that he was better born, better educated, and had better advantages
than the average aspiring youth. In art he had left only the usual
record of desultory drawings. Professor Weir at West Point had given
him lessons, but nothing remarkable resulted therefrom. Some of the
sketches of his West Point days are preserved, and while they are not
astonishing, they are nevertheless moderately indicative of the coming
master. Two drawings called “The Valentine” and “Sam Weller and Mary”
have the same small delicate line and an attempt at tone by shadings
and hatchings that characterize his etchings and lithographs of later
date. But Whistler’s career does not begin for us until he reached
Paris in 1855--the year before La Farge’s arrival.
There are conflicting stories about what he did or did not do under
Gleyre. He must have learned something of drawing and construction
besides such small studio devices as arranging colors on the palette,
preparing the canvas, using ivory-black as a base of tone--a method
which he retained all his life. In actual handling of the brush he
seems to have gotten something from his associates, Fantin-Latour and
Degas, who were then following Courbet. Evidently he did not care for
the routine of the _atelier_. Drouet, the sculptor, who was one of his
intimates, did not think that he worked much but was well disposed
toward jokes, pranks, and a good time. By way of interlude during his
two years with Gleyre he went with a companion on a trip through Alsace
and did some etchings, known as the French set. In 1857 he made a trip
to England and studied pictures at the Manchester Exhibition. Returned
to Paris, he remained there until 1859, living in the Latin Quarter,
copying pictures at the Louvre, and doing original work of his own. His
first notable picture, “At the Piano,” was sent to the Salon of 1859
and rejected, though two of his etchings were accepted. Sent to the
Royal Academy the same year, the picture and the etchings were well
received and praised.
There were many journeyings backward and forward from London during
this year. Whistler’s sister had married Seymour Haden and was living
there; his student friends of Paris days--Poynter, Armstrong, Ionides,
Du Maurier--were there and he had not as yet quarrelled with them;
above all, the Thames was there. So finally he took up his residence
in London and began work along the river. He did eleven etchings of
the Thames set, and the next year painted the “Wapping,” the “Thames
in Ice,” and later in the year “The Music Room,” besides a number of
portraits. In 1861 he was in Brittany doing the “Coast of Brittany”
in the style of Courbet, then in Paris at work on “The White Girl,”
and later at Biarritz painting “The Blue Wave,” again in the style of
Courbet.
Up to this time everything had gone fairly well with him. He had had
an artistic success at the English exhibitions, though his “White Girl”
had been rejected; many friends--Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Swinburne,
and others--recognized his ability; there was as yet no marked
denunciation from press or public. It was not called for, even from a
Philistine point of view. Nothing very ultra or bizarre showed in his
painting. It was modern, but it was the modernity of Gleyre, Courbet,
Fantin--the advanced painting of the times. The pattern of his pictures
was perhaps something of an innovation, because already he had begun
flattening it. That may have been the reason for the rejection of “At
the Piano” and “The White Girl.” But there could have been nothing very
forced about the flattening then, for to-day the pictures look just
a little old-fashioned. For the realistic requirements of 1860 they
were extremely well planned and executed, and the wonder now is that
every one did not give them positive recognition at once. Perhaps the
handling was a little too free and the modelling of the figures too low
in relief for the man in the street, but on the whole there was small
cause for complaint on the part of the young painter.
If there was little question at this time about Whistler’s pictures,
there was none at all about his etchings. Every one, even the stodgiest
of Britons, liked them. Perhaps that was due again to their conformity
to custom. There was little about the early work very different from
that of other etchers except that it was freer, surer, and better.
The long swinging line, as in the dry point of “Jo,” or the sharply
contrasted blacks, as in the “Drouet,” were given with emphasis.
Contrast rather than uniformity was the aim and there was little
attempt at pronounced tone effect, or flattening of the figure,
or disturbance of perspective--the thing most dear to the viewing
public. In fact, Whistler’s etchings have always been exempt from
the denunciation of his paintings. People could see in them things
realistic and representative; the decorative pattern did not bother
them.
There was no hue and cry raised in England over Whistler’s early work
because it was not vehemently radical or audaciously assertive. He had
accepted and followed the classic tradition of Gleyre, had modified it
by studies of Rembrandt, Courbet, Fantin, Manet, had bettered it by
observations and methods entirely his own; but he was going with the
tide, not against it or across it. Had he died at, say, twenty-seven,
and the world had only his early etchings, “The White Girl,” “At the
Piano,” and “The Music Room,” to go by, it is doubtful if his dozen
biographies would have been written, or that he would have held more
than a modest niche in the hall of fame. It was when he became a great
innovator that he met with vituperation, and, by the same token, it was
only then that he became a really great artist.
The innovation came with his modification of the realistic tradition
of the Western world and his introduction of the decorative tradition
of the Eastern world. The latter was a better-based, a fairer, a more
alluring tradition than the one he had been reared in; but he did
not, could not, go over to it in its entirety and turn himself into
an Occidental painter on silk. That would have been mere forceless
imitation. Instead of doing so, he strove to graft the Eastern shoot
upon the Western stock, to take what was best of Japanese art and blend
it with French art, thus harmonizing the two traditions. Representative
figures from the Western world were put into an Eastern pattern and
made to do decorative service. The Thames was turned into nocturnes,
portraits were changed to arrangements in grays or browns or blacks,
and London _genre_ became so many symphonies or harmonies in gold,
blue, or old rose. The result was a rare bouquet of orchids which the
English public, reared on primroses and daisies, did not find in its
botany book and could not understand. No wonder there was confusion,
misunderstanding, and denunciation. With his Oriental gospel Whistler
in London was scoffed at and reviled. He had brought a new faith to
English art, but no one believed in it or would receive it. There was
nothing to do but stone the evangelist. The stoning roused his ire.
“though young he was a Tartar
And not at all disposed to prove a martyr.”
And so the quarrel began and ran on for forty years, until the painter
died, and the British public bought his pictures and hung them in its
national galleries, and the incident was declared closed. The story is
old in art but this one possesses distinctly modern variations.
[Illustration: “Nocturne. Gray and Silver. Chelsea Embankment,” by
James A. McNeill Whistler.
In the Freer Collection, Smithsonian Institution.]
Whistler had probably begun the study of Japanese art before 1860, and
there is equal probability that in Paris he saw not the best examples
of it, but only its latter-day manifestations in the color prints of
Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige. However that may have been, he saw
enough to change his ideas about pattern and to turn him half-way
round, at least, from the representative to the decorative. That was
the beginning of the misunderstanding. Time out of mind artist and
public had been conscious that painting possessed the dimensions of
height and breadth, and, by illusion, was capable of a third dimension
in depth or thickness. The illusion was produced by variations of
light, shade, or color which gave modelling. From long custom a
preference grew up for figures modelled out--a depth by protrusion
rather than by recession. When, therefore, Whistler came to the fore
and insisted that the third dimension was something of a vulgarity and
that figures should not be round and stand out but be flat and _stand
in_, there was instant disagreement.
He went further. Linear perspective was a cheap accomplishment and the
delight in it was unintelligent. There was infinitely more distinction
in aerial perspective whereby recession and depth were produced by
a degradation of values. Aerial perspective was, in fact, the only
perspective worth while. There should not be too much depth. The
pattern should be kept flat and the picture should not “break through
the wall” but be a part of it. Moreover, contrast of color was less
decorative, less charming, than accord. A picture should be pitched in
a certain tonal key and maintain the tone throughout. The minor chords
were more refined than those of higher pitch and greater resonance; a
twilight or a midnight was more lovely than “a foolish sunset.” Finally
the picture was finished when its decorative pattern was complete. The
whole meaning of the picture was in its look. It should make no other
appeal. Piety, patriotism, sentiment, emotion, story were all barred
out as beside the mark--foreign to the medium.
All this Whistler said in his pictures and it irritated him that the
public would not recognize his point of view, but chose instead to
judge his work by the standards of a Leighton and a Millais. By way
of supplement he sought to explain with tongue and pen, but he used
too many metaphors, paradoxes, and sophisms, with the result that the
audience was more mystified than ever. He achieved a reputation for
insincerity; was derided as a coxcomb, a mountebank, an impostor, a
charlatan. Finally it was discovered that some of the things he said
were sharp-pointed, that he was a wit, a dandy, a gay fellow. And they
laughed. They would not take either his word or his art seriously. It
was admitted, with some complacency, that he was a good etcher, but as
a painter he had not fulfilled expectations. The prophet had arrived
ahead of his time.
The Japanese influence--the most potent of all in Whistler’s art--began
to show itself gradually and did not come out entirely in the open
until such pictures as the “Lange Leizen,” “The Gold Screen,” “The
Balcony,” and the “Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine” appeared. With
them not only the flat pattern but Tokio porcelains, fans, screens,
robes were shown. There was some incongruity in the appearances,
which Whistler did not seek to conceal. The figure in the “Lange
Leizen” is English, sits on a chair like an English model, and is in
an English interior; but Japanese costume and blue-and-white pots
and jars are introduced. Whistler regarded it as a color scheme and
called it “An Arrangement in Purple and Rose,” but his audience saw
only the incongruity. “The Balcony” again was mystifying. There were
four figures in Japanese robes on an iron-railed platform with an
outlook on the Thames. There were bamboo screens and potted azaleas and
blue-and-white tea things. Again there was the impossible--Japan set
down in London. The subtitle, “A Harmony in Flesh Color and Green,”
explained nothing. The picture was judged by its meaning, not by its
appearance, and, of course, it meant nothing in an English sense.
The “Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine” was even more startling. Every
one knew it was a young Greek girl who posed as the Princesse, and
the masquerade of Japanese robe and rug and screen and fan was only a
pretense. The subtitle of “Rose and Silver” again did not enlighten.
What was wanted was the common sense of it and not the harmony or the
arrangement. But it had no common sense; it was merely a fantasy in
color. Persistently they looked for the wrong thing and would not see
what the painter wished them to see. It was just so with “The Little
White Girl”--a beautiful symphony in white showing a young girl in
muslin leaning against a white mantel with her face reflected in a
mirror. It was Japanese only in the fan, the flowers, and the vase, but
the arrangement was too flat for public appreciation, and the girl was
declared the “most bizarre of bipeds.”
[Illustration: “The Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine,” by James A.
McNeill Whistler.
In the Freer Collection, Smithsonian Institution.]
All through the sixties this misapprehension of purpose and aim
persisted, and toward 1870 another riddle was presented with the
appearance of the nocturnes. They were things done along the Thames at
dusk and were revelations of that blue-air envelope which forms when
the shadow of the world begins to creep up the Eastern sky. The idea
had perhaps been suggested to Whistler in the color prints of Hiroshige
and he had afterward found its reality in English twilights. Such a
motive was quite the opposite of Turner’s blazing sunset upon which the
generations had been reared. Everything was muffled, vague in outline,
half seen as to place. Much was left to the imagination, and as for
the composition, it was arranged with the greatest simplicity. Indeed,
it was so simple that people thought it must be foolish and said so
without hesitation.
Again the subtitles of “Blue and Gold” and “Black and Gold” carried no
meaning. Even the experienced Ruskin could see nothing in the later
“Falling Rocket” but “a coxcomb flinging a pot of paint in the public’s
face.” It was “cockney impudence” and “wilful imposture.” That was more
than Whistler could stand, and he began a libel suit against Ruskin in
the course of which the Attorney-General of England said he “did not
know when so much amusement had been afforded the British public as
by Mr. Whistler’s pictures.” The trial was a farce and the laugh went
against Whistler. But he laughs best who laughs last, and it has not
been the British public that has done the latest laughing.
There had been merriment before that, and--incredible as it may
seem--over Whistler’s now celebrated portrait of his mother. It
was admitted to the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1872 only after a
well-known academician had threatened to resign if it were rejected.
It was not wanted, but having been received, it was treated as a joke.
London revised its opinion about the portrait later on. After the
French Government bought it for the Luxembourg it was thought, even by
the hosts of Philistia, to be Whistler’s best effort, and there was
much talk of its refined motherly spirit and decent air--praises that
the painter resented, telling the public that the sitter was no affair
of theirs and that their only interest should be in “the arrangement in
gray and black.”
The portrait of Carlyle followed, and was not unlike the mother
portrait in its color scheme and pattern. Nothing was round in
modelling, or projected, or stood out in the canvas. The wall, the
chair, the figure, even the head, were flattened, and to that extent
rendered incomprehensible to the general. The ponderous _Times_
proclaimed that “before such pictures ... critic and spectator are
alike puzzled. Criticism and admiration seem alike impossible, and
the mind vacillates between a feeling that the artist is playing a
practical joke upon the spectator or that the painter is suffering from
some peculiar optical illusion.” Eventually the Carlyle won its way,
and is now one of the treasures of the Glasgow Corporation Art Gallery.
But for years no one would touch it with a pair of tongs.
Both the Carlyle and the mother portraits had their prototypes in the
groups of Frans Hals at Haarlem. Whistler much admired Hals’s late
portraits of Women Regents there, and found in them his “arrangement in
gray and black.” But about the same time with the Carlyle he painted
a portrait of Miss Alexander, the like of which had never before been
seen. It was the portrait of a little girl, hat in hand, standing at
full length in a room, with daisies at the side and butterflies at the
back. The title of it was a “Harmony in Gray and Green.” The pattern
was beautiful, the color delightful, the pose childlike, and even
realistic. But London would not have it. It was “gruesomeness in gray,”
“a rhapsody in raw child and cobwebs,” “a disagreeable presentment,”
and “uncompromisingly vulgar.” Not even in the turbulent times of
Delacroix and “the drunken broom” had criticism so cheapened its array
and shot so wide of the mark.
In spite of abuse Whistler continued producing portraits--one of
Leyland in evening dress standing at full length, an “arrangement in
black”; one of Mrs. Leyland, never entirely completed, a very beautiful
“symphony in flesh color and pink”; one of Mrs. Huth in black velvet,
another “arrangement in black.” They were all realistic enough as
regards the likeness but decoratively arranged as regards pattern and
color. They were, once more, the blended view of the West and the East,
and Whistler never tried to disguise the fact. He sought to place the
figure in the canvas as far as he stood from the sitter when painting
the picture, but otherwise he adhered to the flattening of the pattern,
the simplicity of the arrangement, and the predominance of a tone of
color.
In 1876 Whistler was given _carte blanche_ to produce one of his tone
effects in a room at the Leyland house. This afterward became known
as the Peacock Room. It held the picture of the “Princesse du Pays
de la Porcelaine” at one end, was decorated elsewhere with peacocks,
furnished with cabinets of blue-and-white china, and set off with
blue and gold in the walls and ceiling. The idea of the peacocks had
probably come to Whistler from some Japanese master, perhaps Okio, and
the rest of it was his own arrangement of color. The next year was
that of the suit against Ruskin. London laughed and Whistler shortly
thereafter went into bankruptcy. Everything was seized and sold,
bringing little or nothing. The tide was at its lowest ebb, and the
painter was left stranded, but by no means dead or even moribund.
When he had sufficiently recuperated he went off to Venice, where he
gathered a little coterie of admirers about him who referred to him as
“the master,” and where he talked much, and did some etchings and some
pastels on colored paper. The first series of Venetian etchings, twelve
in number, were done in the summer of 1880, and possibly he never went
beyond such plates as “The Rialto,” “The Bridge”, and “The Traghetto.”
They seem the most flawless of his etched work. As for the pastels,
they were largely notes of color, line, or movement, and while charming
as notes, they were not impeccable in drawing. They were never intended
to be realistic in any modern sense; they were, in fact, mere flying
autumn leaves that meant nothing aside from form and color and their
airy lightness.
In November Whistler returned to London, and the sniping and
sharpshooting began again. It was temporarily interrupted by the death
of his mother in January, but soon broke out anew. Portraits were being
painted--that of Duret in evening clothes with a domino on his arm,
and one of Lady Archibald Campbell, called “The Yellow Buskin,” an
“arrangement in black,” being the most notable. “The Yellow Buskin,”
now in the Fairmount Park Gallery, Philadelphia, appeals to many
people as perhaps Whistler’s most spirited and effective portrait, but
London criticism viewed it lightly. The _Morning Advertiser_ said “its
obvious affectations render the work displeasing,” and another critic
stated that “he has placed one of his portraits on an asphalt floor
and against a coal-black background, the whole apparently representing
a dressy woman in an inferno of the worldly.” The public was equally
unconvinced. So in 1884 Whistler mounted the platform at Princes Hall
and in his _Ten O’Clock_ set forth not only his philosophy of art but
his scorn and contempt for almost everybody and everything excepting
art and artists. The lecture created a stir, was repeated at Oxford and
Cambridge, and Whistler became famous as one who could write even if
he could not paint. Oddly enough, his lecture seemed to command more
respect than his pictures, though it had not a tithe of their sincerity.
At any rate, the painter’s fortunes now began to mend. He joined the
Society of British Artists, and two years later became its president.
In 1888 he was married to Beatrix Godwin, widow of E. B. Godwin, the
architect, afterward moving to No. 21 Cheyne Walk, where many orders
for portraits came to him. Success and honors came also. France gave
him the Legion of Honor, Bavaria made him an academician, he had the
Cross of St. Michael, and later on Glasgow University gave him an
LL.D. His pictures at auction increased in price five and ten fold;
his commission prices were in proportion. He grew so affluent that he
could even decline to paint a ceiling for the Boston Public Library. At
last the light was beginning to dawn--a trifle late, to be sure, but
nevertheless it was welcomed by the painter.
[Illustration: “The Yellow Buskin,” by James A. McNeill Whistler.
In the W. P. Wilstach Collection, Fairmount Park Gallery.]
The rest is soon told. In 1892 he moved to Paris and lived in the rue
du Bac. A studio was opened for pupils in Paris at which he agreed to
give lessons. It was popular at first, but did not last long. He
travelled back and forth to London a good deal, and finally returned
to England to live. Quarrels had followed him to Paris and the Eden
trial had taken place there. It was unfortunate. _Trilby_ had been
written and Whistler was parodied in it, which caused another tempest
in a teapot. Then Mrs. Whistler died, and that was not only a great
shock but a lasting grief. He never quite got over it. He wandered to
Paris and Rome, but he cared little for them; he kept at work with
feverish energy, but he accomplished little. He was evidently broken,
not only in spirit but in body; and his death in July, 1903, was hardly
a surprise to his more intimate friends. The overstrung bow at last had
snapped.
For many years Whistler had been wrongly estimated alike by friend
and foe. That one admired and the other condemned did not change
the measure of extravagance. There was exaggeration on both sides.
Since his death his critics have held their tongues, but many of his
admirers have burst into print with impressions and reminiscences that
are quite out of proportion and give a misleading idea of the man and
the painter. The best account of him is that of the Pennells. They
were devoted to him and wrote enthusiastically about him, as they
should; but they did not fail to give the pros and cons in parallel
columns. Moreover, they did not make him out a jester with cap and
bells, a poseur, a wit, and a fop, but a very sincere and serious
artist stung to resentment by the stupidity and studied insults of
a perverse generation. That is precisely the right point of view,
but unfortunately the Pennells are about the only ones who have
consistently held it. The other accounts, for the most part, deal
with his personal appearance, his witticisms, his eccentricities, his
quarrels, and let his art go with a few rhapsodic generalities.