I may mention as a sequel to the brief account of the suit Whistler v.
Ruskin, which I sent you a short time since, that the plaintiff has
lately published a little pamphlet in which he delivers himself on the
subject of art-criticism.
This little pamphlet, issued by Chatto & Windus, is an affair of
seventeen very prettily-printed small pages; it is now in its sixth
edition, it sells for a shilling, and is to be seen in most of the
shop-windows. It is very characteristic of the painter, and highly
entertaining; but I am not sure that it will have rendered appreciable
service to the cause, which he has at heart. The cause that Mr. Whistler
has at heart is the absolute suppression and extinction of the
art-critic and his function. According to Mr. Whistler the art-critic is
an impertinence, a nuisance, a monstrosity--and usually, into the
bargain, an arrant fool.
Mr. Whistler writes in an off-hand, colloquial style, much besprinkled
with French--a style which might be called familiar if one often
encountered anything like it. He writes by no means as well as he
paints; but his little diatribe against the critics is suggestive, apart
from the force of anything that he specifically urges. The painter's
irritated feeling is interesting, for it suggests the state of mind of
many of his brothers of the brush in the presence of the bungling and
incompetent disquisitions of certain members of the fraternity who sit
in judgment upon their works.
"Let work be received in silence," says Mr. Whistler, "as it was in the
days to which the penman still points as an era when art was at its
apogee." He is very scornful of the "penman," and it is on the general
ground of his being a penman that he deprecates the existence of his
late adversary, Mr. Ruskin. He does not attempt to make out a case in
detail against the great commentator of pictures; it is enough for Mr.
Whistler that he is a "litterateur," and that a litterateur should
concern himself with his own business. The author also falls foul of Mr.
Tom Taylor, who does the reports of the exhibitions in the _Times_, and
who had the misfortune, fifteen years ago, to express himself rather
unintelligently about Velasquez.
"The Observatory at Greenwich under the direction of an apothecary,"
says Mr. Whistler, "the College of Physicians with Tennyson as
president, and we know what madness is about! But a school of art with
an accomplished litterateur at its head disturbs no one, and is actually
what the world receives as rational, while Ruskin writes for pupils and
Colvin holds forth at Cambridge! Still, quite alone stands Ruskin, whose
writing is art and whose art is unworthy his writing. To him and his
example do we owe the outrage of proffered assistance from the
unscientific--the meddling of the immodest--the intrusion of the
garrulous. Art, that for ages has hewn its own history in marble and
written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still and
stammer and wait for wisdom from the passer-by?--for guidance from the
hand that holds neither brush nor chisel? Out upon the shallow conceit!
What greater sarcasm can Mr. Ruskin pass upon himself than that he
preaches to young men what he cannot perform? Why, unsatisfied with his
conscious power, should he choose to become the type of incompetency by
talking for forty years of what he has never done?"
Mr. Whistler winds up by pronouncing Mr. Ruskin, of whose writings he
has perused, I suspect, an infinitesimally small number of pages, "the
Peter Parley of Painting." This is very far, as I say, from exhausting
the question; but it is easy to understand the state of mind of a London
artist (to go no further) who skims through the critiques in the local
journals. There is no scurrility in saying that these are for the most
part almost incredibly weak and unskilled; to turn from one of them to a
critical _feuilleton_ in one of the Parisian journals is like passing
from a primitive to a very high civilisation. Even, however, if the
reviews of pictures were very much better, the protest of the producer
as against the critic would still have a considerable validity.
Few people will deny that the development of criticism in our day has
become inordinate, disproportionate, and that much of what is written
under that exalted name is very idle and superficial. Mr. Whistler's
complaint belongs to the general question, and I am afraid it will never
obtain a serious hearing, on special and exceptional grounds. The whole
artistic fraternity is in the same boat--the painters, the architects,
the poets, the novelists, the dramatists, the actors, the musicians, the
singers. They have a standing, and in many ways a very just, quarrel
with criticism; but perhaps many of them would admit that, on the whole,
so long as they appeal to a public laden with many cares and a great
variety of interests, it gratifies as much as it displeases them. Art is
one of the necessities of life; but even the critics themselves would
probably not assert that criticism is anything more than an agreeable
luxury--something like printed talk. If it be said that they claim too
much in calling it "agreeable" to the criticised, it may be added in
their behalf that they probably mean agreeable in the long run.