The Whistler book
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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: Sadakichi Hartmann
Illustrator: James McNeill Whistler
Release date: May 28, 2015 [eBook #49068]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHISTLER BOOK ***
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,
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