“THROUGH HIS BRAIN, AS THROUGH THE LAST ALEMBIC, IS
DISTILLED THE REFINED ESSENCE OF THAT THOUGHT WHICH
BEGAN WITH THE GODS, AND WHICH THEY LEFT HIM TO
CARRY OUT”
_WHISTLER’S
TEN O’CLOCK_
MR. WHISTLER’S personality was one of the most striking in the art world
of the last forty years, and his death was an irreparable loss. That he
will rank as one of the greatest masters of the nineteenth century there
can be no doubt. As an Impressionist with a strong individuality his
work requires attention in this volume.
The Whistler family came originally from England, chiefly from the
neighbourhoods of Whitchurch and Goring-on-Thames. A notable ancestor
was Daniel Whistler, President of the Royal College of Physicians of
England in the reign of Charles II. Several references to this “quaint
gentleman of rare humour” are to be found in the pages of ‘Pepys’
Diary,’ and the family trait reappeared (with emphasis) in the character
of the famous artist. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born at Lowell,
Massachusetts, in 1834, his father being Major George Washington
Whistler, for some time consulting engineer to the St. Petersburg and
Moscow Railway. The son was destined for a military career, and received
a considerable amount of tuition at the Government College at West
Point. Work as a cadet, and also on the coast survey, does not seem to
have interested him. In the fifties he migrated to Paris and became a
student in the atelier of Gleyre, two of his fellow pupils being Sir
Edward Poynter and George du Maurier. Whistler cannot have had much
sympathy with the art in vogue at that time, a degenerated style based
upon a sentimental classicalism. He found his best friends amongst young
Frenchmen with extremely different ideas, men such as Fantin-Latour,
Bracquemond, Degas, Manet, Duret, Claude Monet, and many others.
Whistler first acquired fame as an etcher, and his first set of plates,
known as the “little French set,” amply justifies the welcome with which
it was received. From that early date until his death he has been
acknowledged pre-eminent in the etcher’s delicate and graceful art.
At the Salon de Refusés (to which frequent reference has already been
made) Whistler exhibited his first important painting, the _Little White
Girl, Symphony in White No. 2_. It created his reputation as a painter,
and remains one of the most charming of his canvases. An early
contribution to the Royal Academy was entitled _At the Piano_, and
clearly showed that the artist was then dominated by the subtle
influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This influence was quickly
discarded, for Rossetti’s talent was inferior to that of the gifted
American.
It has often been said that Whistler was never welcomed at the Royal
Academy. This point remains debatable; the fact remains that the artist
was constantly in evidence during the early part of his career. In 1859
he exhibited _two etchings from nature_ (the title given in the
catalogue to one frame); in 1860 the celebrated _At the Piano_ (which
was bought by an Academician) and five other works, namely, _Monsieur
Astruc, Rédacteur du Journal l’Artiste_ (Drypoint); _Thames—Black Lion
Wharf_; _Portrait_ (Drypoint); _W. Jones, Lime Burner, Thames Street_
(Etching); and _The Thames, from the Tunnel Pier_. In 1861 he was
represented by one canvas, _La Mère Gérard_, together with _Thames from
New Crane Wharf_ (Etching); _Monsieur Oxenfeld, Littérateur, Paris_
(Drypoint); _The Thames, near Limehouse_ (Etching). In 1862 he sent two
paintings, _The Twenty-Fifth of December, 1860, on the Thames, Alone
with the Tide_; and _Rotherhithe_ (Etching). The next year, 1863, was
prolific. The catalogue contains the following titles: _The Last of Old
Westminster_; _Weary_ (Drypoint); _Old Westminster Bridge_; _Hungerford
Bridge_ (Etching); _The Forge_ (Drypoint); _Monsieur Becgis_ (Etching);
_The Pool_ (Drypoint). Two works were on view in 1864: _Wapping_ and
_Die Lange Lizen—of the Six Marks_. In 1865 he exhibited _The Golden
Screen_; _Old Battersea Bridge_; _The Little White Girl_ (with a
quotation in the catalogue of fourteen lines from Swinburne); and _The
Scarf_. Whistler was not represented in 1866, but in 1867 exhibited the
_Symphony in White No. 3_; _Battersea_; and _Sea and Rain_. After a
break of two years came _The Balcony_ in the Academy of 1870. The next
year’s catalogue does not contain his name, but in 1872 the Academy
accepted that exquisite example of his art, now in the Luxembourg,
_Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother_. For
six years Whistler was an absentee, being represented for the last time
on the walls of Burlington House, in 1879, by _Old Putney Bridge_
(Etching).
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE · J. A. McN. WHISTLER
]
[Illustration:
PRINCESS OF THE PORCELAIN COUNTRY · J. A. McN. WHISTLER
]
The majority of Whistler’s masterpieces were exhibited at the Grosvenor
Gallery in the days when Sir Coutts Lindsay was at the head of the
direction. The walls of the rooms in Bond Street were repeatedly adorned
by those charming creations known as _Nocturnes_ and _Symphonies_, by
the remarkable _Valparaiso_, by many of the portraits, notably _Lady
Archibald Campbell_, _Carlyle_, and the delightful _Miss Alexander_.
Twenty years ago Whistler’s life in London and Paris was exceptionally
active. In him Society discovered a wit of Gallic alertness, and he
speedily became one of the most prominent characters of the day. Readers
will remember the oft-told tale of how Whistler sacrificed (with a true
Whistlerian light-heartedness) much costly Cordovan leather, in order
that he might create a masterpiece of decoration in the celebrated
Leyland mansion. Another historic story is the _cause célèbre_ of
Whistler _v._ Ruskin, based upon the criticism of a Grosvenor Gallery
nocturne as “a pot of paint flung in the public face,” with the
resultant farthing damages. The canvas which called forth this elegant
banter was that entitled _Nocturne in Black and Gold; the Fire Wheel_,
the theme being a display of fireworks in the gardens at Cremorne. From
a literary point of view, as a writer of biting sarcasm the artist
scarcely had a peer. One admires that lively _jeu d’esprit_ “Ten
o’clock,” and the strange mixture of correspondence entitled “The Gentle
Art of Making Enemies” will not be out of date until all the shining
lights of the present generation have been forgotten.
After two years of probationship as an ordinary member, in 1886 Whistler
became President of the Royal Society of British Artists, an
old-established and hitherto staid and conservative institution. His
term of office was brilliant and exciting; he himself exhibited such
wonderful pictures as the _Sarasate_, and his reputation attracted the
most talented of the younger artists of the day. The correspondence
which ensued when Whistler vacated the presidential chair must be sought
for in “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.”
In Whistler’s work there is a curious yet indefinable influence of
Japanese painting. In company with most of the Impressionists, he was
influenced by those Impressionists of another race. This influence is to
be observed in all modern painting since 1870, when artists first
commenced to collect examples of the Japanese methods.
In his later years Whistler preferred the atmosphere of Paris to that of
London, although he continued to visit occasionally the country he
described as “humourless and dull.” The artist was thoroughly
cosmopolitan, and was equally at home in New York, Paris, or London. His
influence upon the art of to-day has been unmistakable, and one has
little doubt as to its permanency. Whistler helped to purge art of the
vice of subject, and the belief that the mission of the artist is to
copy nature.
[Illustration:
ALEXANDER HARRISON
]
Mr. Alexander Harrison is one of those numerous American artists who
have settled in France, a natural result of French training and French
sympathies. Inspired by Manet, influenced by Besnard, he has painted
some of the most successful Impressionist work of the last fifteen
years. One cannot agree always with Dr. Muther in his learned and not
altogether satisfactory tomes, but his appreciation of Mr. Harrison is
so delicate and just that it is worth reproducing. “_In Arcady_,” he
writes, “was one of the finest studies of light which have been painted
since Manet. The manner in which the sunlight fell upon the high grass
and slender trees, its rays gliding over branch and shrub, touching the
green blades like shining gold, and glancing over the nude bodies of
fair women—here over a hand, here over a shoulder, and here again over
the bosom—was painted with such virtuosity, felt with such poetry, and
so free from all the heaviness of earth, that one hardly had the sense
of looking at a picture at all.” The luminous painting of Besnard had
here reached its final expression, and the summit of classic finish was
surmounted. His third picture was called _The Wave_. To seize such
phenomena of Nature in their completeness—things so fickle and so hard
to arrest in their mutability—had been the chief study of French
painters since Manet. When Harrison exhibited his _Wave_, sea-pieces by
Duez, Roll, and Victor Binet were also in existence; but Harrison’s
_Wave_ was the best of them all.
[Illustration:
IN ARCADY · ALEXANDER HARRISON
]
[Illustration:
THE WAVE · ALEXANDER HARRISON
]
Harrison’s vast studio in Paris breathes of the sea. The painter is an
ardent yachtsman, and traces of his recreation are numerous. Here are to
be found dozens of canvases, rolled up, piled in bundles, hung haphazard
against the walls, each one telling some different story of the waters.
These studies, probably worked upon in the neighbourhoods of Pould’hu or
Begmiel, are often actually salted and sanded by contact with the
elements which dash against the wild but lovely Breton shores. No modern
man paints seascapes like Harrison. He produces effects which are
evidently the results of patient vigil and watching, as well as a
vigorous power of brushwork. They are transcripts of the ocean, which
can only be seen as the sun rises out of the east over the waters, pale
lilac tints, softly fading into citron, or gaining added strength in
vermilion or deep orange reflected from the passing clouds, whilst
sweeping ripples (one can almost hear their rhythmic cadence) are gently
lost across the expanse of ethereal, glistening sand.
[Illustration:
SUNLIGHT ON THE LAKE · CHILDE HASSAM
]
In other pictures we see the tide at full flood; nature is in a fairer
mood, and the universe glows with an exquisite green. The waves, of a
glassy transparency, are for the moment held in check by a supreme
power. Such passing phases of Nature Mr. Harrison seizes with unerring
touch. Another branch of his work, already referred to in speaking of
the picture _In Arcady_, are the paintings of the nude amidst the actual
surrounding of the fields. Part of their success may be ascribed to the
fact that they have been painted in each case in the open air. From the
photographs, which Mr. Harrison has allowed us to reproduce, both sides
of his beautiful talent may be judged. Like most Impressionists, his art
breathes of a love and joy with Nature as seen by a temperament refined,
distinguished, one may add—aristocratic.
In the days when Florida was a primæval wilderness Mr. Harrison as a
very young man entered the United States Coast Survey. Whistler, it may
be remembered, commenced his career under the auspices of the same
department. Florida was just the place for an adventurous youth, and
Harrison was interested in his work. His enthusiasm, coupled with his
ability, resulted in being intrusted with most of the difficult and
sometimes dangerous “reconnaissance” engineering scout work that called
for lonely jaunts and camping out amongst the swamps and lagoons.
After four years on the Florida coast the party moved on to Puget Sound.
The young men connected with the survey had been dabbling for some time
in the use of water-colours, and Harrison found that the artist in him
was winning ascendency over the surveyor. An argument with the head of
the survey settled the matter. Mr. Harrison went to San Francisco, and
then travelled to Paris, and studied under Gérôme. He was in his
twenty-sixth year, and conscious that his career was midway between
success and failure. He exhibited at the Salon a picture _Châteaux en
Espagne_, a boy stretched on his back in the sand of a warm, dry beach,
wrapt in the spell of a day-dream. “It was rather symbolic,” said the
artist once as he gazed at the photograph, “of my own state of mind at
that time.”
During the next ten years he was engaged in painting nudes in the open
air. His chief source of inspiration was his friend Bastien-Lepage, with
whom he travelled to Brittany. Harrison’s first success was _In Arcady_,
now in the Luxembourg. A recent journalistic interview elicited many
interesting facts about Mr. Harrison’s method of work. The writer
concludes: “Mr. Harrison’s usual haunt in Brittany is Begmiel. Here
there is a sandy peninsula jutting into the sea, whence you can watch
the sun go down on the one horizon, and the moon come up from the other.
He does not carry his paint-box about with him taking notes. Memory and
imagination, knowledge and power of visualisation, take psychic
photographs. It is not to be gathered from this that Mr. Harrison is
unerring. He has scraped out as many yards of painted canvas as any man.
But where his strength undeniably exists is in this subjective, rather
than objective, genius for instantaneous notation. When he comes to put
the picture on the canvas—now mark the importance of early influences—he
becomes the young surveyor again engaged in reconnaissance. He takes his
embryonic map (a small canvas) and puts down his known points. He knows
just what spot of colour was here, what broken line there. The more he
puts down the more he sees, and presently the little map is finished.
The first map finished a larger size is made, and, if all goes well,
perhaps one larger still, and we have a great picture like any one of
those exhibited by the artist at the Salon of the Société Nationale.”
It is hardly necessary to add that this artist is an officer of the
Legion of Honour, and has received numerous medals and other awards. Of
the Franco-American school of painting he is one of the recognised
heads, and this has been acknowledged by his election to the chief art
societies of Paris, New York, Berlin, and Munich, whilst he is
represented in the permanent collections of the Luxembourg, the Royal
Gallery, Dresden, the Museum at Quimper, and the American galleries of
Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco.
[Illustration:
CHILDREN · CHILDE HASSAM
]
[Illustration:
POMONA · CHILDE HASSAM
]
[Illustration:
A COUNTRY BEER-HOUSE, BAVARIA · MAX LIEBERMANN
]
Childe Hassam is a young American artist who has been strongly
influenced by Impressionism. Originally from Boston, he worked for
several years in Paris, and when he returned to the States had already
some reputation. In New York he has “rendered the street life in fresh
and fleeting sketches; snow, smoke, and flaring gaslight pouring through
the shop-windows, quivering out into the night, and reflected in an
intense blaze upon the faces of men and women.” A typical example of his
work in this _genre_ is _Seventh Avenue, New York_. Childe Hassam is an
associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, a member of the
Secession of Munich, the American Water Colour Society, and numerous
clubs and societies throughout the States. He has received medals at
many of the recent International Exhibitions, including that of Paris in
1889, whilst he is represented in several of the continental and
transatlantic galleries. Being still young and enthusiastic, much may be
expected of Mr. Hassam in the future.
------------------------------------------------------------------------