a painted nocturne into black and white. The
essential charm of a Whistler nocturne consists of colour. Black and
white can convey only a vague idea of vibrancy.
When Whistler took up lithographing for the second time in 1885-86, he
had become thoroughly familiar with his medium. He no longer worked on
the stone, and abandoned all elaborate finished compositions. His motifs
are sketchy little figure studies, street scenes, portraits and
occasionally a nude or semi-nude like his "Dancing Girl" in fluttering
drapery. The printing he entrusted to a lithograph printer in London,
Thomas Way by name, who was somewhat of an artist himself and
consequently better equipped than the ordinary pressman to do justice to
Whistler's vague fancies. Frequently Whistler took a hand in the
printing, or at least made corrections. Printer Way told Mr. Wedmore,
with reference to the sometimes disputed matter of the transfer paper,
"that even when the artist drew on that in the first instance, and saw
in proofs things that were lacking or things that were exaggerated, he
would make his correction upon the stone itself, and so, of certain of
his lithographs--his later ones especially--he produced different
'states,' though it was not easy to expressly define them, and though
these differences were, of course, but the exceptions, and whereas very
often, though of course not always in etchings--Whistler's or other
peoples'--the earlier state is finer than the later; in these
lithographs, generally speaking, the later state is finer than the
earlier."
Whistler's lithographs can easily be classified according to the
subjects they represent. During the years Whistler lived in Paris he
depicted views and scenes of the city like the "Pantheon," "The Grand
Gallery of the Louvre," "The Luxembourg Gardens" and interesting
types like "La belle New Yorkaise" and "La belle Dame Paresseuse." One
print, "Les Confidences dans le Jardin," depicts two gossiping women in
the garden of his house in the rue du Bac.
His London subjects are equally numerous. In 1895, when he painted "The
Master Smith" and the "Little Rose of Lyme Regis," while at a watering
place in Dorsetshire he made several sketches of the picturesque streets
of the old town. Of particular charm are his "Early Morning" (a view of
the Thames from his Chelsea window) and "The Locksmith of the Dragon
Square." In 1886, during an illness of his wife, he lived in the Surrey
Hotel and executed a number of panoramic views of the Strand, the Thames
with its river traffic, the quays, St. Paul's Cathedral and bird-eye
views of London streets.
[Illustration: _Boston Museum of Fine Arts_
LITTLE ROSE OF LYME REGIS.]
All these designs are beautifully enveloped in a misty atmosphere. The
paper is used as a value as important as the grey lines of the crayon,
and the forms are softened as if broken by light and generally massed in
an unsymmetrical fashion.
Some of the portrait sketches are superb, in particular that of Stéphane
Mallarmé, who was Whistler's life-long friend and one of his staunchest
supporters. It was largely due to Mallarmé that the "Portrait of the
Artist's Mother" found a home in the Luxembourg. He also translated the
"Ten O'clock" into French. Whistler's sketch of the poet appeared on the
front of the Parisian edition of "Vers et Prose" (1893). It is
apparently hurriedly dashed off, but the result of many careful studies
and experiments. It is a mere fragment, negligent, disdainful; but how
knowingly made, and how characteristic of the poet's personality!
Despite its vagueness it is a likeness, and preferable, to me at least,
who was fortunate to know Mallarmé in the early eighties, to most
portraits made of him.
Whistler never surpassed this particular effort, although his portraits
of Joseph Pennell, Mrs. Pennell, Walter Sickert, W. E. Henley and his
wife, Miss Philip and Comte Montesquieu are excellent character studies.
Way published in 1896 a catalogue of 130 lithographs. Later additions
probably increase the number to 150. The London Fine Arts Society held
in 1895 a special sale of 75 lithographs. The "Grolier Club" of New York
in 1900 held an exhibition of 106 prints.
His nudes are charming little inventions in pose and gesture with
considerable knowledge of the human figure. In the Society exhibition of
1885 he exhibited a nude entitled "Caprice." A _R. A._ Horsley took
exception to it, and in a lecture before a Church Congress, after
indulging in most curious, pedantic and mediæval arguments, ended with
the following tirade:
"Is not clothedness a distinct type and feature of our Christian faith?
All art representations of nakedness are out of harmony with it."
[Illustration: STUDY OF NUDE FIGURE (CHALK DRAWING).]
Whistler, ever ready to take up the cudgel, avenged himself by writing
under the picture: "_Horsley_ soit qui mal y pense," and leaving it
there during the entire exhibition.
Strange, that Whistler never attempted to paint a large nude in oil. He,
no doubt, had a reason for this omission, although it is nowhere
recorded. Perhaps he agreed on the point with Ruskin that a realistic
nude had no place in modern life, not for any moral reason but merely
that the human body was too defective to allow the highest æsthetic
gratification. A figure in modern garb is a part of modern life, a nude
is an alien in space without any special significance. This should have
appealed to Whistler; perhaps he strove hard to realize it but never
succeeded in doing so. His lithographs and pastels of nudes seem largely
experimental. They never go beyond the sketch and vaguely remind one of
Tanagra figures. "The Model Resting," and "The Little Nude Reading," a
profile view of a young girl sitting in bed holding with both hands a
book, are two of the best known.
Whistler also made a few attempts in coloured lithography, as for
instance, "La Maison Jaune." But it is hardly coloured lithography, it
is merely a black and white design with a few touches of colour, as
expressed in "A Lannion" or the "Maison Rouge à Paimpol," the result of
an excursion to Brittany. Perhaps the most exquisite and delicate of his
efforts are these slight delicate renderings of female forms. When he
adds a little colour it is always done with rare preciosity, the
"un-finish" always being masterly. And there is such a thing as masterly
"un-finish" always being just at the right spot as there is merit in the
masterly inactivity of a Russian general opposing an invading army. The
very essence of Whistler's art is to be seen in these coloured drawings.
Of peculiar charm are Whistler's pastels. The majority, some fifty which
he exhibited in the London Fine Arts Society in 1880, depict Venetian
scenes. They were catalogued as "harmonies in blue and browns, in opal
and turquoise, etc." They show a rare elegance of design and a peculiar
suavity of colour. They are the last remnants of his early period of
vivid colouring, and are highly valued. They represent canals with
draped gondolas, views from the lagoons with ships at anchor, archways,
and white churches, the cemetery with green trees, lights gleaming on
the distant shore and reflections in the water. His figures in pastels
are mostly young girls, semi-nude or in quaintly coloured robes,
frequently in pink and red against vague backgrounds. Whistler's
virtuosity in these sketches and pictorial fragments is entirely
different from the so-called impressionist's work. It is primarily full
of imagination, of a high mental tone and dignity. Whistler has shown
how noble an aspect can be given to the expression of an extremist, for
he also was an extremist. He perfectly realized that aggressive
sketchiness can never be monumental, that sketches are merely gymnastic
exercises that lend health and strength to a painter's technique,
although they remain to the end merely exercises. At the same time, if
rightly handled, they express certain æsthetic aspects of life better
than more elaborate efforts. He knew what a sketch could and could not
convey, and the wonderful freshness and spontaneity which they exhibit
are witness alike to the clear crispness of his perception and to his
sympathetic handling.
[Illustration: _Owned by Th. R. Way_
PASTEL STUDY.]
The only medium in which Whistler expressed himself without adding a
decided note to individuality of execution, are his water colours. They
have an easy flow, but the areas of surface seem too large for the
slight treatment. The meaning of the motifs seems to be dissipated. They
represent mostly street scenes, country views, the seashore and marines,
charmingly translucent, but without suggesting a style, that developed
the medium according to its resources. But whatever Whistler did was
interesting. It is difficult to imagine a more delightful pastime than
to look over a collection of his pastels, lithographs and aquarelles.
They are carried out lightly, but with true touches of genius and joyous
mystifying excursions into the dreamland of pictorial fancy, quite in
the Whistlerian manner. No one, I think, quite so well fulfilled
Whistler's own theory that an artist should see nature through the
spiritual eye of an individual. Few painters were such frank
interpreters of their own intimate moods.
Aside of all these works on record Whistler has scattered through the
world countless scraps of drawings, themselves amply sufficient to make
an artist's reputation. What a precious document we should have if their
author were able to-day to give a list, as certain artists have done, a
kind of _Liber veritatis_ of all the studies he has made and
disseminated! But he has flung them far and wide, as the plum tree
scatters its blossoms in approaching spring.
CHAPTER X
WHISTLER'S ICONOCLASM
It would be difficult to find in the whole history of art writing
another case of a pamphleteer who became as famous with a few
manuscripts as Whistler. Both the "Gentle Art of Making Enemies," edited
by Sheridan Ford, and published in 1890 by William Heineman, London;
Frederick Stokes & Co., New York; and Delabrosse & Co., all in the same
year, and "The Ten O'clock," delivered in London, February, 1885; in
Cambridge, March 24th; and Oxford, April 30th of the following year, and
published in 1888, created a sensation. They scarcely embrace five
thousand words of reading matter.
Whistler's diction was exceedingly terse and poignant and he managed to
say, or at least to suggest to intelligent minds, in a few words a
phrase or maxim, which would exact from more sluggish pens page after
page of argument. Of course, his letters and replies to critics were
written largely for effect. A well turned phrase was to him the ideal of
diction and no doubt he rewrote every sentence a dozen times before he
allowed it to go out to the public. It was to him a part--and a most
serious part--of his profession. And whenever he did not deal with
personalities and approached the technical principle on which his
practice as artist was based, as in his "propositions," his observations
and theories became lucid and convincing. Read his reply to the
criticism which was caused by the withdrawal of two members from the
Society of the British Artists, who left voluntarily knowing that
changes of policy were inevitable under the presidency of Whistler. The
attack in the London Daily News ended as follows:
"It will be for the patrons of the Suffolk-street Gallery to decide
whether the more than half-uncovered walls which will be offered to
their view next week are more interesting than the work of many
artists of more than average merit which will be conspicuous by its
absence, owing to the selfish policy inaugurated.
(Signed) A BRITISH ARTIST."
[Illustration: _Owned by Howard Mansfield_ ARCHWAY, VENICE (PASTEL).]
Whistler answered:
"Far from me to propose to penetrate the motives of such
withdrawal, but what I do deny was that it could possibly be
caused--as its strangely late announcement seemed sweetly to
insinuate--by the strong determination to tolerate no longer the
mediocre work that had hitherto habitually swarmed the walls of the
Suffolk-street.
"This is a plain question of date, and I pointed out that these two
gentlemen left the Society six months ago--long before the
supervising committee were called upon to act at all, or make any
demonstration whatever. Your correspondent regrets that I do not
'go further,' and straightway goes further himself, and scarcely
fares better, when, with a quaintness of _naiveté_ rare at this
moment, he proposes that 'it will be for the patrons of the gallery
to decide whether the more than half-covered walls are more
interesting than the works of many artists of more than the average
merit.' Now it will be for the patrons to decide absolutely
nothing. It is, and will always be, for the gentlemen of the
hanging committee alone, duly chosen, to decide whether empty space
be preferable to poor pictures--whether, in short, it be their duty
to cover walls, merely that walls may be covered--no matter with
what quality of work.
"Indeed the period of the patron has utterly passed away, and the
painter takes his place--to point out what he knows to be
consistent with the demands of his art--without deference to
patrons or prejudice to party. Beyond this, whether the 'policy of
Mr. Whistler and his following' be 'selfish or no,' matters but
little; but if the policy of your correspondent's 'following' find
itself among the ruthlessly rejected, his letter is more readily
explained."
This is some logic and delicious sarcasm. It is to the point and there
is nothing unpleasant in the entire argument. His art challenges and
explanations always impress us in that manner.
That is why his art lecture, if it may be passed as such--it is
exceedingly short as art lectures go--is so much more valuable as a
literary document than his collected letters, though the latter are more
amusing, and give perhaps a better insight into the author's
personality. It is a concise _résumé_ of modern art, not only the
exploitation of one man's ideas, but rather a set of theories which
reflect the thoughts of most of the younger and modern painters. It is
written in a subjective way but the impression derived therefrom is
objective. Whistler was one of the few great representatives of modern
art, and if such a man has the gift to express his idea in a clear
manner, a gift which most painters lack, he will necessarily reflect the
aspirations of his contemporaries. As a piece of literature aside from
the idea conveyed in it, I would compare it to Fromentin's "Le Desert,"
a charming treatise on colour and atmosphere, but as soon as it treats
the more serious problems of art it becomes of deeper significance, and
I, for my part, would not hesitate to mention it in the same breath with
Lessing's "Laokoon." It has neither the dignity nor logical sequence of
the Hamburgh philosopher, but the statements in it are more important,
or at least, more significant to us than any theories of the German
critic. I do not know of any book which is more reflective of modern art
than Whistler's "Ten O'Clock." It filled a big gap, and its influence on
the reasoning power (which, true enough, is small in many instances) of
the modern painter has been far-reaching.
[Illustration: _Owned by Howard Mansfield_
THE JAPANESE DRESS (PASTEL).]
Whistler's literary activity began about 1863, when he lived in Linsey
Row, London. His pictures had been rejected from several leading London
and Paris exhibitions, and, finally, when he succeeded in exhibiting his
"Woman in White" at the Berner Street Galleries, during the spring
months of 1862 (before sending it to Paris), it called forth a storm
of derision and ridicule. His answer to a most silly criticism in the
"Athenæum," that the face of his "Woman in White" was well done, but
that it was not that of Mr. Wilkie Collins' heroine was his first
attempt at repudiation. It was as follows:
"May I beg to correct an erroneous impression likely to be
confirmed by a paragraph in your last number? The Berner Street
Galleries have, without my sanction, called my picture the 'Woman
in White.' I had no intentions whatsoever of illustrating Mr.
Wilkie Collins' novel; it so happens, indeed, that I have never
read it. My painting simply represents a girl in white standing in
front of a white curtain. I am,
JAMES WHISTLER."
The reply, in my mind, is rather commonplace. It has, as yet, nothing of
Whistler's fine sarcasm and finished style. Almost anybody could have
written it. The attitude of a critic to accept something as a starting
point, and then to criticize a picture from that point, is such a
commonplace occurrence that it was hardly worth answering.
Also his second literary attempt, more than ten years later, when he
objected to having one of his pictures called "The Yacht Race: A
symphony in B sharp," had little merit except that of indignation.
Whistler was an iconoclast, as fanatic as any, when problems of art were
in question, but his image-breaking was always indirect, "inverted" as
it were; he defended his position by asserting his own beliefs. He, no
doubt, was prompted by his own deep-rooted convictions, but the
stimulant of his literary activity was never based on didacticism: to
bring out an idea because it was a great truth and ought to be brought
out. The stimulant for his utterances was always personal anger,
irritation and wrath. He fought for himself and his art, but not for
others. He was one of the greatest egotists that ever lived. Whenever he
felt hurt at some injustice and stupidity he had to set it aright, no
matter at what cost, to his own satisfaction.
It was not before he was forty-four that he took up letter writing
seriously. In one of his earliest answers he is seen at his best; it was
written as early as 1867 but never published until 1887, when it
appeared in the "Art Journal." Somebody had found fault with him calling
one of his pictures "A Symphony in White," because one of the girls had
reddish hair; and a yellow dress, a blue ribbon and a blue fan had been
introduced into a white tonality. He replied in his vigorous fashion:
"Can anything be more amazing than the stultified prattle of this
poor person? Not precisely a symphony in white ... for there is a
yellowish dress ... brown hair ... and of course there is the flesh
colour of the complexions. Bon Dieu! Did this creature expect white
hair and chalked faces? And does he then in his astounding wisdom
believe that a symphony in F contains no other note, but a
continued repetition of F, F, F, F, F?... Fool!
JAMES WHISTLER."
In this letter he took the right attitude, that of the fighter, who,
with a few penstrokes, annihilated the foolishness of his opponents. If
all his feuds had been of this character, no objection would have been
raised to them. Alas, he did things, frequently, merely to pose as a
wit, to say something that would make London society laugh, caring
little in how malicious and vituperative a manner he would couch his
words. Even when he was wrong and knew that he was wrong he would fight,
as in the _Café Orientale_ incident. A correspondent of the "World"
attacked the title, stating that it had an _e_ too many for French, and
an _f_ too few for Italian. Whistler does not attempt to justify his
orthographical error, but, by telling an anecdote, endeavours to
ridicule all criticism which pretends to such accuracy. It is cleverly
told, but after all it is silly.
Nearly all his friends, sooner or later, were forced into crossing
swords with him. The list is a long one and embraces many well-known
names. He fought with his brother-in-law, F. Seymour Haden, because he
had admired Frank Duveneck's etchings and mistaken them for Whistler's.
He advised Harry Quilter, an art writer, "his bitterest enemy," to
employ his sense of smell in preference to his eyesight; he calls the
art critic P. G. Hamerton, "a certain Mr. Hamerton." He wrangled with
Sir William Eden and even his friend Leyland about the price for ordered
pictures, in each case making the whole transaction public; he attacked
Tom Taylor and F. Wedmore for misquotations in their writings (he who
had been guilty of the same thing himself), he quarrelled with the
Academy when they repainted an old sign of his, "the famous Lion and
Butterfly wrangle;" and wrote most insulting letters to Wyke Bayliss,
who has succeeded him in the presidency. He withdrew all his pictures
from the Paris Exposition, because the American colonel, C. R. Hawkins,
had refused a few of his etchings in a rather impolite manner. The real
reason was lack of space, and one could hardly expect from an American
colonel the manners of a Chesterfield. Surely, Whistler did not possess
them himself. He, at all times, practised more "manner" than manners,
his language had at times an irritating touch of rudeness and
coarseness. The feuds were endless. He continually baited his fellow
artists. He called the pre-Raphaelites "What a damn crew." Legros, Val
Prinsep, W. P. Frith, Sir Frederick Leighton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
were at one time or another recipients. Everybody who came in contact
with him, William M. Chase, "the masher of the Avenues," Theodore Child,
who had to bear the brunt of a pun on his name, etc., all have some
queer experiences to tell about him.
George Moore, who had stood so gallantly by Whistler's side, was thrown
over without much ado as soon as he remained neutral, and did not join
the front ranks of the fighting host in the Sir William Eden episode.
Swinburne did not fare better; nor his friend Stott of Oldham, on whom
he had passed such exaggerated eulogies in the beginning of his career.
Even his oldest friend and supporter, Kennedy, the picture dealer, was
finally bespattered with the mud of Whistler's invectives. His _bon
mots_ and repartee in ordinary life were as significant as those in his
pamphlets, letters and catalogues. We all remember his "Why drag in
Velasquez!" his "Goodness gracious! you don't fancy a man owns a picture
because he bought it," or "Indeed! it is not every man in England I
paint for." Then again talking about Leighton, "Yes, and he paints too."
In meeting Du Maurier and Wilde at one of the exhibitions Whistler burst
forth: "I say, which one of you invented the other, eh!" The famous
repartee, Whistler:--"Nature's creeping up." Oscar Wilde: "Heavens, I
wish I had said that!" "You will," dryly replied Whistler.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York_
MR. KENNEDY: PORTRAIT STUDY.]
Most of his adversaries were smaller men or, at any rate, lacked the
faculty of repartee, and for a witty man it was easy enough to mock them
out of existence. Only Oscar Wilde, who himself made a profession of
scattering corrosive epigrams, occasionally got the best of him. His
sarcastic remark, "With our James, vulgarity begins at home; would that
it might stop there," was one of the sentences that made Whistler lay
aside his pen for a while and ponder on reciprocity. The famous
Whistler _v_. Ruskin libel suit was gotten up, I believe, largely for
effect. It happened naturally enough, but Whistler made the most of it.
And, from the press agent's point of view, it was the opportunity of a
life time.
In 1877 Sir Coutts Lindsey had organized an independent gallery in
opposition to the London Royal Academy. Among the exhibitors were
Burne-Jones, Millais, Leighton and Whistler. The works of the
pre-Raphaelites were praised but Whistler's nocturnes were ignored or
sneered at. He perhaps would have taken no notice of the ordinary
criticisms, but when John Ruskin, who then was in the prime of his fame,
wrote in his "Fors Clavigera," an art publication, a short and most
obtrusive paragraph about the pictures, he put on his paint and feathers
once more and went on the war path. It is incredible how a man like
Ruskin could have ever been so bitter and pedantic, to write the
following paragraph:
"Lastly the mannerisms and errors of these pictures (by
Burne-Jones), whatever may be their extent, are never affected or
indolent. Their work is natural to the painter, however strange to
us; and it is wrought with utmost conscience of care, however far,
to his own or our desire, the result may be yet incomplete.
Scarcely so much can be said for any other pictures of the modern
school; their eccentricities are most always in some degree forced,
and their imperfections gratuitously, if not impertinently
indulged. For Mr. Whistler's sake, no less than for the protection
of the purchasers, Sir Coutts Lindsey ought not to have admitted
works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the
artist so nearly approached the aspect of the wilful imposture. I
have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but
never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for
flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.
JOHN RUSKIN."
The suit went to trial before Judge Huddleston and a special jury,
November 25th, 1878, and Whistler won the case, although one farthing
damages were allowed him. He published a small brown covered paper
pamphlet: "Whistler _v._ Ruskin--Art and Art Critics," the same year.
Not satisfied with his scant victory, he endeavoured to strike back at
his still powerful adversary by publishing a hodge-podge _résumé_ of
Ruskin's writings and deliberately stringing together a number of well
known sentences in such a way that they have no connection whatever.
All this is amusing but smacks of the mountebank.
The Mortimer Menpes incident shows a different side of his nature. It
was a controversy as to who was "the father of the decorative
revolution," Menpes or Whistler. Intensely sympathetic with the work of
Japan's great painters and craftsmen, Menpes' impressions of her cities,
temples, shrines, theatres, gardens, and museums, received during a few
months' stay in that land of delight, are worthy of consideration, but
he had no claim to the decorative innovation, not even to the pink hue
of his house, as Whistler had mixed the colour himself one summer
afternoon, when Menpes was still his pupil. When a dispute was of real
importance Whistler was apt to ignore it entirely, and let others fight
it out for him. It was too serious a matter for exchange of witty
remarks. This shows that Whistler, at times, realized the value of
silence.
Even as there were friends and acquaintances and associates with whom he
never quarrelled, he liked Carlo Pelligrini to the very end. He never
picked a quarrel with Sarasate, nor with the Comte Montesquieu, though
most people did. Charles Keene, the caricaturist, never writhed under
Whistler's "strong arm." Even Sheridan Ford came out unscathed,
although they were never on terms of "commonplace" amity and
acquiescence. Nor did ever his American acquaintances advance to "warm
personal friends." H. W. Singer says in his little monograph that
"Perhaps Whistler's human soul was occupied by a double portion of
malice, invidiousness and pettiness, so that his artistic spirit might
be entirely free and unfettered in its greatness." As good an
explanation as many others.
He wrote down those records he thought important as did Casanova his
amours and Cellini his assassinations and, collected into a book, they
form a sort of autobiography to those who can read between the lines. He
had a way, as Pennell tells us, half-laughing, half-serious, of calling
it his Bible. "Well, you know, you have only to look, and there it all
is in the Bible," or "I am afraid you do not know the Bible as you
should," he would reply to some question about his work or his
experiences as an artist.
As remarked previously, his attacks were remarkably free from all
personal and domestic references, they referred solely to art
transactions related to the profession. Whistler was an artist, and
naturally over-sensitive. He could not help being impatient of
criticisms that utterly failed to see the aim of his work, sometimes
praising him for qualities a painter would blush to possess and again
heaping unmerited blame on admirable achievements. Things really
irritated him and he worked himself into a white fury, often over
nothing. Later on his love for notoriety and his pose made him
exaggerate the importance of events. As in the case of every master,
there were, of course, followers and disciples. To these, the master
held forth, now instilling a principle of art, now relating an encounter
with this or that critic. Mr. Menpes speaks quite truthfully when he
says: "All the same, he was one of the true fearless champions that art
ever had, he fought with the dignity of the artist, demanded
consideration and courteous treatment, and upheld dignity of
workmanship, never tired of exposing and exploiting the ignorance of the
average press critic."
The real Whistler, then, as his closest friends saw him, was an
impulsive, quixotic, erratic, if you like, but, above and beyond
everything else, an artist of indisputable genius who fought a losing
battle for a quarter of a century; jested through it all, and finally
triumphed magnificently. His minor accomplishments were illumined by the
flare of newspaper polemics; his greater and nobler qualities were too
often obscured by the lack of comprehension. Yet there were times when
Whistler gave of his best simply and sincerely to all who had the
perception to receive his gift. Such an occasion was that on which he
delivered for the first time his immortal lecture on art, "Ten O'Clock."
He chose this title because he did not want the people to rush to him
from the dinner table, as to the theatre. Ten o'clock was early enough.
The audience and critics who greeted him in Prince's Hall, London, on
that never to be forgotten occasion, were puzzled by what they chose to
regard as Whistler's "new pose." As a matter of fact, he was not posing
at all, but had called them to him that he might impart to them, out of
his very heart, the standard of artistic faith by which his life was
ruled. It was a revolt not so much against the conclusions of modern
paintings nor a plea for Japanese art (he does not mention Japan except
once in the beautiful final sentence: "The story of the beautiful is
already complete, hewn in the marble of Parthenon--and broidered, with
the birds, upon the fan of Hokusai at the foot of Fusiyama") as against
the pedantic and realistic methods in art, a fierce crusade for the
ideals of painting. His style is virile, individual, marvellously
condensed and suggestive. It contains a number of beautifully put
phrases like: "Art happens--no hovel is safe, no prince can depend
upon it."
[Illustration: THE LIME BURNER (ETCHING).]
"Colours are not more since the heavy hangings of night were first drawn
aside, and the loveliness of night revealed."
"If art be rare to-day it is seldom heretofore." In these aphorisms he
puts his finger on the secret of literary expression--the application of
the simplest and subtlest means to the most complicated and inexistent
subject.
Paragraphs as the following must excite the admiration of every literary
man.
"Alas! ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned. She has naught in
common with such practices. She is a goddess of dainty thought--reticent
of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better
others."
"She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection only--having
no desire to teach--seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions
and at all times as did her priest Rembrandt, when he saw picturesque
grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, and
lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks."
Or again:
"Humanity takes the place of art, and God's creations are excused by
their usefulness. Beauty is confounded with virtue and, before a work
of art, it is asked: 'What good shall it do?'"
"Hence it is that nobility of action in his life is hopelessly linked
with the merit of the work that portrays it; and thus the people have
acquired the habit of looking, as who should say, not _at_ a picture,
but _through_ it, at some human fact, that shall, not from a social
point of view, better their mental or moral state. So we have come to
hear of the painting that elevates, and the duty of the painter--of the
picture that is full of thought and of the panel that merely decorates."
Whistler fought principally for three big ideas:
"That the main object of painting was to express the beauty of the
technical medium unalloyed by any exterior motive, independent of time
and place."
"That art was not restricted to any special locality, but universal,
cosmopolitan."
"That art could be understood only by the artist and that all criticism
consequently was futile occupation."
All these arguments have sifted down into the rank and file of the
profession, they have become common property and are continually used in
the every-day conversations of artists. They are all three open to
criticism, and in a way (like all things, according to Walt Whitman)
have done as much harm as good.
That the main object of art is art, cannot be confuted. But what is art
in painting! Is all poetry and sentiment in a painting to be expressed
by the actual handling of the colours, the process of handling and the
mechanism of brushwork! Can all the poetry be contained in the objects
themselves and the way they are painted? It has become the fashion of
artists to say that they are _painters_, not _artists_.
Now what do they mean by this? What is a painter? A person who can
handle the brush and who knows colour, or, in other words, who masters
the tool of his trade. And what is an artist? The term artist is not
limited to one profession. It applies to a musician or a sculptor as
well as painter. In calling somebody an artist we mean to convey that he
has a poetic conception in his work. But he must surely possess an equal
mastery of technique or he would be unable to express it. And is the
painter absolutely void of poetic conception? Surely not. He tries to
get the poetry out of the medium itself, while the artist adds something
from the outside to the medium. In that sense Abbott Thayer, Ryder and
Inness are artists, Sargent and Chase are painters. But how about
Chavannes, Whistler, Israels? I suppose they are both. There we are in a
dilemma. They oppose subject painting; the beauty of the object, the
poetry that is inherent in what they see before them, is supposed to be
sufficient. But they object to the phrase that they are merely
interested in surface beauty, they assert that they search for character
and the inner meaning of things as much as anybody else. In this they
contradict their own and Whistler's argument. Whistler himself was all
his life a subject painter. Of course he has avoided telling stories,
but he has suggested them, and given to each picture that vague note of
interest which every true painting should possess. The main purpose is
to make the picture more interesting. And you cannot make a picture more
interesting without adding something. Painting for painting's sake is an
impossibility. One cannot translate nature and life into colour without
the help of the imagination. A little more or less, what is the
difference?
The second claim, that all art is cosmopolitan, has been welcomed by all
our ex-patriots, who have neither the strength nor the inclination to
discover virgin material in their own country and to translate it into
beauty. It furnishes a marvellous loop-hole for the imitative talent.
Whistler said: "There is no such thing as English art--art is art when
it is good enough." This is at its best merely a truism. We perfectly
agree that only good workmanship makes a painting worthy of the name of
art, but surely Hogarth, Gainsborough and Constable have a true native
flavour in their work, which they could have gained nowhere but on
British soil. All art, when perfect, can command universal appreciation,
but it is perfect in most instances only when it has, perhaps not so
much a local interest, but a local motive or stimulant, i. e. it must
have inhaled the atmosphere of some peculiar locality and the faculty to
exude it again. I believe, Whistler used his argument largely as a
subterfuge, to hide his own enthusiasm for Japanese art. He understood
how to amalgamate the foreign influences and his own individuality (this
I have analyzed at length in some other chapter). His art in a sense was
cosmopolitan, but merely because he was the first to adopt the new
principles of an Eastern art; and it is just as easy to trace American
as Japanese or Old Master traits in his work. I claim that all great art
is local, and mention only three of the greatest painters, Velasquez,
Rembrandt, and Dürer, to prove my argument. They surely were imbued with
the spirit of their time and country. And I am equally certain that a
painter who would express America as it is to-day (as Whitman has done
in his time in literature) would be a greater man than Whistler. The
foremost masters of the nineteenth century, Monet, Manet, Chavannes, and
Whistler, were all innovators in technical problems, for they discovered
new mediums of expression, and, in a way, only prepared the way for more
concentrated expressions of art.
The third great theory of the essay, which consists largely of
Whistler's arrogant assertions as to the superiority of the artist and
his own hatred for so called connoisseur, dilettante, and critic, has
made a very proud man of the painter. Imagine an ordinary wielder of the
brush reading the following sentence: "Vulgarity--under whose
fascinating influence 'the many' have elbowed 'the few,' and the gentle
circle of Art swarms with the intoxicated mob of mediocrity, whose
leaders prate and counsel, and call aloud, where the gods once spoke in
whispers.
"And now from their midst the dilettante stalks abroad. The amateur is
loosed. The voice of the æsthetic is heard in the land, and the
catastrophe is upon us.
"The artist in fulness of heart and head is glad, and laughs aloud, and
is happy in his strength, and is merry at the pompous pretension--the
solemn stillness that surrounds him."
Whistler lashed himself into the belief that he was the sole judge of
his work. This is a very erroneous attitude. Creation is an unconscious
process. Few artists have the critical faculty to analyze their work,
and years pass before he is able to get a clear view of his own work. If
we were an art-loving nation things would be different, but interest in
painting has become a privilege of the rich and of museums; it is too
remote to be considered an immediate pleasure. It needs some kind
intermediator to bring about more sympathy between the public and the
artist. What writers, who can write and to whom the smell of paint is
not unfamiliar, see in a picture, is one thing. What a painter desires
to express is an entirely different proposition, but this is no reason
to find fault with the writer. What he says may be explanatory and
interesting. A work of art is made to arouse sensations, pure or
æsthetic, emotions and vagrant thoughts, and they will differ vastly in
every beholder. This may be beyond the pale of unattached writers and
gentlemen clerks of collections and appointed preachers, into which
Whistler has divided the critics, but there is no argument necessary to
make any reader believe that authors like Hawthorne, the Goncourts, Guy
de Maupassant, Paul Heyse, Mallarmé, knew how to write about art.
Whistler also laughed at the pretence of the state as a fosterer of art.
In this he was right. Art can not be forced upon a community. It is a
matter of individual appreciation. It is a matter of conquest.
But this is, after all, a busy world we are living in, and unless things
are pointed out to us we may overlook them or not even learn of their
existence, no matter how hungry we may be for new sensations. And that
is the crucial point where the art writer may prove useful. The majority
of artists entertain no kindly feeling towards art writers. In their
just anger with critics, who arrogate to themselves the right of telling
an artist how he should have done his work, they forget that the real
writer on art, misnamed critic, has quite a different aim, and is their
best friend. For he takes upon himself the duty of mediating between
artist and public. Without him, we may say, the true artist is nowhere.
True art (in opposition to commercial work and all vulgar practices to
which pictorialism is put) is a difficult matter to comprehend. When
the public, composed of people whose energy is drained almost to
exhaustion by daily associations and occupations, suddenly encounters a
new phase of art, it can no more formulate a just opinion of it than it
could when placed face to face with the tablets of Karnak and Sakkarah.
Just as the electrician in a new invention must explain the working of
natural forces, so must the "critic" explain the work of the artistic
forces which come into play in the production of a picture. Most artists
have become popular--as far as the true artist can become popular--only
after the eyes of the public have been opened by some critic. Such
artists as find no apostle to proclaim their creed die unattended. Many
an artist left his family in poverty; but after his death critics dwelt
at length upon the beauties of his pictures, and only then the public
began to pay enormous prices for them.
And Whistler himself! Does he not refute his own contempt by his
Barnum-Boulanger-like use of the press? True enough all his little
squibs and elaborate bids for notoriety had some underlying truth which
he wished to express. But if ever an artist realized the power of type
it was Whistler.
As for the ordinary critic--he deserves our deepest sympathy. He proves
beyond dispute "that there is something rotten" in our art
appreciation. Old Japan and the Primitifs knew them not. He is harmless,
however, as he has absolutely nothing to do with art. He is a necessary
evil produced by the shortcomings of the time. Anatole France's remark
about art criticism, that it should be the adventure of one's soul among
masterpieces, is enough, but he forgets that the adventure should be the
experience of a literary artist. For the only criticism that is lasting
is either biographical in tendency or artistic commentary, which by a
new work of art reflects the beauty of the original. If a picture is
really beautiful, one should be able to write a poem about it, or
express it in music, dancing or some other art.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ (LITHOGRAPH).]
CHAPTER XI
AS HIS FRIENDS KNEW HIM
One afternoon in 1892, walking along the boulevards with Stéphane
Mallarmé, during absinthe hours, I met Whistler. The poet and the
painter raised their hats and shook hands and exchanged a few words in
French, which I did not understand. I was introduced, Whistler bowed,
shook hands and then we passed on. It was one of those fugitive meetings
that occur so frequently and to which no importance can be attached. It
gives one the sole and rather futile privilege of having seen Whistler,
just as I have seen Liszt, the king of Bavaria, Ibsen and many others,
without having become acquainted with them.
I do not remember how Whistler was dressed, I only recall the top hat,
monocle and cane. He looked rather undersized to me, a trifle affected,
but exceedingly picturesque, and possessing that peculiar magnetism
which we feel in the presence of great men.
As for a more intimate analysis of Whistler's personality, I must refer
to some of his friends, who have expressed themselves in print. I shall
cite a number of paragraphs that have the merit of descriptive verity,
and that will give a clear insight into his curious, highstrung
character, as it appeared in every-day life.
"What strikes one in Whistler's biography," says Laurence Binyon, the
London critic and poet, "is the extraordinary amount of time, trouble
and energy he expended on things and people that did not matter, the
record of his squabbles, the fanatical loyalty of his enmities, the rage
of his 'egotism.'" This is the Whistler that the world knew. But there
was another Whistler, Mr. Binyon suggests,--"A man of singular
sensitiveness, who shunned the vulgar daytime and stole abroad at
twilight ... bent always on revealing to his fellow men the loveliness
that lurks in familiar sights and among the dingy aspects of a modern
city."
One of his earliest intimates who writes of him in Vanity Fair, as
one of the "Men of the Day," signed John Junior, says: "Mr.
Whistler--'Jimmy' as his friends call him--is personally one of the most
charming, simple and witty of men. He touches nothing but he
embellishes and enlivens it with startling novelty of conceit. His
hereditary lock of white hair is a rallying point of humour wherever he
goes, and his studio is the resort of all who delight in hearing the new
thing."
The article continues to say that it is evidently not difficult for the
newspaper correspondent to approach him, as much had been written about
his charming house and spacious studio in Chelsea. He was so thoroughly
an artist that material seemed indifferent to him. His famous "Peacock
Room," which he did for Mr. Leyland, shows his genius as a decorator,
and conservative opinion is, that he was even greater as an etcher than
as a painter. He had engraved, and painted in water-colours, of course,
and his attire, from his top-coat to his shoe strings, was made from his
own designs. Apparently he chafed under the academic tyranny of even the
tailor. Of his powers in mimicry and in character acting his friend
never tired of talking and telling anecdotes which illustrate it, and
indicate that even in drollery his art is as subtle as in work of
seriousness and dignity. "Dickens was not a patch on him," said someone,
recently, who had seen the pantomiming of both.
Harper Pennington, one of his _officially_ acknowledged pupils, gives a
fine description of the man in the "Metropolitan Magazine" of 1910.
"Whistler was not a tall man, but of trim and muscular appearance,
broad-shouldered, strong-armed, and well set up--the result of West
Point training. He was intensely active and alert, although not in the
least fidgety or nervous. His eyes were as bright as a bird's, flashing
from face to face in a group of persons. It is noteworthy that he moved
his eyes and not his head from side to side, fixing each speaker in his
turn. This may have been another effect of West Point drills--'Eyes
right,' 'Eyes left.' His long hands and bony wrists suggested force and
delicacy of touch. If he was a trifle robin-legged, the effect served to
enhance a certain dandified attitude he frequently assumed, especially
when chaffing someone who deserved it, to the delight of the gallery,
without which he seldom thought it worth while to perform.
"The man was above all things gregarious--he did not like to be
alone--and most intensely human. He had his foibles, faults and virtues
like the rest. The Whistler I knew was clean of person and speech. I
never heard him utter one word that might not be repeated without
offending the most easily shocked of prudes. He has been described as
untidy. He was, on the contrary, the only man who ever washed his hair
three times every day, and was fastidious to the point of being prinky
about his person. His clothes, generally black, were always simple in
the extreme and spotless, even when, in those old Venice days of
dreadful poverty, they were worn threadbare--actually in holes. His
courage was indisputable. He would fight any man, no matter what size or
weight, and the jaunty cheerfulness with which he bore privations, when
he lacked everything, even the materials necessary for his work,
deceived those who were his daily companions and sufficiently proved his
moral pluck.
"He wore a black silk ribbon tie at his neck, a bow with six inch loops
and fluttering ends, but that was all that was unusual in his attire,
unless the long bamboo wands of canes--a dark one for the night and a
light for day--should be included. Nothing that glittered, not even a
watch-chain or a ring, formed any part of his costume. A tiny white or
yellow flower at his buttonhole was his unique adornment.
"Is it true, as Thackeray declared, that ordinary mortals do, indeed,
delight to pry into the weakness of the strong, the smallness of the
great? I have thought it best to show _my_ Whistler as he really was, a
simple, kind and tender-hearted fellow, who turned his best side towards
the unappreciative world he lived in, not from vanity of person, but to
hide his poverty, and the makeshifts he was driven to employ, as a man
will say 'I like to walk,' when he can't afford to ride. His cackling
laugh hid many a bitter thrust that had gone home and hurt him to the
quick. He laughed, and then would come the swift _riposte_ of witty
repartee. He never attacked a living creature, never struck the first
blow, and would have been glad to live in peace with all the world. But
so coarse were the criticisms of his person and his work that he was
driven to defend Art, which was the only thing he could not joke about.
Upon the rare occasions when he talked with me, as a master might, about
his work, his face itself seemed transfigured.
"Brave when he was well, his cowardice when ill or in pain was comical.
If he caught cold he would disappear, and those who knew him well were
sure he had fled to his doctor--his brother's house in Wimpole Street.
Dr. Whistler told me that Jimmy would appear all muffled up and say:
'Willie, I am ill! I am going up to bed--here--and won't go home until
you've cured me!' Any little malady was enough to demoralize him. In
his hours of weakness he would hide away like a wounded animal and
not show up again until he had been nursed back to his normal state.
[Illustration: ARRANGEMENT IN FLESH-COLOUR AND BLACK: THEODORE DURET.]
"Whistler was extremely frugal and abstemious. He ate and drank most
moderately the plainest fare. He liked dainty dishes and rare old wine,
but had a horror of the 'groaning board' at huge set feasts and formal
banquets. He could cook quite decently himself, and sometimes made an
omelet or scrambled eggs, but these culinary feats I never saw
performed; as to the Master's knowledge of wine, it was very limited
indeed. I have seen him mistake a heavy vintage of champagne for
'Tisane.' I never saw him cook anything, even in his poorest days, in
Venice, but I know that he liked a good dinner at a club even when it
was punctually served and consisted of quite ordinary delicacies such as
other men delight in."
The notes from his childhood are rather scarce. In his mother's diary,
written during the stay in Russia, we find the following reference to
him when he was twelve years old: "... Jimmie's eagerness to attain all
his desires for information and his fearlessness often make him offend
and it makes him appear less amiable than he really is." And at some
other place, when they had watched some parade with the Empress
passing: "He behaved like a man. With one compassing arm he guarded me,
and with the other kept people at a proper distance, and I must confer,
brilliant as the spectacle was, the greatest pleasure was derived by the
conduct of my dear and manly boy." Miss Emma Palmer, his cousin,
describes Whistler at this period as "tall and slight, with a pensive,
delicate face, shaded by soft brown curls. He had a foreign appearance
and manners, which, added to his natural abilities, made him very
charming even at that age. He was one of the sweetest, loveliest boys I
ever knew and was a great favourite."
"Whistler, as a boy, was exactly what those who knew him as a man would
expect: gay and bright, absorbed in his work when that work was in any
way related to art, brave and fearless, selfish, if selfishness is
another word for ambition, considerate and kindly above all to his
mother. The boy, like the man, was delightful to those who knew and
understood him, 'startling' and 'alarming' to those who did not."
Joseph Pennell, in his excellent book, has given us a most fascinating
description of Whistler as a student in Paris and a young painter in
England. No one can refuse to admire the loyalty of this writer, who has
gathered with such loving care every note of interest in Whistler's
life. The following paragraphs are from his Quartier Latin chapter; "To
Whistler the Frenchman was more sympathetic than the English, in his
serious as in his light hours. His fellow students brought back to
England the impression that he was an idler; it is hard to-day to make
people believe that he was anything else in his youth. And yet he worked
in Paris as prodigiously as he played. To us it is incomprehensible how
he found time to read as a student, and yet he knew the literature of
the period thoroughly, and always the charm of his manner and his
courtesy made it delightful to do anything for him. Few men ever ate
less than Whistler, but few were more fastidious about what they did
eat--no man ever shrank more from thought, or at the mention of death
than Whistler. There was always in life so much for him to do and so
little time in which to do it.
"He was popular with the children, and delighted in music, though he was
not too critical, for he was known to call the passing hurdy-gurdy into
his garden and have it ground under his windows. Occasionally the
brother (Greaves) played, so that Whistler might dance. He was always
full of drolleries and fun. He would imitate a man sawing, or two men
fighting at the door, so cleverly that his brother never ceased to be
astonished when he walked into the room alone and unhurt. He delighted
in American mechanical toys and his house was full of Japanese dolls.
One great doll, dressed like a man, he would take with him not only to
Greaves, but to dinners at the Little Holland House, where the Princess
then lived, and to other houses, where he put it through amazing
performances." Many notes are quoted from the writings of his
associates. Here are some of the most interesting of them: Mr. Luke
Ionides writes: "He was a great favourite among us all, and also among
the grisettes we used to meet at the gardens where dancing went on. I
remember one especially, they called her the tigress. She seemed madly
in love with Jimmie and would not allow any other woman to talk to him
when she was present. She sat for him several times with her curly hair
down her back. She had a good voice and I have often thought she
suggested 'Trilby' to Du Maurier. One time in a rage she tore up a lot
of drawings, when Whistler came home and saw them piled high on the
table, he wept." If Whistler had money in his pockets, Mr. Ionides says,
he spent it royally on others.
Mr. Rowley, "Taffy," writes: "It was in 1857-8 that I knew Whistler, and
a most amusing and eccentric fellow he was, with his long black thick
curly hair and large felt hat with a broad black ribbon around it. I
remember on the wall was a representation of him, I believe done by Du
Maurier, a sketch of him, then a fainter one and then finally an
interrogation--very clever it was and very much like the original. In
those days he did not work hard."
"Whistler was never wholly one of us," Mr. Armstrong tells us; Drouet
does not think that Whistler worked hard, certainly not in usual student
fashion at the schools. He was every evening at the Students' ball, and
as he never got up until ten or eleven in the morning, where was the
time for work?
The personal observations and a glance at one of Whistler's
self-portraits of this period should give us a fair vision of the young
Whistler at Paris. The earliest known self-portrait in oil is the one
painted in Paris about 1859, the Whistler with a hat, engraved by
Guérard, which was lent by Samuel P. Avery to the Memorial Exhibition at
Boston. It shows him with a slight mustache, a large Rubens hat, a big
dotted tie, and a coat with a velvet collar. It is a good example of a
dark silhouette against dark arrangement. The face has a few strong
headlights, the remainder of it in middle tints, while the rest of the
figure--the hat, the hair, the bust--are darker than the background. The
space arrangement and position of the head are clever, but the shape of
the bust is awkward, and, I fear slightly contorted.
Mrs. Jameson writes: "The man, as I knew him, was so different from the
descriptions and presentations I have read of him, that I would like to
speak of the other side of his character. It is impossible to conceive a
more unfailingly courteous, considerate and delightful companion than
Whistler as I found him, and I never heard a complaint of anything in my
simple household arrangements from him. Any little failure was treated
as a joke. His courtesy to servants and maids was particularly charming,
indeed. I cannot conceive of his quarrelling with any one without
provocation. His talk about his own work revealed a very different man
to me from the self-satisfied man he is usually believed to have been.
He knew his powers, of course, but he was painfully aware of his
defects--in drawing for instance. To my judgment he was the most
absolutely truthful man about himself that I ever met. I never knew him
to hide an opinion or thought--nor to try to excuse an action."
[Illustration: THE UNSAFE TENEMENT (ETCHING).]
Mr. Watts Denton, on the other hand, tries to make us believe that Dante
Gabriel Rossetti got exceedingly tired of Whistler after a while and
considered him a brainless fellow, who had no more than a quick
malicious wit at the expense of others, and no real philosophy or
humour.
Otto Bacher, the American painter and etcher, has written a delightful
book entitled "With Whistler in Venice." The title is slightly deceptive
as the contents are largely an eulogy on the beauties of Venice.
Whistler is a mere picturesque incident. Bacher describes his friend in
this fashion: "When he was talking the glass (monocle) was dropped. If
he sat at one of the tables at the café the clanging of the eye-glass
accentuated his conversation. If he was presented to any one it would
drop and dangled to and fro from the neat cord for a few moments, to be
readjusted after some moments of fumbling. His monocle was always a
source of entertainment. He generally carried in his hand a Japanese
bamboo cane, using it to emphasize his remarks.
"He rose early, worked strenuously and retired late. He seemed to forget
ordinary hours for meals and would often have to be called over and
over again. He was a fastidious smoker, but a continuous one--his choice
of words was always a marked feature. His manners were elegant. He would
always adapt himself to any situation and, at the same time, retain his
dignity and personality."
Another interesting account was furnished in the Cornhill Magazine,
1903, by Mortimer Menpes: "Whistler was of all men essentially a
purist--a purist in every sense of the word, both as a man and a worker.
As a man he was sadly misunderstood by the masses. Whistler's nature was
ever a combative one and his long and brilliant career was a continuous
fight throughout. He revealed himself only to the few, and even that
small inner circle, of whom I was one of the most devoted, saw the real
man but seldom. But on those rare occasions Whistler could be gentle,
sweet and sympathetic, almost feminine, so lovable was he. Whistler
treated his hair as everything about him, purely from an artist's
standpoint, as a picture, as a bit of decoration. Whistler wanted to
produce certain lines in the frock coat and he insisted upon having the
skirts cut very long, while there were to be capes over the shoulders,
which must need form graceful curves in sympathy with the long-flowing
lines of the skirt. The idea of wearing white duck trousers with a black
coat was not conceived in order to be unlike other people, but because
they formed a harmony in black and white he loved. His straight brimmed
hats, his cane, the way he held his cane, each and every detail was
observed, but only as the means of forming a decorative whole."
Less personal are Val Prinsep's remarks: "I have always thought that
behind the 'poseur' there was quite a different Whistler. Those who saw
him with his mother were conscious of the fact that the irrepressible
Jimmy was very human. No one could have been a better son or more
attentive to his mother's wishes; after his marriage I have heard that
the life of this most Bohemian 'poseur' was most harmonious and
domestic.
"The grammar of expression was a constant stumbling block to him, hence
his slowness in producing. For let it not be supposed his pictures,
which looked so simple in their execution, were produced with facility.
The late Mr. Leyland told me that when he was sitting for his portrait,
a standing full-length, Whistler nearly cried over the drawing of the
legs and bitterly regretted that he had not learned something of the
construction of the human form during his student years. He once spoke
of himself as a 'soiled butterfly.' Surely this is the first recorded
instance of a butterfly being an aggressive and vindictive insect. This
however was a mere pose of Whistler's, the result of a well considered
determination to exalt himself, which he found in the long run paid,
even as all judicious publicity is said to bring in a sum percentage of
profit."
A. Ludovici, a New York dealer, makes quite a hero of Whistler. "He soon
made me feel that I was talking to an artist of great taste and
refinement, full of love for his work and a ready wit, and, in spite of
an academic training just received in Paris, I became that moment
devoted to him and his art. The little I had seen of it at the Grosvenor
engendered a desire to learn more regarding the mysterious technique of
which he was such an undoubted master and confirmed my predilection in
favour of painting the scene of life surrounding in preference to the
making up of the conventional subject so much in vogue. I who knew him
for the last twenty years of his life always found him most simple in
his tastes, firm in his convictions, generous and open-hearted to those
whose friendship he relied on and always ready to help and oblige any
one in whom his interests had been awakened. A more brilliant and
staunch friend one could not wish to have had."
Also Alexander Harrison, the marine painter, expresses himself in a
highly enthusiastic manner: "I have never known a man of more sincere
and genuine impulse even in ordinary human relations and I am convinced
that no man existed who could have been more easily controlled on lines
of response to a fair and square apprehension of his genuine qualities.
When off his guard he was often a pathetic kid and I have spotted him in
bashful moods, although it would be hard to convince the bourgeois of
this. Wit, pathos, gentleness, affection, audacity, acridity, tenacity
were brought instantly to the sensitive surface, like a spark by rough
contact."
Mr. Percy Thomas says: "He was a man who could never bear to be alone.
Through his own open door strange people drifted. If they amused him he
forgave them, however they presumed, and they usually did succeed.
Whistler seldom painted men except when they came for their portraits,
and the models drifting in and out of the door of Linsey Row, were
mostly women. He liked to have them with him. Mr. Thomas thinks he felt
it necessary to see them about his studio, for, as he watched their
movements they would take the pose that he wanted, or suggest a group,
an arrangement. He lived at a rate that would have killed most men, and
at an expense in details that was fabulous."
Walter Gray speaks about Whistler's technique. "No one can realize who
has not watched Whistler paint the agony that his work gave him. I have
seen him, after a day's struggle with a picture when things did not go,
completely collapse, as from an illness. His drawing coat gave him
infinite trouble. Whatever his friends charge against him it seems to me
that Whistler's faults and weaknesses sprang from an unbalanced
mentality; he was a _deséquilibré_, the common defect of great painters.
Yet, underneath all his vagaries and eccentricities, one felt that
indefinable yet unmistakable being--a gentleman."
Pennell gives a most valuable description of Whistler as a painter. "The
long nights of observation of the river were followed by long days of
experiment in his studio. In the end he gave up even making notes of
subjects and effects. It was impossible for him to choose and mix his
colour at night, and he was compelled to trust his memory, which he
cultivated, when he painted his nocturnes. He reshaped his brushes,
usually heating them over a candle, melting the glue and pushing the
hairs into the form he wanted. Whistler told us he used a medium
composed of opal, mastix and turpentine. The colours were arranged upon
a palette, a long oblong board some two feet by three with the
'Butterfly' inlaid in one corner; round the edge, sunken boxes for
brushes and tubes. The palette was laid upon the table; the colours were
placed, though, more frequently, there were no pure colours at all.
Large quantities of different tones of prevailing colours in the fashion
and his paints were mixed, and so much medium was used that he called it
'sauce.' Mr. Greaves says, that the nocturnes were mostly painted on
very absorbant canvas, sometimes on panels, sometimes on bare brown
holland sized. For the blue nocturnes the canvas was covered with a red
ground, or the panel was of mahogany, which had the advantage of forcing
up the blues. Others were done in a practically warm black ground. For
the fireworks there was a lead ground, or if the night was grey--the
canvas was grey.
[Illustration: IN THE SUNSHINE (ETCHING).]
"So much 'sauce' was used that, frequently, the canvas had to be thrown
flat on the floor to keep the whole thing from running off. He washed
the liquid colours on the canvas, lighting and darkening the tone as he
worked. In many nocturnes the entire sky and water is rendered with
great sweeps of the brush exactly the right tone. How many times he may
have wiped out that sweeping tone is another matter. Some one remembers
seeing the nocturnes set out along the garden wall to bake in the sun,
sometimes they dried out like body colour in the most unexpected manner.
He had no recipe, no system.
"In his painting it was surprising to see how much he accomplished in a
short time. He would decide upon any local tone, putting it on with five
or six big strokes, any variation of tones would be added in the same
way. In a given time he would put down more facts than any man I ever
knew. In the beginning of a pastel he drew his subject crisply and
carefully in outline with black crayon upon one of the sheets of tinted
paper which fitted the general colour of the motives. A few touches with
sky tinted pastels produced a remarkable effect. He never was in a hurry
in his work, always careful and accomplished much. Every subject
contrived some problem for nature which he wished to convey on canvas."
The portraits painted and etched by himself and various artist friends
also comment favourably upon his personality. William Michael Rossetti,
in his diary of February 5, 1857, mentions seeing in Whistler's studio
"a clever, vivacious portrait of himself," believed to be that belonging
to the late George McCullough and which appears as the frontispiece to
Pennell's book. Another portrait sketch of this period or a little later
was shown at the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1910.
Another portrait sketch can be seen in the Freer collection.
In 1874 Whistler planned a big picture similar to Fantin-Latour's
"Hommage à Delacroix", only less serious and more eccentric in
conception. Whistler was to be the centre figure and to be surrounded by
the "Woman in White" on a couch and a kimonoed lady walking about the
studio, while Albert Moore and Fantin-Latour were chosen to serve as
black notes. One of the studies, Whistler in his studio, is illustrated
in Pennell. A chalk drawing belonging to Thomas Way is likewise in the
same book. There are three etched portraits in existence. A very early
one dated 1859, the "Whistler with the White Lock," which appeared as
frontispiece in Ralph Thomas' "Catalogue of Etchings and Drypoints of
Whistler," and an etching very similar to the 1867 portrait, dated 1874.
In 1894 he was painting a portrait of himself in a white jacket which,
according to the Pennells, was changed into a dark coat after the death
of his wife. A full length portrait in long overcoat was in the Paris
Exposition of 1900, under the title of "Brown and Gold." Another half
length is known to belong to George W. Vanderbilt.
A dry-point by Helleu, drawn in 1878, has many admirers, but is rather
superficial as a characterization. The most important portrait is the
Mephistophilean interpretation by Boldini, painted 1897 and shown at the
Exposition in 1900. But I almost prefer a certain photograph which shows
him with top-hat, and overcoat over his shoulder. It reminds me of the
glimpse I caught of him that afternoon, in Paris years ago, when I was
still carefree and had not the slightest idea that I would one day write
a book about the man I passed so nonchalantly.
The few paragraphs that are cited in this chapter may not do his
personality full justice, but they must suffice. A personality can not
be recalled from the shades. We can only produce a mental image, and an
abundance of notes would only confuse the outlines. His work remains,
that is the principal thing. Even the greatest painters of the past are
mere ghosts and visions to us. And although Whistler, more than any
other modern painter, has the chance of marching down posterity,
unforgotten and wreathed in glory, a curious high-seasoned personality
not unlike Benvenuto Cellini, the author of these lines must refrain, as
he can add nothing new or original.
Prophets or seers, call them what you will, in the arts or in the
sciences, must of necessity be few and far between, and in advance of
their age. Whistler is to me one of these, in his absolute and genuine
love of his profession, for the resolve to win out at any cost, for his
conquests in various realms of art and the triumph of ideas they
represent.
I admire his colossal vanity and egotism, but, more than all, I admire
him for the seriousness with which he took himself and his business of
being a painter. It is so rare a quality. Velasquez was so much of a
solemn cavalier that he was almost ashamed of being a painter. It
offended him to be reminded of his profession. It was a serious sport to
him, but only a sport. He was like Goethe: a distinguished and
conscientious amateur. Their exalted position in life enabled them to
treat art with such ease and condescension. But Whistler had to climb to
the very heights from which they started, and all the battles and
victories, struggles and temporary defeats, magnificent successes and
lavish praises were the result of his personal efforts. Whistler needed,
and had the true autolatry of the artist; he could conceive genius only
under an artistic guise; he entertained the absolute faith that the
faculty of painting is something so hugely superior to anything else
that it confers a sort of sacred character on its owner. And it is for
this wholesome artistic seriousness, this salutary egotism, that I
admire Whistler, the man.
[Illustration: THE POOL (ETCHING).]
CHAPTER XII
THE STORY OF THE BEAUTIFUL
Who knew the errant life of the highway, of the starlit desert and windy
mountain slopes better than the story-teller of old, who wandered from
town to village, from camp to solitary tent, all over the face of the
earth, telling his simple tales to those who cared to listen? He was the
wayfarer who lived in his life the Odyssey of the eternal Wanderer, and
whose words reflected in quaint imaginative excursions the adventures of
strange men and women he had met in lonely forests and crowded city
streets.
Every nomadic tribe, every nation, every country, has had its singer of
songs, its chanter of religious hymns, its troubadour, its vagrom poet,
some story-teller of the beautiful. They have vanished, and the story is
now repeated by the professional poet and artist. He no longer treads
the highways and the listeners no longer offer him the hospitality of a
night's shelter. He lives the life of the large cities; he hastens from
place to place, he mingles with the crowd but passes unseen as nobody
will listen to his stories. More than ever is he the vagrom man, unless
he tells his story of the Beautiful in such a novel, fascinating way
that Art, "the whimsical goddess," will open the book of life and
inscribe his name. Then his townspeople, his nation, a whole continent,
the entire world may claim him.
Whistler travelled many highways and lo, when he arrived at the age of
sixty a weary, restless wanderer in the realm of art, three
nations--England, France and America--claimed him as their own.
Born in America, obtaining his education partly in America and partly in
St. Petersburg, Russia, living the rest of his life in Europe, dividing
his time almost equally between Paris and London, he was a cosmopolitan
in the true sense of the word, and that is what he wished to be
considered. He loved England and loved France, but he felt quite
indifferent towards America. In Paris he had spent his student years,
and he was drawn to this city by many bonds of attachments and
friendships that lasted for life. And it was France who gave him that
final great recognition of his genius when it purchased "The Artist's
Mother" portrait for the Luxembourg, and made him an officer of the
Legion of Honour. In England, on the other hand, he fought the great
battles of his life for social as well as artistic recognition. In
England he married, and was for many years one of the most conspicuous
characters of London art and social life.
America really did nothing for him, and he did nothing for America. He
never came back to America--during forty-eight years--after leaving it
as a young man of twenty-one. He never exhibited in America until his
name as a painter was one of the best known in Europe. He even preferred
to exhibit his work with English artists in international exhibitions.
We all remember the General Hawkins incident in 1889. Whistler only
became known to America after his death through memorial exhibitions.
Now, of course, we like to claim him, and do so with ostentation.
Expatriots are always claimed by their native country when they have
achieved success or performed some remarkable act that has aroused the
wonder of nations. Nobody cares whether Mr. Jack Johnson lived on the
Place Monceau, or died on the Riviera.
To the analytical mind it is of little consequence whether he will go
down in history as an American, English or Frenchman, as he was one of
the great artists of the nineteenth century with an international
significance. In the case of artists like Burne-Jones, Israels, Boldini,
Fortuny, Lenbach, Segantini, it may be of more importance, as they are
_local_ talents.
Whistler's predilections were natural. He was too shrewd a promoter of
his own artistic welfare not to make the best of this dispute of
nations. He could not have prevented it anyhow, and the question of his
nationality will be disputed for many years to come. Of course, one can
simply settle the matter by saying that as he was born in America of
American parents, he is an American.
The English differ; they choose to do in this case what we have always
done with our immigrants. After a person has lived for any length of
time in the country we make him a citizen and consider him an American.
How about Carl Schurz, General Siegel and Roebling, the bridge builder?
They were all born abroad and yet their names are inscribed on our roll
of honour. Of what nationality was Lafcadio Hearn, who, born on the
Ionian Islands, of Irish and Greek parentage, living for years in New
Orleans and New York, finally selected Japan as the country of his
choice, where he lived the remainder of his life and was buried? And
yet we class him as an American writer. It seems that the party most
concerned in it; the personality itself, should decide the question.
Hearn wished to be considered a Japanese. We are not quite sure what
Whistler's opinion was on the matter. He claimed to be a cosmopolitan.
But that is no answer, as it does not settle the dispute. It leaves
others to settle it, and the trouble starts anew.
There is another much subtler point, open to argument. Is his art in any
sense American? Has it a flavour, a peculiarity of its own, that could
be derived from any source except that of American birth and parentage?
To this question I answer emphatically yes. True enough his subject
matter was, with the exception of "L'Américaine" and a few portraits,
strictly Continental. But the spirit was strictly Japanese
and--American. Or, I would rather say, his form of art conception was
Oriental, but the essence, the under-rhythm of his personality, was
after all American. He was somewhat of a snob and a _precieux_, like his
friend Comte Montesquiou. He had all the polished manners, the spirit,
the grace of a foreign aristocrat and yet he was neither a Frenchman nor
an Englishman in his habits or views on art. He remained an alien, as
any man in a foreign climate must remain to some extent, when the
change of domicile is made as late as the twentieth year.
His wit and sarcasm was American. It was not pointless, neither brusque
nor frivolous but it was at times flat like Mark Twain's. His
self-exploitation revealed the shrewdness of an intellectual Barnum. His
attitude in society was that of a "Yankee at King Arthur's Court."
Besides there are vague traits in his art which reveal the premises of
his origin. His women, "The Fur Jacket," "Lady Archibald Campbell,"
"L'Américaine," and "Miss Alexander," have a natural _finesse_, direct
grace and elegant frailty that can be found nowhere but in America. His
power of adaptability, his disregard for ancient culture for modern
purposes, his technical fanaticism, his adventurous tastes and theories,
all have an American physiognomy. If there is anything that will make
him an American it is the aptitude for labour, free association, and
practical adaptation.
That he left America never to return again is no compliment to our
country, but he, no doubt, acted wisely. If we remember the sad
unsuccessful lives of Whitman and Poe, we shun to think what might have
become of Whistler had he stayed on these shores. He, no doubt, would
have become one of our best painters, but he would never have become
the Whistler we know to-day.
[Illustration: ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND WHITE: "L'AMÉRICAINE."]
Like all our painters of merit, Fuller, Abbott Thayer, Winslow Homer,
Homer Martin, to mention but a few, he would have retired into solitude,
he would have become a hermit at a much earlier stage in his career. In
England it was revolt, fight and victory; here it would have been
stagnation. There would have been no fight because there would have been
nobody to fight with.
When a man is young, he is strong because he is impulsive and because he
has absolute faith in his beliefs. As he grows older his views broaden,
he is not quite as certain of himself, and there will come a time when
he will vacillate from one point to another, trying his faculties in
different directions and searching for the final path on which his
inborn talent may blossom forth in fullest strength and beauty. This is
the time when a man needs encouragement, some patron no matter how
stingy, some order no matter how humble, some friends and supporters who
champion his cause--or he will succumb. He may not give up the battle,
but his development will be marred and retarded for years.
American life is not particularly kind to budding geniuses, either in
the period of revolt or of later evolution. There is no gainsaying we
are a very material race just now. And it is nowise peculiar that it
should be so. We do not expect much from Australia and Canada in the way
of art. Why should we of the United States, where there are vast
territories in very much the same primitive condition as in other
emigrant countries? Of course there are certain parts and centres in
this country which can boast of a culture dating back a few centuries,
but the population has always lived in turmoil and conflict.
Self-assertion and self-improvement are the ideals of any man who has
changed his domicile, in the one hope to better his material welfare. In
a country which is so vast as ours and which has at times an increase of
ten thousand aliens a week, the national pride in intellectual
accomplishments cannot run high.
All that wealth can do is done at present. We have numerous private
collections of rare excellence and will have National Galleries and
Kensington Museums in due time, but, as Whistler has said, art is not a
matter of education, or of royal, civic or municipal encouragement. It
is a growth and the soil must be ripe for it. No doubt, in due time
collectors will divert some of their attention from the battered relics
of past ages to the quite as admirable productions of their
contemporaries. It would be pleasant to find that people cease the
worship of dubious pictures by Old Masters as the one certain and
infallible proof of enlightenment.
The artist of to-day has to subsist on the Spartan principle; he has
either to do or to die. These are no stimulants to inspiration. He has
to dig it all out of himself. That engenders martyrdom. And very few,
particularly those equipped with lesser talent, are willing to give up a
half-way respectable existence for a life in a garret and a long wait
until fame knocks at the door. Nearly all the great European artists had
their struggle and lived in hovels. The American is less willing to
enter upon such a precarious existence, as he realizes that if he
accepts it, he may have to stay in a garret until the end of his life.
American artists do not assist each other. Each goes his own way, partly
under the stress of conditions, because the vastness of the country and
larger towns permits no closer association; and partly by choice, by
personal inclination or professional reasons. There is but little
intellectual intercourse. The atmospheric conditions are just as
beautiful here as anywhere. And so are the subjects equally beautiful
and plentiful. It would be ridiculous to deny it. Yet it takes courage
to be a pioneer. It needs leisure, some incentive and sympathy. No man
is inexhaustible. He needs some encouragement from outside; and if it
fails to come he will grow indifferent. He may open up a restaurant, or
become an illustrator on a comic paper. Deserters of this kind may not
represent an irreparable loss, as they were never ensign-bearers, nor
ever stood in the firing line.
"They were not carved as from iron or wood,
Cut with an axe, or hammered with sledge,
Till the man shows strong and good."
as Daniel Dawson sang, another young poet who fell by the wayside.
Our conditions are not conducive to the evolution and exploitation of a
genius. Graft and prohibition laws, whose evil influences are felt in
all strata of society, also injure artistic progress, if not directly,
surely by the stress of public opinion. Such conditions would no doubt
have retarded the progress of even a man like Whistler for years. If a
man has not the means to sip his demi-tasse at Florian's, in Venice on
the piazza, he can not make any etchings or lithographs of the
Campanile. And if a man cannot afford to buy plates and an etching press
he cannot make any etchings at all. And that is the fate of hundreds of
artists in our larger cities.
No, to go to Paris and then to find another congenial abode in Europe,
to settle there, to live his own life, and to do in art what he wanted
to do was the wisest move Whistler ever made. It helped him to expand
and to mature the great talent that was slumbering within him, ever
since he stared, lost in wonder, at the Velasquez of the Hermitage at
St. Petersburg.
Whistler admired the Greek as much as anybody, but this emotional
reverence did not hinder him from smashing some traditions of ancient
beauty to pieces. Greek art was so perfect that for centuries no artist
could escape its influence. All the Old Masters were nursed on the
marble breasts of Grecian goddesses. In all art schools the white
corpses of plaster cast facsimiles were worshipped on bended knee. The
pupils never dared to glance about. They did not see the beauty of the
world around them. They could perceive it only through Greek
conventions. This had to cease. There was no life blood in these
artificial constructions. But tradition was so deeply ingrained in
Western æstheticisms that it lingered on for centuries, until Manet
entered the studio, opened the windows, let in the light, and Monet
took the young students by the arm, pushed them into the open air and
led them to the meadows and riverside, and the open road.
Whistler, in the meanwhile, had scoured the whole horizon of art, and
beheld a new dawn in the East. There he saw an old civilization, as deep
and broad as ours. It was just at a stage when modern materialism had
begun to wash out some of its finest colours. Art was deteriorating in
the East under the stress of missionaries and merchants. An era of
manufacture had set in. Could not the noble, unselfish spirit of old
Japan be kept alive, revived,--amalgamated with our art, and be made to
pour new life into our valiant dreams of beauty!
You remember what Whistler said of the primitive artist. The words are
worth repeating:
"In the beginning, man went forth each day--some to do battle, some to
the chase, others, again, to dig and delve in the fields--all that they
might gain and live, or lose and die. Until there was found among them
one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so
he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a
burnt stick upon a gourd.
"This man, who took not joy in the ways of his brethren--who cared not
for conquest, and fretted in the field--this designer of quaint
patterns--this deviser of the beautiful, who perceived in Nature about
him curious curvings, as faces are seen in the fire, this dreamer apart,
was the first artist.
"And when, from the field from afar, there came back the people, they
took the gourd--and drank from out of it.
"And presently there came to this man another--and in time others--of
like nature, chosen by the Gods--and so they worked together and soon
they fashioned from the moistened earth forms resembling the gourd. And
with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist, presently they
went forth beyond the slovenly suggestion of Nature, and the first vase
was born, in beautiful proportions.
"And the toilers tilled and were athirst; and the heroes returned from
fresh victories, to rejoice and to feast; and all drank alike from the
artist's goblets, fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of the
craftsman's pride, and understanding not his glory in his work; drinking
at the cup, not from choice, not from a consciousness that it was
beautiful, but because, forsooth, there was none other."
The art of the past has done its work. The white gods are worshipped no
longer in the sacred woods and the Old Masters have lost much of their
spiritual glamour. But no need to mourn their loss, they will remain
beautiful. We will always look with awe and wonder at the figures of the
Parthenon frieze. We will never cease to love the Primitifs. We will
continue to make pilgrimages to the Prado and the Sistine Chapel. And
Rembrandt will as heretofore receive the adoration of mankind.
Yet the new art will be different. It has to be different to equal the
old. It will be attuned to the moods of the modern mind. It will have
new accents. It will bear the analytical and complex aspects of our
time. It will be subtler, more fragile, perhaps, but it will drive
deeper into our soul than the cold correctness of older forms and
emblems.
It was Whistler who pointed out that a large picture is a contradiction,
that a picture like Raphael's "Transfiguration" or Veronese's "Marriage
of Cana" are merely combinations of smaller pictures, drearily linked
together by stretches of negligible paint. The demands of explanation,
of form and composition, drag in, every now and then, lines and colour
notes which are merely padding. They are the painter's concessions to
the old rules of complexity. The modern mind demands a concentrated
vision. Painting must appeal again directly to our finer sensibilities,
speak to us without interference of moral or literary considerations.
[Illustration: THE FIDDLER (ETCHING).]
It was Whistler who taught that painting was a science of colour
manipulation. That the first requisite of a painter is to know how to
paint. Everybody can learn how to draw and how to handle a brush. To
explore the secrets of colour, to discern their influences upon each
other, to render them atmospheric and musical, that alone is of vital
importance. For painting should be a visual language that speaks
directly and distinctly to the cultured mind. How many of the younger
American painters (alas, our younger men have all passed the threshold
of thirty if not of forty) really know their _métier_? Henri, Reid,
Luks, Tarbell, Hawthorne, Clews, R. E. Miller, Lucas, who else? That is
why Whistler's art is so exceptional and masterful. There may be other
methods just as good as his; Monticelli, Maris, Mancini, Segantini,
Renoir, Cézanne, etc., all have their peculiar way, but I believe that
Whistler got nearest to the pulse beat of our age. Resolutely and
tranquil, he carried an idea to its utmost logical conclusion, after
once accepting its particular point of view. And that is why everything
he did bears an unmistakable stamp of his own.
It was Whistler who proved that art was synonymous with hard work. Few
painters will follow his example and spend a whole day trying to put in
a high-light or to find the right place for a butterfly's wing, and go
home at night satisfied with having made a few brush-strokes after
altering them a hundred times, but these commercial travellers of art
will never know the painter's pure delight, the contemplation of life,
the aspiration to perfection, the lifting of beauty out of the dead
pigment. Such worship of art, such absolute disinterestedness, such
fidelity to painting cannot be too highly esteemed.
And it was Whistler who proclaimed that art cannot be taught but must be
an inborn gift, that everything can be acquired by long practice save
that one supernatural quality of genius which alone can transform a
painter into a great artist. What is there in these pictures produced
every year, here and in Paris and everywhere? Portraits, landscapes,
ordinary delineations of prosaic scenes that may be painted with
considerable skill and that may look pretty enough, but that are
absolutely incapable of evoking a fine and subtle emotion. This, the men
upon whose shoulders the black mantle of Whistler's muse may fall,
must realize, that it is a vain endeavour--as futile as cloud shadows on
a summer day--unless they know that they can hold her, "the capricious
jade," as they possess the magic wand to call her.
[Illustration: NOCTURNE IN BROWN AND SILVER: OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE.]
This was the spirit in which Whistler conceived art. It had long faded
out of European art. It was rapidly deteriorating in the Orient. Why
could not a single man, even with the whole world against him, live up
to some big ideal! To be an artist simply for one's own gratification.
To fashion something beautiful simply because one feels like doing it.
To purify one's mind by projecting into life what is accumulated there
by some curious grace of nature. Whistler undertook the task, and
created a new art form that may be destined to rule art for the next
thousand years.
A new art form is always the expression of a new spirit. In painting the
new spirit is rebellious. In addition it is emphatically
individualistic. It is opposed to previous schools and academic
training. It aims at attaining the maximum of personal intensity. The
exigencies of the classic style--the necessity of a literary subject--at
once stay the free use of the brush and hamper the virile expression of
technique. Why not give to art a new twist, graft upon it a new beauty,
enliven it with a purer flame, that it may shine forth again in its old
pristine beauty!
The Western mind still rebels that this resurrection should come from
the East, through another race. Even the most ardent disciples of
Whistler make little of the Japanese influence. It is still a question
of conquest. In my mind, as in that of many of our foremost artists,
there is not the slightest doubt that the Eastern idea will win out and
that a new era, as important as that of Greek influence, will set in.
The meaning of the old symbols has faded and it is the artist's duty to
create new ones.
Whistler disclosed new harmonies of tone, of arrangement, and visual
poetry, all of them sensitive and expressive, using blacks and browns
and a touch of vivid colour or a flare of white, and thereby succeeded
in stirring the depth of our nature. His art has a tender pallor, tones
purposely deadened, faded tints like those on Japanese screens of old
feudal castles, of a wondrous harmony and softness. Details, discreetly
accentuated, allow the ensemble to retain its full importance, and
against dark background, in soft neutral tints, figures that the painter
desires to bring out show with an illusion of life truly magical. Herein
consists the last great pictorial invention; it is through this that
painting still has the faculty to powerfully address the modern mind.
He said in his "Ten O'Clock" that the story of the beautiful was
complete. He surely, like Monet, has added a valuable chapter. He, in
his own words, was "one of the chosen--with the mark of the gods upon
him--who had to continue what had gone before."
THE END.
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Butterfly," "A Valentine with a Verdict." Paris, 1899.
Whistler, J. McN.: "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies." London, 1890.
New edition, 1892, includes Whistler's "Ten O'Clock."
Whistler _v._ Ruskin: "The Painter Etcher Papers and the Nocturnes,
Marines and Chevalet Pieces."
Whistler _v._ Ruskin: "Nocturnes, Marines and Chevalet Pieces."
London, 1892.
Whistler _v._ Ruskin: "Paddon papers, or the Owl and the Cabinet."
London, 1882.
Whistler _v._ Ruskin: "Piker Papers."
Whistler _v._ Ruskin: "Mr. Whistler's Ten O'Clock." London, 1888.
Whistler _v._ Ruskin: "Art and Art Critics," "The White House."
Chelsea, London, December, 1878.
Whistler _v._ Ruskin: "Whistler Album" (20 photographs). Paris, 1892.
Whistler _v._ Ruskin: "Wilde _v._ Whistler: being Acrimonious
Correspondence." London, 1896.
PRINCIPAL MAGAZINE ARTICLES
-----------------------+-------------------------+-----------------
Alden, W. S. Saturday Review Aug. 1903.
Alexandre, Arsène Les Arts Sept. 1903.
American Architect Nov. 1887.
Art Journal v. 49, p. 10.
Art Journal v. 52, p. 198.
Art Journal v. 49, p. 298.
Bacher, Otto Century Magazine 1902, p. 100-111.
Baldry, A. L. The Studio Sept. 1903.
Beal, S. American Architect v. 81, p. 91.
Beerbohm, Max Metropolitan 1904, p. 728-733.
Beerbohm, Max Saturday Review Nov. 1897.
Bénédite, Léonce Gazette des beaux-arts 1905, p. 33-34.
Bloor, A. J. Critic 1903.
Brinton, Christian Critic 1902.
Brinton, Christian Munsey's Magazine 1906.
Brownell, W. C. Scribner's Magazine Aug. 1879.
Boughton, G. H. International Studio 1904, p. 210-218.
Caffin, Charles H. International Studio 1903, v. 20.
Coburn, Fred. W. Brush and Pencil 1904, v. 13.
Cortissoz, Royal Atlantic Monthly 1903, v. 92,
pp. 826-838.
Cox, Kenyon Nation Magazine 1904 v. 78.
Crawford, Earl Stetson The Reader 1903, v. 2,
pp. 387-390.
Current Literature Sept. 1903.
Dempsey, Charles W. Magazine of Art 1882, p. 358.
Dempsey, Charles W. McClure's Magazine v. 7, p. 374.
Dodgson, Campbell Graphische Künste 1904.
Dowdeswell, W. American Architect v. 22, p. 258.
Dreyfus, Albert Kunst für Alle 1907.
Eclectic Magazine 1903, v. 10,
pp. 556-558.
Fenellosa, Ernest F. Lotus Magazine 1903.
Finberg, A. J. Athenæum Magazine 1902-3.
Fortuny, Pascal Gazette des beaux-arts 1903, v. 30.
Fourcaud, L. de Gazette des beaux-arts June, 1884.
Geffroy, Gustave Revue Universelle Sept. 1903.
Hadley, Frank H. Brush and Pencil 1903, v. 12.
Harper's Weekly Aug. 1903.
Hartmann, Sadakichi Wilson's Magazine Apr. 1910.
Hawthorne, Julian Independent Magazine Nov. 1899.
Hubbard, Elbert Idler Magazine 1903, v. 23.
International Studio 1905, v. 25.
Jenney, W. L. B. American Architect v. 59, p. 4.
Jackson, Louise W. Brush and Pencil 1908.
Kelley, G. Weston's Magazine v. 130.
Kessler, Harry G. Kunst und Künstler 1905.
Knaufft, Ernest Churchman Magazine 1903.
Knaufft, Ernest Review of Reviews v. 28, p. 173.
Kobbé, Gustave The Chap Book 1898.
Kunst und Künstler 1905.
Kunst und Künstler 1908.
Levin, Julius Illustrirte Zeitung 1903.
Living Age 1905, v. 28
(v. 246).
Losee, William F. Brush and Pencil 1903, v. 12.
Ludovici, A. Art Journal 1906, v. 68.
Masters in Art 1907, v. 8.
Macfall, H. Academy v. 66, p. 633.
Mather, Frank, Jr. World's Work 1903.
Matsuki, Bunkio Lotus Magazine 1903.
Mauclair, Camille Rev. Polit. and Litter. 1903, v. 20.
Mans, Octave International Studio 1904, v. 23.
Meier-Graefe, Julius Die Zukunft 1903.
Menpes, Dorothy International Studio 1904, v 20,
pp. 245-257.
Menpes, Mortimer Cornhill Magazine 1903, v. 15.
McColl, D. S. Art Journal v. 15, p. 88.
McColl, D. S. Saturday Review v. 13, p. 357.
Meynell, Wilfred Pall Mall Magazine 1903, v. 31.
Morton, Fred. W. Brush and Pencil 1903, v. 12.
Mulliken, Mary A. International Studio 1905, v. 25.
Muster, John de Elseviers Geillust 1907, v. 33.
The Nation 1903, pp. 149-151.
Patini, Rinaldo Nuova antologia 1909, v. 140.
Pennell, Joseph Burlington Magazine 1903, v. 3.
Pennell, Joseph Nation v. 54, p. 280.
Pennell, Joseph North American Review 1903, v. 177.
Scribner's Magazine v. 21, p. 277.
Pennington, Harper International Quar'ly 1904, v. 10, No. 1.
Pennington, Harper Metropolitan Magazine 1910, pp. 769-776.
Princep, Val Magazine of Art 1903.
Quilter, Harry Chamber's Magazine 1903, v. 66.
Revista Latino Americana 1903, v. 1.
Rosenhagen, Hans Nord und Süd 1909, v. 130.
Saturday Review v. 3 p. 208.
Scott, William International Studio 1903, pp. 97-107.
Sickert, Bernhard Burlington Magazine 1905, v. 6.
Sickert, Oswald International Studio 1903, v. 21.
Sickert, Oswald Kunst und Künstler 1903, v. 1.
Sickert, Walker Fortnightly Review v. 54, p. 243.
Sketchley, R. E. D. Kunst und Künstler 1906, v. 4.
Smalley, Phoebe J. The Lamp v. 27, p. 110.
Spielmann, M. H. Magazine of Art Nov. 1903,
pp. 69-70.
Swinburne, A. C. Fortnightly Review v. 49, p. 745.
Swinburne, A. C. Ecclesiastic Magazine v. 111, p. 154.
Teall, Gardner C. The Bookman 1903, pp. 265-268.
Thompson, D. Art Journal 1903, v. 55.
Academy v. 23, p. 134.
Wedmore, Fred 19th Century Magazine 1904, v. 21.
Knowledge v. 3, p. 208.
Way, Thomas R. International Studio 1903.
Wuerpel, G. H. Independent v. 56, p. 131.
Wilson, T. Book Buyer v. 17, p. 113.
PRINCIPAL PAINTINGS[2]
[Footnote 2: p. indicates when picture was painted, or started, as it
sometimes took Whistler more than ten years to finish a picture; e.
indicates when first exhibited. Dates and ownership are omitted whenever
author failed to verify facts.]
-------------------------+--------------------------------+--------
La Fumette p. 1859.
Self-portrait (S. P. Avery, Esq.) p. 1859.
La Mère Gérard p. 1859.
The Music Room (Frank J. Hecker, Esq.) p. 1860.
The Woman in White (J. H. Whittemore, Esq.) p. 1863
e. 1863.
Lange Leizen of Six
Marks: In Purple and
Rose (John G. Johnson, Esq.) p. 1864
e. 1864.
Harmony in Purple and
Gold: The Golden
Screen (Chas. W. Freer, Esq.) p. 1864
e. 1865.
Symphony in White II:
The Little White Girl (Arthur Studd, Esq.) p. and
e. 1864.
Symphony in White III (E. Davis, Esq.)
At the Piano (E. Davis, Esq.) p. 1859
e. 1867.
La Princesse du Pays
de la Porcelaine (Chas. W. Freer, Esq.) p. 1864
e. 1865.
On the Balcony: Harmony
in Flesh Colour
and Green (Chas. W. Freer, Esq.) e. 1866.
Self-portrait (George McCullough, Esq.) p. 1867.
Arrangement in Black:
F. R. Leyland (Chas. W. Freer, Esq.) e. 1873
Arrangement in Brown
and Gold (J. J. Cowan, Esq.)
Woman in Gray (Rijks Museum, Amsterdam)
Lady in Gray (Metropolitan Museum, New York)
L'Andalusienne (John H. Whittemore, Esq.) p. about
1894.
Arrangement in Black
and Brown: Miss
Rose Corder (R. A. Canfield, Esq.) p. 1876
e. 1881.
The Peacock Room (Chas. W. Freer, Esq.) 1876.
Arrangement in Black
and Brown: The Fur
Jacket (William Burrell, Esq.) p. 1876.
Américaine p. 1876
e. 1878.
Florence Leyland (Brooklyn Institute, New York) p. 1876
e. 1878.
Arrangement in Gray
and Black: Thomas
Carlyle (City Art Galleries, Glasgow) p. 1872
e. 1877.
Sir Henry Irving as
Philip II e. 1877.
Arrangement in Gray
and Black: The Artist's
Mother (Luxembourg Gallery) p. 1871
e. 1881.
Arrangement in Gray
and Green: Miss
Alexander (W. C. Alexander, Esq.) p. 1872
e. 1881.
Arrangement in Black
and White: Lady Meux p. 1877
e. 1884.
Harmony in Pink and
Gray: Lady Meux e. 1882.
Theodore Duret e. 1883.
Arrangement in Black:
Lady Archibald Campbell (Wilstach Gallery, Phila.) e. 1883.
Mrs. Louis Huth p. 1877
e. 1884.
Arrangement in Black:
Mme. Cassatt e. 1855.
Arrangement in Black: (Carnegie Art Institute,
Pablo Sarasate Pittsburg, Pa.) p. 1884
e. 1886.
Harmony in Ivory:
Lady Colin Campbell e. 1866.
Arrangement in Violet
and Rose: Mme.
Walter Sickert e. 1887.
Arrangement in Black
and Gold: Comte de
Montesquieu (R. A. Canfield, Esq.) e. 1891.
The Master Smith of
Lyme Regis (Boston Museum) e. 1895.
Little Rose of Lyme
Regis (Boston Museum) e. 1895.
Full length Self-portrait (G. W. Vanderbilt, Esq.) e. 1900.
NOCTURNES
_The majority of Nocturnes were painted during the years 1866-1884._
Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso p. 1866 e. 1871. (Chas. W.
Freer, Esq.)
Symphony in Gray and Green: The Ocean p. 1871. (R. A.
Canfield, Esq.)
Crepuscule in Flesh Color and Green:
Valparaiso p. 1871.
Nocturne in Blue and Silver: Battersea p. 1877. (Chas. W.
Reach Freer, Esq.)
Nocturne in Blue and Silver p. 1877.
Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea
Bridge (Tate Gallery, London.)
Nocturne: Trafalgar Square, Snow.
Nocturne in Blue and Silver: Bognor. (Chas. W. Freer, Esq.)
Nocturne in Opal and Silver: The
Music Room.
Nocturne in Gray and Gold: Chelsea,
Snow.
Nocturne in Gray and Gold: Westminster
Bridge.
Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Southampton
Waters (Art Institute, Chicago.)
Nocturne in Brown and Silver: Old
Battersea Bridge.
Nocturne in Blue and Gold: St.
Mark's, Venice.
Pink and Gray: Chelsea (Lord Battersea.)
Nocturne in Black and Gold: The p. 187 (Mrs. S. Untermyer)
Falling Rocket
Cremorne Gardens (Metropolitan Museum, N.Y.)
An Orange Note: Sweet Shop.
INDEX
Abbey, Edwin A., 37
_Adam and Eve Tavern_, 153
Adams, Clifford, 72
_Alexander, Portrait of Miss_, 109, 124, 137-138, 139, 238
"_Américaine, La Belle_," 134, 237, 238
Appian, 152
_Amsterdam Canal_, 154
_Annual Review at Spithead_, 157
Armstrong, 219
_Arrangements_, 21, 116, 129
_Artist's Mother, Portrait of the_, 8, 21, 29, 31, 41, 76, 90, 109,
124, 136, 137, 143, 144-146, 176, 234
_At the Piano_, 3, 17, 122-123
Aubrey, 110
Avery, S. P., 219
Bacher, Otto H., 155-156, 221
Balleroy, De, 17
Balzac, 94
_Barber, The_, 158
_Battersea Bridge_, 153
Baudelaire, 17
Bayliss, Wyke, 190
_Becquet_, 153
"_Belle Dame Paresseuse, La_," 175
"_Belle New-Yorkaise, La_," 175
Besnard, 85, 89
Bing, 45
Binyon, Laurence, 210
_Blue Wave, The; Biarritz_, 42
Böcklin, 69
_Bognor_, 40
Boldini, 138, 230, 236
Bonvin, 17
Bracquemond, 17, 18
Burne-Jones, 72, 193, 236
Butterfly Monogram, The, 39-41, 56-57
_Cadogan Pier_, 162
_Campbell, Portrait of Lady Archibald_, 3, 4, 5, 27, 124, 128, 137,
238
Canaletto, 151
Canfield, R. A., 73, 128
_Caprice_, 177
_Caprices_, 21
Caravaggio, 93
Carlyle, Thomas, 23, 110, 138
_Carlyle, Portrait of Thomas_, 8, 76, 109, 136, 137, 143, 144
Carrière, 69, 90, 96
Carte, D'Oyly, 110
Casanova, 196
_Cassatt, Portrait of Mme._, 124
Cazin, 18, 68, 69
Cellini, Benvenuto, 196, 231
Cernuschi, 45
Cézanne, 247
Champfleury, 17
Chandler, Rob, 104
Chardin, 87
Chase, William M., 191, 201
Chavannes, 55, 68, 69, 76, 202, 204
_Chelsea_, 3, 70, 153
Cheret, 47
_Chevalet Pieces_, 29
Chevreul, 87
Child, Theodore, 191
Church, F. E., 76
Cimabue, 35
Clews, 247
Colarossi, 42
Collins, Wilkie, 187
"_Confidences dans le Jardin, Les_," 175
Constable, 90, 134, 203
_Corder, Portrait of Rose_, 124, 128-129, 137
Cordier, 17
Corot, 69
Courbet, 17, 18, 42, 43, 64, 79
"_Cuisine, La_," 149
Dabo, Leon, 34, 90
Dagnan-Bouveret, 69
_Dam Wood, The_, 162
_Dancing Girl_, 173
Dannat, 84
Daubigny, 75
David, 78
Dawson, Daniel, 242
Degas, 18, 85, 87, 89
Delacroix, 17, 87, 133
Delaroche, 78
Delâtre, 166
Delonney, 150
Denton, Watts, 221
_Doorway_, 154
Drouet, 219
_Drouet, Portrait of_, 153
Du Maurier, 16, 192, 218, 219
Duran, Carolus, 33
Duranty, 17
Dürer, 147, 148, 203
Duret, Theodore, 37, 125, 173
_Duret, Portrait of Theodore_, 124, 136, 137, 138, 139, 143
Duveneck, Frank, 190
Eden, Sir William, 190, 191
Elsheimer, 94
_Etchings_, 7, 27, 28, 66, 116, 149-154, 158-162, 166-167
Eugenie, Empress, 16, 18
_Early Morning_, 175
_Falling Rocket, The_, 24, 58-60
Fantin-Latour, 13, 16, 17, 172, 229
Flaubert, 80
Ford, Sheridan, 30, 100, 182, 195
Fortuny, 236
Fragonard, 133
France, Anatole, 208
Freer, Charles W., 36, 37, 50, 229
Frith, W. P., 191
Fromentin, 186
Fuller, 239
_Fumette_, 17
_Fur Jacket, The_, 124, 128, 137, 238
Gainsborough, 138, 203
_Garden, The_, 66, 151
"_Gentle Art of Making Enemies, The_," 8, 30, 40, 182
_Girl on a Couch_, 153
Gleyre, Charles, 12, 41-42
Godwin, Edwin W., 8, 37
_Golden Screen, The_, 50, 51
Goncourt, Edmond and Jules de, 45, 80, 206
Goya, 79
Gozzolli, 124, 125
Grain, Corney, 108
_Grand Gallery of the Louvre, The_, 174
Gray, Walter, 226
Greaves, 227
Guimet, 45
Guthrie, Sir James, 37
Haden, F. Seymour, 9, 17, 44, 122, 155, 190
Hals, Franz, 79, 91, 122, 134, 141
Hamerton, P. G., 153, 190
_Harmonies_, 21, 28, 29, 44, 116, 118, 129, 178
Harpignies, 18
Harrison, Alexander, 225
Harunobu, 147, 148
Hawkins, C. R., 191, 235
Hawthorne, 247
Hecker, Frank J., 44
Heffernan, Joanna, 51-52
Heine, Heinrich, 49, 151
Helleu, 230
Helmholtz, 87
_Henley, Portraits of Mr. and Mrs. W. E._, 176
Henner, 69, 93
Henri, Robert, 91, 247
Heyse, Paul, 206
Herrick, 172
Hiroshige, 40, 51, 53, 62, 66, 67
Hogarth, 37, 203
Hokusai, 148
Homer, Winslow, 239
Horsley, R. A., 177
_Hôtel de Ville at Loches_, 151
_House Beautiful_, see _White House_
Huddleston, Judge, 194
_Huth, Portrait of Mrs._, 124, 137
Ingres, 12, 64, 78, 147
Inness, 201
Ionides, Luke, 218
_Irving as Philip II., Portrait of Sir Henry_, 124, 136
Israels, 64, 134, 202, 236
Jacquemart, 152
Jameson, Mrs., 220
_Jo_, 52, 153
Johnson, John G., 49
Jongkind, 18
Julian, 42
Keene, Charles, 195
Kennedy, 192
Khnopff, 90
Kiyonaga, 46
Klinger, 153
Lalanne, 152
Lalouette, Madame, 13
_Lange-Leizen of the Six Marks_, 49, 50
_Lannion, A_, 178
Lautrec, Toulouse, 47
Lavery, John, 37, 90
Legros, 13, 16, 17, 191
Leighton, Sir Frederick, 64, 69, 191, 192, 193
Lenbach, 83, 236
Leonardo da Vinci, 16, 79, 90, 92
Lessing, 186
Leyland, F. R., 9, 22, 54, 103, 104, 105, 157, 190, 211, 223
_Leyland, Portrait of Florence_, 124, 129-130, 134, 139
_Leyland, Portrait of F. R._, 124, 127-128, 140, 143
_Lime Burner, The_, 66
Lindsey, Sir Coutts, 193, 194
_Lion's Wharf_, 153
_Lithographs_, 8, 27, 29, 172-178
_Little Mast, The_, 158
_Little Nude Reading, The_, 178
_Little Pool, The_, 162
_Little Rose of Lyme Regis_, 175
_Little Venice_, 151
_Little Wapping_, 162
_Little White Girl, The_, 49, 52-53, 123
_Locksmith of the Dragon Square, The_, 175
_London Bridge_, 158
_Long Lagoon, The_, 162
Lorraine, Claude, 151
Ludovici, A, 224
Luks, 247
_Luxembourg Gardens, The_, 174
"_Maison Jaune, La_," 178
"_Maison Rouge à Paimpol, La_," 178
Makart, 134
Mallarmé, Stéphane, 176, 206, 209
_Mallarmé, Portrait of Stéphane_, 175-176
Mancini, 247
Manet, 17, 18, 19, 87, 90, 141, 204, 243
Mantz, Paul, 19
"_Marchande de Moutarde, La_," 149
_Marines_, 29
Maris, 71, 247
Martin, Homer, 239
_Master Smith, The_, 175
"Maud," 110
Maupassant, Guy de, 206
Max, Gabriel, 124
McCullough, George, 229
Memling, 133
Menpes, Mortimer, 195, 197, 222
Meredith, George, 3, 23
"_Mère Gérard, La_," 17, 149
_Meux, Portraits of Lady_, 27, 124, 133, 137
Meyrion, 153, 154
Millais, 193
_Model resting, The_, 153, 178
Monet, 75, 79, 87, 90, 141, 142, 204, 244
Montesquiou de Fezensac, Comte, 195, 237
_Montesquiou de Fezensac, Portraits of Comte_, 27, 142-143, 176
Monticelli, 136, 247
Moore, Albert, 229
Moore, George, 191
_Morning Call, The_, see _Music Room, The_
Morris, William, 100-102
Murger, Henri, 13
_Music Room, The_, 42, 44
Napoleon III, 18
_Nocturnes_, 21, 24-25, 28, 29, 40, 59-61, 67, 71-80, 118, 193,
226-228
_Notes_, 21, 28, 29, 118
_Ocean, The_, 39, 67
_Old Battersea Bridge_, 3, 59, 67, 70
_Old Hungerford Bridge_, 162
_On the Balcony (Terrace)_, 50, 54-55, 70, 154
Outomaro, 46, 49, 54, 64
_Palace_, 154
Palmer, Emma, 216
_Pantheon_, 174
_Pastels_, 7, 28, 178-179
_Peacock Room_, 21, 54, 103, 104-105, 211
Peladan, Mérodack, 147
Pelligrini, Carlo, 195
Pennell, Joseph, 105, 125, 139, 153, 157, 166-167, 196, 216, 226,
229, 230
_Pennell, Portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph_, 176
Pennington, Harper, 107, 211
"Pepys' Diary," 9
Philip, John Bernie, 8
_Philip, Portrait of Miss_, 176
Pinturicchio, 133
Pissaro, 18
Poe, Edgar Allan, 11
_Pool, The_, 151
_Price's Candle Works_, 151
_Princess of the Porcelain Land_, 50, 54, 65, 103, 123
Prinsep, Val, 191, 223
Prudhon, 93
Quilter, Harry, 113-114, 190
Raffaelli, Jean François, 6, 86, 124, 153
Raphael, 91, 147, 246
Regamey, 45
Reid, 247
Rembrandt, 18, 79, 81, 82, 91, 95, 98, 149, 152, 199, 203, 246
Renoir, 89, 95, 247
Ribera, 93
Ribot, 16, 134
_Riva, The_, 158
Robertson, Graham, 128
Rodin, 94
Rood, Ogden, 87
Rops, 153
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 23, 34, 54, 191, 221
Rossetti, W. M., 103, 228
Rossi, Mme. Carmen, 33
Rousseau, 75
Rowley, 219
Roybet, 134
Rubens, 13, 65, 133, 219
Ruskin, John, 24, 58-60, 72, 87, 117, 151, 177, 193-194
Ryder, 71, 201
_San Biagio_, 151
Sarasate, Pablo de, 22, 110, 113, 195
_Sarasate, Portrait of Pablo de_, 27, 97, 124, 136, 139-140, 145
Sargent, 84, 141, 201
_Scene in Alsatian Village_, 150
Schalcken, 82
Segantini, 236, 247
Sharaku, 46
Shunsho, 46
_Sickert, Portrait of Walter_, 176
_Silent Canal, The_, 153
Singer, H. W., 196
"_Soupe à Trois Sous_," 153
_Southampton Docks_, 153
_Southampton Water_, 70
Spartali, Christie, 54
Spencer, Herbert, 85
Starr, Sidney, 140
Steichen, 94
Stevens, 42, 43-44, 103, 123
_St. Mark's, Venice_, 70
Stott, 191
_Street at Saverne_, 150
Studd, Arthur, 49
Sutherland, 106
Swinburne, 23, 53,191
_Symphony in White, A_, 19, 42, 50, 189, see also _Woman in White_
_Symphonies_, 21, 39, 40, 42
Tadema, Alma, 42
Taine, H., 81
Tanyu, 148
Tarbell, 247
Taylor, Tom, 190
"Ten O'clock," 8, 61, 182, 186, 198-200, 251
Terborg, 93
Thayer, Abbott, 201, 239
Thomas, Percy, 225
Thomas, Ralph, 229
Thompson, Sir H., 22
Tintoretto, 65
Tissot, 12, 95, 133, 134
Titian, 65, 81, 91, 95, 130, 133, 168
Tryon, 68, 69
Turner, 75, 87, 151
_Unsafe Tenement_, 153
_Valparaiso Harbour_, 20-21, 59, 70
Vanderbilt, George W., 37, 230
Van der Helst, 18
Van Dyke, 79, 82, 122
Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Schuyler, 167
_Variations_, 21
Velasquez, 11, 42, 79, 95, 97, 124-125, 132, 134, 142, 192, 203, 231,
243
_Velvet Dress, The_, 162
Vermeer, 18
Vernet, 78
Veronese, 168, 169, 246
Veyrasset, 153
"_Vielle aux Loques, La_," 149
_View on the Thames_, 173
Vollon, 18
Watteau, 87
Way, Thomas, 174, 176, 229
Wedmore, Frederick, 166, 174, 190
_Westminster Bridge_, 70
Whistler George Washington, 9-11
Whistler, James (Abbott) McNeill
Private Life, 8-38, 214-218, 234
Birth, 9
Youth, 9-11
Marriage, 8, 32
In Russia, 10-11
At West Point, 11-12, 16
Student Life in Paris, 12-17, 41-43
In London, 6-7, 17, 19, 21-26, 27, 36-37
In Paris, 6-7, 19, 28-36
In Venice, 7, 26-27, 151-152
In Holland, 7, 18, 36
In South America, 20-21, 74
Financial Difficulties, 26-27
His Art School, 33-35
Japanese Influence, 45-57
Butterfly Monogram, 39-41, 56-57
_Whistler's Portraits of Himself_, 219, 228-230
Whistler, William, 214
_White Girl, The_, see _Symphony in White, A_
White House, The, 8, 22-23, 106-109, 113
White, Stanford, 118
Whitman, 204
Whittemore, John G., 50
Wilde, Oscar, 25-26, 192
_Wine Glass, The_, 153
_Woman in White_, 49, 52, 123, 186-187, 229
Wuerpel, E. H., 28
_Yacht Race, The_, 188
_Yellow Buskin, The_, see _Campbell, Portrait of Lady Archibald_
Young, 87
_Zaandam_, 158
Zola, 19
Zorn, 84, 141, 153
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
PUNCTUATION
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
oe ligatures are shown thus: [oe] (e.g. man[oe]uvred).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals or with
passages in title case.
Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired; however,
inconsistencies in hyphenation (e.g. "every-day"/"everyday") have
been retained.
WORDS AND SPELLING
pg 25: "Grey" changed to "Gray" (The author of "Dorian Gray")
pg 32 and 45: "ae" normalised to "æ" (Men of very dissimilar
æsthetic convictions) (the æsthetes of the Empire)
pg 110 and index: "D'Oyle" changed to "D'Oyly" (the home of Mr.
D'Oyly Carte)
pg 166: Word "he" added (I believe he himself knew)
pg 186: "Laakoon" changed to "Laokoon"
pg 227: "absorbant" changed to "absorbent" (painted on very
absorbent canvas)
pg 227: "noctures" changed to "nocturnes" (For the blue nocturnes)
pg 229: "frontpiece" changed to "frontispiece" (appears as the
frontispiece)
pg 241: "enlightment" changed to "enlightenment" (proof of
enlightenment)
pg 263: "Riks Museum" changed to "Rijks Museum" (Rijks Museum,
Amsterdam)
pg 269: "Hellew" changed to "Helleu"
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Whistler Book - A Monograph of the Life and Position in Art of James McNeill - Whistler, Together with a Careful Study of His More - Important Works" ***
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