presence of the cinematograph and its marvellous living and moving
transcripts from nature, as presented in the fascinating picture
theatres, painting would have no chance, for even colour is sometimes
given.
But, however wonderful, it is scientific mechanism and not art. The
true province of painting is untouched, our national galleries have
not lost their attraction, and are not old masters more valuable than
ever? The very illusory powers of photography serve to define the true
sphere of art, which is a product of the human mind as well as of the
eye and hand.
There is another form of pictorial appeal which has, owing to the
association of art with commercial enterprise, attained such vast
proportions as to count as a popular education of the eye--for good or
for evil. I mean the pictorial poster, which might be said to be the
most original flourishing and vigorous type of popular art existing,
and the only popular form of mural painting. Its too frequent banality
and vulgarity are to be deplored, but to a great extent they are
inseparable from the conditions of the existence of the poster; but
undoubtedly there is a great amount of artistic ability employed in
these designs, which often show, too, the great resources of modern
colour-printing. It is part of the wastefulness of our system that
so much skill, talent, and labour should be spent on such ephemeral
purposes and placed in such incongruous positions and injurious
juxtapositions, often appearing in the mass as a sort of
sticking-plaster of varied colour upon the doleful face of a dingy
street. The same ability under different influences and inspired by
different ideals might serve to make eloquent the bare walls of our
schools and public buildings with painted histories and legends of our
country and race, which might foster the public spirit of our future
citizens. Every town should have its history painted in its Town
Hall--as Manchester has done in that wonderful series of mural
pictures by Madox Brown. There might be competitions in schemes of
decoration and mural design of this sort among the students of the
local art schools. Is this an ideal?
Well, after all, the great thing is to _have_ an ideal, an ideal, too,
may be of enormous practical value, for it is capable of inspiring men
to accomplish great works which they would never have touched without
such a stimulus. Every great work, every great achievement in art, in
social service--in all human effort, has been the result of an ideal
in the mind, a vision, a lamp, a torch that has lighted the path that
has enabled its bearer to clear away often apparently insuperable
difficulties and attain the goal.
Nor is the possession of an ideal less necessary to a people--the
nation collectively--than it is to the individual if real progress is
to be made. From ideals in art we are led to ideals in life and to
the greatest art of all--_The art of Life_. An ideal of national life
which would give purpose and impetus and unity to all social efforts
at amelioration, something beyond the strife of parties, personal
jealousies, and parliamentary man[oe]uvres. Such an ideal may be found
in that growing conception of the new age we are entering of _a true
co-operative commonwealth_, when the public good, being the main
motive, all things that add to the beauty, health, dignity, and
comfort of our cities, would be considered as of the first importance,
and when, while our ancient history and monuments should be preserved,
natural growth and expansion should not be impeded; a state wherein
every citizen, every man and woman would find a useful and congenial
sphere of work, and each and all would be prepared to do their part in
the service of the community, secure of a place at life's table, when
friendly emulation should take the place of cut-throat competition;
when every mother and every child would be cared for, and there would
be ample provision for old age. Labour being so organized that there
would be neither overwork nor unemployment, while there remained
abundant leisure for the cultivation of the arts and sciences and the
pleasures of life--poverty being unknown, and disease conquered by
knowledge and enforcement of the laws of health; death itself faced
with calmness or fearlessly met at need in the service or defence of
the community.
THE APOTHEOSIS OF "THE BUTTERFLY"
[Illustration]
THE APOTHEOSIS OF "THE BUTTERFLY"[11]
The world, it has been said, takes a man at his own valuation, and,
certainly it seems to have accepted even Whistler, at last, at his own
by no means modest estimate, and in the commercial sense, indeed, to
have considerably exceeded it.
It is true that Whistler had, as an original artist, to pass through
the usual stages of neglect and contumely. It is only the common
experience of what is called genius, albeit varied and complicated in
his case by his combative and whimsical personality.
What a pity it is that there are no means of obtaining a just and
sober estimate of an artist's powers (as well as a sympathetic one)
except by the long wait necessary for the verdict of that Court of
Final Appeal--Time.
At present the system seems to be, in the case of any one who shows
individuality or independence in art, at first to ridicule, underrate,
or abuse. If the innovator survives this process--well, the impression
gains ground that there must be something in him, and, if he can only
struggle on long enough, and keep his head above water, the tide may
turn in his favour--even to such an extent, sometimes, as to carry
the genius on the top of it to quite the other extreme of laudatory
appreciation, which may land him eventually in almost as dangerous
a position, as regards his artistic safety, as that in which he was
first discovered.
Between the bitterness of his enemies and the extravagant eulogies of
his friends, it becomes almost as difficult for an artist to find his
real latitude and longitude as for a ship in a fog. Still more so for
other navigators on critical seas anxious to take his true bearings.
Well, "The Butterfly" is caught at last! We have him in Mr. and Mrs.
Pennell's two sumptuous volumes, pinned down, as it were, in a glass
case, his natural history fully accounted for, both as an artist and
as a man. We can study the Whistlerian genius in its various stages,
from caterpillar to chrysalis, up to when it flutters gaily over
everybody and everything in the garden of life--a butterfly with the
sting of a wasp!
[Illustration: PORTRAIT STUDY OF WHISTLER BY HIMSELF.
(From a black and white drawing.)]
The authors have indeed, in a literary sense, adopted the
pre-Raphaelite methods, to which in art they appear to be opposed, in
painting their literary portrait of the great Impressionist. No one
will doubt the patience, care, and zeal with which they have carried
out the work, or the devoted loyalty of spirit in which what was
evidently regarded as a sacred trust has been fulfilled; but in their
natural anxiety to give full relief to the portrait of their hero and
idol, the authors have not always been able to be fair to some of his
contemporaries or predecessors, or to other forms of art than those
which he practised, and they are apt to become a little extravagant in
their terms. To assert, for instance, that Whistler was "the greatest
artist and most remarkable personality of the nineteenth century" is
a little "tall"; but no doubt the authors did not wish, any more than
Mr. Wedmore, to "understate." The insertion of the little words
_one of_ in the above-quoted sentence would have been advisable,
considering the number of remarkable personalities and artists the
nineteenth century produced. This presentation of Whistler dominating
and overtopping everybody reminds one of the method of the mural
artists of ancient Egypt, who, in order to glorify their kings and
impress beholders with his powers, represented the monarch as a
gigantic figure clutching a handful of diminutive enemies trembling in
his grasp, while he flourishes his sword over their heads.
It is, perhaps, one of "life's little ironies" that Whistler, who
maintained in his "Ten o'clock" philosophy that the artist, like the
unexpected, always "happens," and who took a purely individualistic
view of artistic history should be at last fully accounted for on
evolutionary principles. It seems strange that he, who apparently held
that artists occurred accidentally here and there in the history of
the world--like very sparing currants in a suet pudding, the pudding,
or public, being always of the same materials, equally "stodgy,"
indifferent, or ignorant as to art--that Whistler, who might almost
be described as the artist of accident, should be portrayed in minute
detail under the glare of the limelight, and shown in relation to, and
accounted for by, his heredity and environment.
A member of a most respectable family (like "The Newcomes") hailing
originally from the Islanders he professed to hate, we may trace the
origins of his personal characteristics, the germs of his development
and the foundations of his art. His mastery in etching, for instance
(perhaps destined to be considered the strongest and most enduring
side of his art), had its roots in the technical experience and
training of the United States Coast Survey. It is to be regretted that
it was not found possible to include later illustrations of his etched
plates in the book, as, with the exception of the pastels and water
colours and the earlier pictures, the reproductions generally lose
much of the charm, with the colour, of the originals, and most of
their atmosphere.
Whistler in himself furnishes another illustration of the different
side of his nature an artist often presents in his serious work from
that usually perceived in him, by the world in general, as a man.
If nothing of his self-assertive, combative, caustic and whimsical
personality had been known, such traits could hardly have been
suspected in the possessor of the refined taste, the delicate justness
of tone, the somewhat austere and restrained decorative sense combined
with a certain poetic vagueness, which generally characterize his
works.
The work of Whistler at different periods of his life also illustrates
the curious fact that artists of the most pronounced individuality of
style and method often show how strongly they may become influenced by
the work of others.
What Whistler's art would have been had he never seen the work
of Courbet, of Velasquez, of Fantin, of Albert Moore, and of the
Japanese, who can say? The power of assimilation itself may be an
attribute of genius, and it is not so much what he may have absorbed,
or from what source he may have derived suggestions, as what use an
artist makes of his derivations that really matters.
The first time I saw Whistler's work was in the old rooms of the Royal
Academy when that Institution shared the Gallery in Trafalgar Square
with the National Collection, and the old masters and the moderns were
next-door neighbours.
There was a certain obscure den opening out of a passage between two
of the principal picture galleries, named the Octagon Room, almost as
dark as a cellar, but it was here that Whistler's early and wonderful
etchings of the Thames side first saw the light--such as it was! in
the sixties.
I well remember, too, his early pictures, which also first appeared in
the Royal Academy exhibitions in the Trafalgar Square rooms. The quiet
power, rich tone, and distinction of "At the Piano," in 1860; the
picture of a rocky seashore with a figure of a fisher-girl lying
on the sand ("The Coast of Brittany," 1862), "skyed," if I remember
rightly, which, Mr. Pennell says, "might have been signed by Courbet";
the lady in a Japanese robe painting a blue pot ("The Lange Leizen--of
the Six Marks," 1864); I recall the striking effect of these works
among the commonplaces of the usual mixed exhibition. They struck new
notes. I also remember the "Wapping," "The Thames in Ice," "The Music
Room," and "The Little White Girl," all of which were exhibited at the
Royal Academy in the early sixties. These impressed me more than any
other, or later, of Whistler's works. All the above-mentioned early
pictures are reproduced in Mr. and Mrs. Pennell's book, and, to
my mind, they still hold their place as the strongest and most
interesting of the works of the artist in painting.
[Illustration:
[_T. R. Annan and Sons, photo_
"THE THAMES IN ICE."]
Later, too, visitors to the winter exhibitions of oil pictures at the
Dudley Gallery were surprised by certain "Nocturnes," visions of the
Thames in misty twilight with shadowy bridges and ghostly figures and
gliding barges, illuminated by twinkling golden lights; these were set
in moulded frames of unusual refinement, in green and other tones of
gold to suit the key of colour in the picture, and painted on the
flat with decorative patterns of a Japanese character in dull blue,
including a mysterious unit of pattern or mark, afterwards known as
"The Butterfly," and used as a signature upon all Whistler's works.
Then there was a "one man show" in a gallery in Pall Mall (No. 48),
opposite Marlborough House, in which "Old Battersea Bridge, Nocturne
in blue and gold" loomed large, I remember, and the town was surprised
by something fresh in the decorative arrangement of the exhibition,
yellow and gray predominating, if I remember rightly, relieved with
blue pots and palms. This is mentioned in the Life at p. 179. Then
came the famous "Peacock Room" in Prince's Gate, which chiefly
sustains Whistler's repute as what one may call a practical decorator.
It is to be deplored that the room itself was not more beautiful in
structure and arrangement, cut up as it was with fidgetty details,
with pendants from the ceiling and shelves for china. Still, of
course, the business of a decorator is to adapt his scheme to the
place decorated, and certainly this was done quite thoroughly
by Whistler, and the blue and gold scheme was worked out very
consistently and ingeniously upon the theme of the peacock.
It seems rather pitiful to read of the miserable squabbles over the
money, and the personalities and petty spite, however seasoned with
the wit of the artist, which seemed to raise a cloud of dust around
every transaction in which Whistler was concerned.
A little later, at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, he is in the
limelight again, and this time is fallen foul of by John Ruskin.
Much as one may owe to that great writer, and while, however biassed
or occasionally mistaken, the wholesome and ennobling influence of
his work on the whole must be acknowledged, there could be no
justification for his very injudicious and uncritical pronouncement
upon that nocturne of Whistler's, but it only meant that Ruskin, as
might be supposed, was utterly out of sympathy with that form of art,
and did not understand it.
Yet great as was the provocation, it would surely have been more
dignified for the artist attacked to have let the words recoil upon
the writer, and to have confidently awaited the verdict of time,
rather than to have dragged the matter into a law-court to be made
game of by counsel, judge, and jury, an utterly incompetent tribunal
to form any serious opinion upon a question of art.
[Illustration: PANELS FROM THE PEACOCK ROOM.]
One feels, however, to a nature like Whistler's, the sort of
notoriety which such situations give to the principals had a distinct
attraction, added to the fighting instinct which possessed him.
From this time onward this attraction seems to have grown more and
more powerful and to have influenced the life and work of the artist
in anything but a fortunate way, and it becomes fatiguing to follow
the course of the continual brawls in which he was involved.
He was a conspicuous figure at the Grosvenor Gallery private views in
the early days, with his white lock and his long wand, but I never
got further than a slight acquaintance with him, personally, which may
have been as much my fault (or misfortune) as his.
When we come to his "Ten o'clock," in which Whistler gives us his
philosophy of art, we find his views, characteristically, intensely
individualistic. Period, traditions, gradual evolution in art and
artists, are nothing to him. It is always the "one man show," a
purely personal view of art, from the first etcher on a cave-bone to
Rembrandt. The artist is always an accident. His predecessors or his
contemporaries are nothing. Heredity and environment, economic and
social conditions, are of no account. Race or country don't matter.
The inspiration of symbol and story is ignored or despised as
"literary." The unifying and ennobling influence of architecture, the
co-operation of the crafts, the associated chain of human endeavour
and experiment in the arts, which link the ages together, and find
their highest expression in great public monuments, do not interest
him apparently. "Art happened." This is as much as to say one is
only concerned with the flower, and the roots, the soil from which
it springs or the evolution of the plant itself are matters of no
account! Thus the individualistic artist kicks away the ladder by
which he arrived and expects the stage to be cleared for him. Ah,
well, "Ten o'clock" suited the hour, the audience, and the man. It
would be too much to expect brilliant artists and witty inventors of
_bons mots_, or butterflies to be profound philosophers as well.
In many ways Whistler, though distinctly a decorative artist, was the
complete antithesis of William Morris. Mr. Pennell makes a true remark
in his book in speaking of Whistler's ideas in decoration when he says
(p. 221, vol. i): "Colour for him (Whistler), was as much decoration
as pattern was for William Morris." One would be inclined however to
qualify this by saying that Whistler's main principle in decoration,
in which he showed a fine taste, was by _tones_ of colour; especially
was he successful in the choice of pale delicate tones. Whistler
appeals to one as a great craftsman in _tone_, rather than as a
colourist.
As a painter his most distinctive and original works will always
be his "nocturnes," and, of his portraits (which, however, he often
treated as landscapes) his fame seems likely chiefly to rest upon
those of his Mother and Carlyle.
The picture of Whistler himself, of his character as a man, which this
book reveals--in spite of some relieving touches--is not an attractive
one.
One can only feel sorry that so genuine an artist was so consumed
by his own opinion of himself, and wasted so much time and energy in
litigation, and that he could stoop to be professor of "the gentle art
of making enemies" or glory in the distinction of being a past-master
in the craft of losing friends. Still, he fought the Philistines.
Mr. and Mrs. Pennell's book is admirably done and well illustrated,
and it appears moreover in a form--clad in an arrangement of brown,
yellow, and gold--such as might have been approved by its fastidious
subject.
The book is peppered with Whistler's smart repartees and sayings;
of the latter the following dictum strikes me as remarkably true and
sound:
"Poverty may induce industry, but it does not produce the fine flower
of painting. The test is not poverty, it's money. Give a painter money
and see what he will do: if he does not paint his work is well lost to
the world."
[Footnote 11: "The Life of J. McNeill Whistler," by E. R.
and J. Pennell, in two volumes, illustrated. London: William
Heinemann, 1908.]
INDEX
(Note: The Page number is the link to the reference.
123^x indicates that the reference is only in the Footnote;
123,^x indicates that the reference is also in the Footnote).
Ancient Buildings, Society for the Protection of, 42, 43, 217.
Animals, treatment of, in art, 185-204.
Architecture, modern domestic, 48;
arts allied to, 125-146;
of the nineteenth century, 225-227.
Art education, 56, 57, 107-110, 114, 115, 242-245, 250.
Art, study and practice of, 105-122;
of the nineteenth century, 223-237.
"Art Nouveau, L'," 232.
Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, the, 28, 67, 68, 70, 71, 95,
96, 230, 248, 249.
Art Workers' Guild, the, 59, 60, 70, 93.
Assyrian art, animals in, 187, 188, 190.
Athens, architecture of, 126.
Ball, John, 41.
Bates, Harry, 61, 228.
Bell, R. Anning, 134.
Bellamy, Edward, his "Looking Backward," 10, 11, 214.
Benson, Frank, 236.
Binyon, Laurence, 65.
Birmingham, St. Philip's, 29.
Blake, William, 228.
Bokhara, embroidery from, 154, 155.
Brangwyn, Frank, 92.
Brown, Ford Madox, 17, 28, 92, 230, 253.
Brown, Prof. Frederick, 92.
Bullen, Wentworth, 25.
Burges, William, 50, 51, 227.
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 15, 25, 26, 28, 36, 37, 61, 230.
Burne-Jones, Lady, 29.
Butterfield, William, 227.
Cambridge, Jesus College, 28.
Canova, Antonio, 227.
Carlisle, Earl of, 15.
Carlyle, Thomas, 21, 40, 213.
Cennini, Cennino, his "Trattato," 164-176.
Century Guild, the, 67.
Chinese art, 63, 65, 231.
City and Guilds of London Institute, the, 67.
Clausen, George, 69, 92.
Clay, modelling in, 145.
Cleveland, Ohio, mosaic floor for bank at, 132.
Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., 28^2, 34.
Coire, gesso work at, 164.
Courbet, Gustave, 264, 265.
Cowper, F. Cadogan, 78^4.
Crane, Walter, his designs for "The Glittering Plain," 36;
associated with the proposal for a National Exhibition of the
Arts, 69;
President of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 95;
design in mosaic for a bank at Cleveland, 132.
Cretan embroideries, 152, 153.
Darius, frieze from palace of, 139.
Day, Lewis F., 59.
Dearle, H., 25.
Drawing, study of, 242-245.
Dress, modern, 212-214.
Dressler, Conrad, 139.
"Earthly Paradise, The," 7, 8, 16;
projected illustrated edition, 37.
Eastlake, C. L., his "Hints on Household Taste," 53.
Edinburgh, Art Congress at (1889), 29, 74.
Egyptian art, animals in, 185-188, 190;
mummies, use of gesso on, 182.
Embroidery, colour and its treatment, 149-159.
Eve, G. W., 192.
Flaxman, John, 227.
Florence, Riccardi Chapel, 141.
Forbes, Stanhope, 92.
Ford, Onslow, 227.
Furse, Charles, 92.
Gainsborough, Thomas, 228.
Gallia Placida, Mausoleum of, 133.
Gesso work, early Italian, 136, 137, 141, 163-182.
Gibson, John, 227.
Gilbert, Alfred, 61.
Giotto, 140.
Glasgow School, the, 232.
Glass, stained, 28, 29, 144.
"Glittering Plain, The," 36.
Gozzoli, Benozzo, 141.
Greek art, animals in, 190-192.
Grosvenor Gallery, the, 65, 71, 268, 270.
Gwalior, stone carvings of animals at, 198, 200-203.
Hammersmith Socialist Society, 27, 28,^2.
"Hobby Horse, The," 67.
Hogarth, William, 228.
Hokusai, 63.
Holiday, Mr. and Mrs. Henry, 134.
Home Arts and Industries Association, the, 67.
Hooper, W. H., 36.
Horne, Herbert P., 67.
Horniman Museum, mosaic design on the, 134.
Houses of Parliament, frescoes in the, 78^4.
Hughes, Arthur, 17.
Hunt, Holman, 49, 69, 230.
Indian art, animals in, 189, 190, 198, 200-203.
Israels, Joseph, 91.
Jackson, John, 108^5.
Japanese art, influence of, 63-65, 231;
treatment of animals in, 198, 199.
Kelmscott House, 27, 28,^2.
Kelmscott Press, the, 5, 29, 34-36.
Landseer, Sir Edwin, 203.
Lascelles, Frank, 236.
La Thangue, H. H., 92.
Leighton, Lord, 61.
Leverett, Arthur, 36.
Liebermann, Max, 91.
Lindsay, Sir Coutts, 65.
Liverpool, Art Congress at (1888), 73, 74.
London, aspect of, 207-214;
architecture of, 226.
London County Council, its technical schools, 68, 69.
Magnus, Sir Philip, 67.
Magnússon, Professor, 16.
Manchester, frescoes in the Town Hall, 253.
Marlborough College Chapel, decoration of, 168.
Merton Abbey, 25, 27, 28,^2.
Meunier, Constantin, 91, 228.
Michael Angelo, 141.
Micklethwaite, J. T., 132.
Millais, Sir J. E., 230.
Millar, W., his "Plastering," 164.
Millet, François, 91.
Moody, T. W., 63, 138.
Moore, Albert, 61, 264.
More, Sir Thomas, 41.
Morgan, William de, 55, 139.
Morland, George, 228.
Morris, Miss May, 36.
Morris, William, 3-43, 51, 230, 271;
his Socialism, 5, 7-14, 36-41;
visit to Iceland, 16;
and the artistic revival, 16-20, 54, 93-95, 232, 248;
his birth and education, 21, 22;
experiments in dyeing, 24;
weaving, 24-26;
painted glass, 28, 29;
his MS. of Omar Khayyám, 29-33;
the Kelmscott Press, 5, 29, 34-36;
illustrations for "Cupid and Psyche," 37;
founds the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, 42;
his appreciation of humour, 44,^3.