to authority without losing something of that give-and-take spirit which
softens life’s asperities.
Therefore, in any estimate of Whistler’s character and of his conduct
towards others, the influence of these very unusual early associations
and conditions must be taken into account and due allowance made.
_III_
_An American--The Puritan Element--Attitude of England and
France--Racial and Universal Qualities in Art--Art-Loving Nations._
Of Whistler’s innate and aggressive Americanism this is the place to
speak.
English in origin, the family became Irish and then American. In blood
he was doubly removed from England, first by Irish progenitors, then by
American, and in his entire make-up, physical and intellectual, he was
so absolutely un-English that to the day of his death he was an object
of curious observation and wondering comment wherever he went, in even
so cosmopolitan a city as London.
There was nothing he loved better than to surprise, mystify, confuse,
and confound the stolid Briton. And though he lived most of his life in
Chelsea and came back there to spend his last days, he was from the very
beginning and remained until the end a stranger in a strange land, a
solitary soul in the midst of an uncongenial, unsympathetic,
unappreciative, unloving people.
So little does England care for him or his art, or, more truly, so
prejudiced is the nation against him as an impertinent interloper, who
for more than a generation disturbed the serenity of her art household,
that the National Museum has no example of his work. Needless to say, if
he had been English, or had come from the remotest of England’s outlying
possessions, English paperdom and English officialdom would have claimed
him as their own, condoned his eccentricities, and bought his works with
liberal hand.
* * * * *
During the days of his greatest poverty and distress, when even France
turned stupidly aside from things she soon came to worship, and England
was jeering clumsily, and all nations repudiated him,--our own the
loudest of all,--he really seemed to be “a man without a country,” and,
beyond question, the injustice, the bitterness of it all entered deep
into his soul and remained. But whatever the folly, the blindness, the
stupidity of a country, though it seek to cast off a child so brilliant
he is not understood, the ties remain; however strained, they cannot be
broken. Nothing that America can do suffices to make an Englishman or a
Frenchman or a German out of an American,--the man himself may take on a
foreign veneer, but beneath the surface he belongs where blood and birth
have placed him.
* * * * *
He was infinitely more of an American than thousands who live at home
and ape the manners of Europe. He came from a line of ancestors so
distinctively and aggressively American that he could not have turned
out otherwise had he tried.
He was not even an Anglo-American or a Franco-American, but of all the
types and races which go to make the American people he was in blood,
appearance, alertness, combativeness, wit, and a thousand and one
traits, an exceedingly refined illustration of the Irish-American; and
because of his Irish blood, with perhaps some Scotch on his mother’s
side, he was never in sympathy with anything English, but was now and
then somewhat in sympathy with many things French, though the points of
sympathetic contact were so slight and superficial that he could not
live contentedly for any length of time in Paris. In his art, his
convictions, and his conventions he was altogether too profound, too
serious, too earnest--one might with truth say, too puritanical--to find
the atmosphere of Paris altogether congenial. His great portraits might
have come from the studio of a Covenanter, but never from a typical
Paris atelier.
* * * * *
The Puritan element which is to be found in every American achievement,
whether in war, in art, or in literature, though often deeply hidden, is
conspicuous in Whistler’s work, though he himself would probably have
been the first to deny it; and it is this element of sobriety, of
steadfastness, of undeviating adherence to convictions and ideals that
constitutes the firm foundation of his art, of his many brilliant and
beautiful superstructures of fancy.
Only a Puritan at heart could have painted the “Carlyle,” “His Mother,”
and that wonderful child portrait, “Miss Alexander.”
Only a Puritan at heart could have painted the mystery of night with all
his tender, loving, religious sympathy.
Only a Puritan at heart could have exhibited as he did in everything he
touched those infinitely precious qualities of reserve, of delicacy, of
refinement, which are the conspicuous characteristics of his work.
Concerning his refinement some one has very truly remarked:
“He so hated everything ugly or unclean that, even in the club
smoking-rooms (where one may sometimes hear rather Rabelaisian
tales), he never told a story which could not have been repeated in
the presence of modest women. His personal daintiness was extreme.
Threadbare coats on him were never shabby. He had to wear too many
threadbare garments, poor fellow! for, inasmuch as he put the
integrity of his art before everything else, he never stooped to
make those ‘pretty’ things which would have brought him a fortune,
without doubt. He was abstemious in his living, simple in all that
he did,--his exquisite, sure taste preventing him from extremes,
gaudiness, or untidiness.”
And when he lent his support, some eight years ago, to the school kept
by Carmen Rossi, who as a child had been one of his models, he would not
tolerate the study of the nude by mixed classes, and, in fact,
introduced many rules and restrictions which were considered by even
American pupils as “puritanical” in the extreme, and which the French
could not understand at all.
[Illustration]
He never painted any large and aggressive nudes, such as abound in
French art, such as, in a way, may be said to characterize French art
and mark its attitude towards life; but he made many drawings in
water-color and pastel, and painted some oils, all, however, exquisitely
refined, the element of the nude being in every instance subordinated to
the artistic scheme and intention. Many of these drawings have never
been exhibited. When seen they will go far towards demonstrating the
puritanical element in Whistler.
In his intolerance towards the methods, convictions, and ideals of
others he exhibited some of the spirit of the Puritan zealot who knows
no creed but his own.
Concerning his Americanism, one who knew him says:[2]
“Upon the known facts of Whistler’s career I do not touch. I wish
only to underline his Americanism, and to offer you one or two
personal memories. He was ‘an American of the Americans,’ say the
American papers, and who shall venture to dispute their dictum? Not
I, certainly. Nor would anybody who knew Whistler personally. I
knew him for many years in London and in Paris. I have many letters
from him on art and other matters, some of which ought to be
printed, for his letters to friends were not less works of art than
those which he composed more carefully for print. I have books and
drawings which he gave me. I mention these things as evidence that
I may fairly say something about him, at least on the personal
side. And I knew on what terms he lived with the so-called art
world in England, and what his own view of the matter was.”
And an English writer said, some ten years ago:[3]
“It should not be forgotten in America that Mr. Whistler is an
American of Americans. It may therefore be appropriately asked,
What has America done for him? It has treated him with--if
possible--even more ignorance than England; this, of course, coming
from the desire of the Anglomaniac to out-English the English.”
And there are others whose testimony will be forthcoming some day to
show how wholly and absolutely American he was to the very core and
centre of his being, and in his attitude towards all countries and
peoples of Europe.
It is true he said many harsh, bitter, and cutting things concerning the
press and people of this country, that he frequently exhibited in the
English sections of art exhibitions in preference to those of his own
country; but for all these things there were many good reasons, and we
have but ourselves to blame.
He was so much of an American that a single word of ridicule from this
side cut deeper than pages of abuse from the other. To the scoffings of
England he turned a careless ear, and replied with flippant, but
pointed, tongue; while the utter lack of support and appreciation from
his own country was ever referred to with a bitterness that betrayed
his real feelings. He could not understand how the American people could
desert a countryman battling alone against all England. As he frequently
said:
“It did not matter whether I was in the right or in the wrong,--I was
one against the mob. Why did America take the side of the mob,--and--and
get whipped?”
* * * * *
America was blind to his merits until long after he achieved fame in
every country of Europe; and it is undeniably true that the press here
truculently echoed the slurs of the critics on the other side throughout
that long period of controversy. It is a lamentable fact that up to the
day of his death he was misunderstood, or accepted as an eccentric in
many quarters of the land that now claims him as her bright particular
star in the firmament of art. Notwithstanding all these things, he
remained so conspicuously an American that every Englishman and every
Frenchman with whom he came in contact recognized him as a foreigner;
neither would have thought of mistaking him for a fellow-countryman; he
was as un-English and un-French as an Italian, or a Spaniard,
or--better--as an American.
* * * * *
The “White Girl” was rejected at the Salon in 1863; the “Portrait of my
Mother” was accepted by the Royal Academy and obscurely hung in 1871,
only after a bitter discussion, in which the one member of the committee
who favored it, Sir William Boxall, a friend of Whistler’s family,
threatened to resign unless it was accepted.
This same great portrait--it is said on good authority--was offered in
New York for twelve hundred dollars and found no buyer.
When exhibited in London, language failed to express the full measure of
the scorn and contempt the English press--from the ponderous _Times_
down to the most insignificant fly-sheet--had for this wonderful
picture; but no sooner had the French government purchased it for the
Luxembourg than all was changed, and with delightful effrontery the
_Illustrated London News_ said:
“Modern _British_ (!) art will now be represented in the National
Gallery of the Luxembourg by one of the finest paintings due to the
brush of an _English_ (!) artist,--namely, Mr. Whistler’s portrait of
his mother.”
The italics and exclamation marks are Whistler’s own, and his denial of
British complicity is complete.
* * * * *
Aside from Whistler’s personality, his art finds its only congenial
place in the midst of American art.
That his pictures will not hang in any conceivable exhibition of British
art without the incongruity being painfully perceptible goes without
saying, and none knows this better than English painters themselves.
Of all the various manifestations of art with which Whistler’s has come
in sharp contrast, English painting has been the slowest and most
stubborn in yielding to influences from the far East; whereas of all
painters of the nineteenth century Whistler was the very first to
recognize the wondrous qualities of Chinese and Japanese art and absorb
what those countries had to teach concerning line and color; and in so
far as the painters of England, and more conspicuously those of
Scotland, have learned aught of the subtleties and refinements of the
East, they have learned it _through Whistler_, and not direct.
In other words, Whistler has been absolutely immune to English
influences; there is not the faintest trace in any of his works,
etchings, lithographs, or paintings. In temperament, mood, fancy, and
imagination, in what he saw and the manner that he painted it, he was as
far removed from any “English School” as Hokusai himself.
On the other hand, England for some time has not been immune to his
influence, and things after--a long way after--Whistler appear at every
exhibition. What is known as the “Glasgow School”--that body of able and
progressive painters--long ago frankly accepted him as master.
Of English painters dead and living he had a poor--possibly too
poor--opinion. He frequently said, “England never produced but one
painter, and that was Hogarth.” In mellower moments he would say not
unkind things of certain qualities in other men; towards the living
painters who appreciated his art he was oftentimes generous in the
bestowal of praise. But it was impossible for Whistler to say a thing
was good if he did not think so; and he would exercise all his
ingenuity to get out of expressing an opinion when he knew his real
opinion would hurt the feelings of a friend. Towards strangers and
enemies he was often almost brutal in condemning what was bad,--as when
a rich man took him over his new house, dwelling with pride and
enthusiasm on this extraordinary feature and that, at each of which
Whistler would exclaim, “Amazing, amazing!” until at the end of their
tour of the rooms and halls, he at last said, “Amazing,--and there’s no
excuse for it!”
* * * * *
Of his attitude towards others a friendly writer said:[4]
“He was not a devotee of Turner, but he yielded to no man in
appreciation of certain of the works of that painter. He was not
lavish of praise where his contemporaries were concerned. Though he
could say pleasant things about them in a rather vague
way,--calling some young painter ‘a good fellow,’ and so on,--words
of explicit admiration he did not promiscuously bestow. The truth
is, there was an immense amount of stuff which he saw in the
exhibitions which he frankly detested. Yet conversation with him
did not leave the impression that he was a man grudging of praise.
It was rather that a picture had to be exceptionally good to excite
his emotions. One point is significant. It was not the flashy and
popular painter that he invited to share in the gatherings for
which his Paris studio was noted: it was the painter like Puvis de
Chavannes, the man who had greatness in him.”
That he had nothing in common with English art, the English were quick
to assert, until his fame made him a desirable acquisition, when on this
side, and that within the last few years, a disposition to claim
him--very much as the business-like empire seizes desirable territory
here and there about the globe--has begun to show itself; and, unless
America is alert, Whistler will yet appear in the National Gallery
as--to quote again the words of the _Illustrated News_--“An English
artist.”
* * * * *
As regards the French, they are disposed to claim Whistler on three
grounds:
First. That he was a student there,--with a master who taught him
nothing.
Second. That France acknowledged his genius by the purchase of the
portrait of his mother,--twenty years after it was painted, and seven
after it was exhibited in Paris.
Third. That he lived for a time in Paris.
Three reasons which would annex to France about every American artist of
note, for most of them (1) studied in France, (2) are represented in the
Luxembourg, and (3) have lived in Paris much longer than Whistler.
* * * * *
As for those first few years in Paris, even the French concede that
Gleyre was entirely without influence upon Whistler’s subsequent career.
As regards the recognition of his genius, France was exceedingly slow.
The portrait of his mother was exhibited in London in 1871, and
purchased for the Luxembourg in 1891, though it had been awarded a medal
at the Salon some seven years before.
France no more taught Whistler to paint than it taught him to etch. His
masters were older and greater than the art of France. Before he was
twenty-five he had absorbed all and rejected most that France had to
teach. At twenty-eight he painted a picture which, scorned by the Salon,
startled all who visited the “Salon des Refusés,” and then--still under
thirty--he shook the dust of France from his feet, obliterated every
vestige of her influence from his art, and started out to make his way
alone and unaided in the domain of the beautiful.
* * * * *
In 1865 he again stirred the critics with that novel creation of color
“The Princess of the Land of Porcelain.” Nothing of the kind had ever
been seen in either French or any other art. It was the application of
Western methods to Eastern motives; it was plainly a study primarily in
color, secondarily in line, not at all in character. It was the first
great step taken by the Western world towards abstract art.
“The Princess of the Land of Porcelain,” the “Lange Leizen,” the “Gold
Screen,” the “Balcony”--all early pictures--are all one and the same in
motive; they are his first attempts in a large way to produce color
harmonies, to subordinate everything to the color composition.
[Illustration]
Of Whistler and American art in those days an unnamed correspondent has
written from Paris:[5]
“It would puzzle the analysis of a competent critic to find what
Whistler owed to Gleyre; and the young American openly professed to
have profited by the counter example of Gustave Courbet, who was
the realist of that day. From the first triumph of Courbet in 1849,
Gleyre had shrunk back into his shell and no longer exhibited at
the annual salons.
“From the start Whistler was an independent; and when, after six
years of work in the studios, he offered a picture for the judgment
of the official Salon, the jury promptly refused it. Whistler was
not discouraged, and hung the painting in the outlaws’ Salon des
Refusés. It created a stir that was almost enthusiasm, and the name
of his ‘Fille Blanche’--White Maiden--was still remembered when
four years later a few American painters demanded a section for
their work at the Universal Exposition of 1867. I have looked up a
criticism of the time, and imagine it will be found more
interesting now than when it was written.
“‘The United States of America are surely a great country and the
North Americans a great people, but what little artists they are!
The big daubs which they exhibit, under pretence of “Blue
Mountains,” “Niagara Falls,” “Genesee Plain,” or “Rain in the
Tropics,” show as much childish arrogance as boyish ignorance.
People say that these loud placards are sold for crazy prices in
Philadelphia or Boston. I am willing to believe it, but I cannot
rejoice at it.’
“This is laid on with no light brush, and some of us can recall the
American painters of that remote age who were so mishandled. But
the remaining paragraph of the lines given to American art may
surprise those who look on Whistler as only a contemporary.
“‘M. Whistler seems to me the only American artist really worthy of
attention; he is our old acquaintance of the Salon des Refusés of
1863, where his “Fille Blanche” had a _suces d’engouement_ (a
success of infatuation!). He is truly an American, as understood by
the motto, “time is money.” M. Whistler so well knows the value of
time that he scarcely stops at the small points of execution; the
impression seized as it flies and fixed as soon as possible in
swift strokes, with a galloping brush--such is the artist and such,
too, is the man.’
“Velasquez was already in the air, but Japanese art, to which
Whistler afterwards allowed himself to be thought indebted, was not
yet spoken of. Thus the young American artist was the precursor of
movements which years afterwards came to a head, and which for the
most part he has outlived. In view of this, the closing verdict of
the official critic of 1867 is worth noting, the more so as it
shows the reward already attributed to the American’s industry in
another branch of art. ‘While waiting for M. Whistler to become a
painter in the sense which old Europe still attaches to the word,
he is already an etcher (_aquafortiste_), all fire and color, and
very worthy of attention, even if he had only this claim to it.’”
Before France cared very much for Velasquez, before it so much as knew
there was an island called Japan on the art map, Whistler was playing
with the blacks and grays of the master of Madrid and with the blues and
silvery whites of the porcelains of the Orient.
And it was he,--Whistler,--the American, who turned the face of France
towards the East, and made her see things in line and color her most
vagrant fancy had never before conceived.
Searching the shops of Amsterdam, he found the blue-and-white china
which gave him inspiration to do those things beside which the finest
art of France is crude and barbaric.
* * * * *
Not very long ago a French writer said, “There is not, as yet, an
American school of painting, but there are already many American
painters, and great ones, who will in time form a school.”
Let us hope not.
A friend--a painter--once called Whistler’s attention to several very
good things by Alfred Stevens. Whistler looked at them a moment, then
said, “School, school, school,” and turned away.
In that, or any other restrictive or regulative sense of the word, let
us hope there will be no “American school;” but so long as there are
American painters there will be American paintings; and the greater the
work the more completely will it reflect the man, and the greater the
man the more surely and subtly will it reflect his nationality.
The phrase “American painters” means something more than Americans who
paint, and “American paintings” implies the transmission to the work of
something of the painter’s individuality, which includes as an important
element his racial and national characteristics.
In other words, American painters, regardless of where they are trained,
where they work, and what they paint, must produce American paintings;
they cannot wholly eliminate their individuality and nationality; they
cannot become so completely French or English as to absolutely
obliterate every trace of their American origin, and their works, though
English, French, or Italian to the last degree, will still exhibit
traces of American origin. So true is this, that the paintings of men
who have lived longest abroad and tried hardest to paint after the
manner of others find their most congenial surroundings amidst American
art.
* * * * *
So long as we have American paintings we shall have an American “school”
in the sense that all American paintings taken together, whether few or
many, whether good or bad, will be distinguished and distinguishable
from the paintings of every other country. In that sense America has,
and always has had, a “school” of painting, though for a long time the
school was little more than a kindergarten.
America has no centre like Paris, or Rome, or Florence, where a large
body of men and women are gathered from the four quarters of the globe
to study art. In that sense America has no “school;” but that sort of a
“school” is about the worst thing that can happen to a country. These
great centres for the diffusion of art are usually fatal to the
development of native art; the presence of a horde of foreigners, each
with his own peculiarities and characteristics, some with the effeminacy
of the South, others with the brutal force and overpowering virilty of
the North, stifles national initiative and produces sterile
cosmopolites.
Paris, with its salons, exhibitions, competitions, medals, prizes, and
innumerable incentives towards commercial, blatant, and vicious art, is
the curse of French art, and pretty soon France will have no art that is
really hers.
The atmosphere of Paris is one of strenuous striving after effect, of
mighty endeavor to make an impression; it encourages facility, dash,
bravura, eccentricities, and experiments of all kinds. From the depths
of our hearts let us be thankful that America has no “school” of that
kind, and earnestly hope that American artists residing temporarily
within that atmosphere will be affected as little as was Whistler.
Paris is an æsthetic Babel.