Mediterranean came to study the Acropolis.
* * * * *
Turning to the entire body of American painters, at home and abroad, we
find that they constitute at the present day the one “school” that has
already given to the world the greatest artist since the days of
Rembrandt and Velasquez,--and greater than either in some respects, as
we shall see,--and also the greatest of living portrait-painters, not to
mention a half-dozen more who are recognized internationally as masters
in their chosen fields; the one “school” that contains more of sobriety,
more of sanity, more of youthful vigor and virility, more of indomitable
energy and perseverance, more of promise and assurance of mighty
achievement than all the schools of all the other nations taken
together.
If the world is destined to see the modern equivalent of ancient Athens,
it will be somewhere within the confines of North America.
The countries of the Old World have had their opportunities, and the
tide of progress in its circuit of the globe is already lapping the
shores of the Western continent.
In temperament the typical American lies about midway between the
stolidity of the Englishman and the volatility of the Frenchman. He has
much of the dogged perseverance of the former, with a large element of
the facility and versatility of the latter; he is steadfast in the
pursuit of his ideals, and at the same time quick to adopt new and
improved methods for attaining his ends; he has an Englishman’s tenacity
of conviction and much of a Frenchman’s brilliancy of expression. As
compared with an Englishman the American appears more than half French;
as compared with a Frenchman he seems essentially English. It is this
combination of earnest convictions, profound belief in self and country,
sobriety, perseverance, tenacity of purpose, stolid endurance, with
inventiveness, originality, irresistible impulsiveness, dash and
brilliancy in execution, that assures to the future of North America the
noblest of human achievements.
For the present the strength and resources of the country are absorbed
in the production of wealth; but soon the people will tire of this
pursuit, and the accumulated wealth of nation, States, cities, and
individuals will turn to the encouragement of things beautiful in not
only art and literature, but in the long-neglected handicrafts,--the
crafts that make instead of destroying men.
* * * * *
At the World’s Exposition of 1893, in Chicago, Whistler’s paintings
hung, where they rightfully belonged, in the American section. Though
far and away superior to anything in the entire section, and conspicuous
above everything near for their exquisite beauty, still it cannot be
gainsaid that of all the sections of that exhibition the American was
the only one which would contain Whistler’s work without the contrast
being so marked as to be absolutely destructive. That they could not
hang with entire fitness among the English pictures even the English
would admit; that their sober harmonies were distinctively at variance
with the brilliant and superficial qualities of the French pictures was
apparent to even the unpractised eye. “The Yellow Buskin” and “The Fur
Jacket,” to mention no others, could hang in only one place, and that
was where they were put,--in the main hall of the American section,
flanked and confronted by American work.
Not that the pictures about them equalled in merit,--that is not the
question; but they were sufficiently akin to constitute an harmonious
environment.
* * * * *
Art is simply a mode of expression, and the highest, truest, noblest art
is the reflection of the best there is in a people. It follows,
therefore, that the art of any race or people must exhibit the racial
characteristics. A painting, for instance, belongs first to the man who
painted it and bears on its face so many marks of his individuality that
not only he but others recognize it as his. Secondly, the painting
belongs to the race or people with which the artist is identified, for
the very traits which distinguish him as an American, or an Englishman,
or a Frenchman from all other nationalities inevitably make themselves
felt in the work, and distinguish it not only specifically from all
other canvases, but generically from the work of other peoples, schools,
epochs, eras, etc.
A man may change his allegiance and live in foreign lands, but he cannot
change his blood. If a Chinaman, he will remain a Chinaman, no matter
where he lives; if an American, he will remain an American, though, like
many of our mess-of-potage citizens, he may remain a bastard American in
the endeavor to become an adopted Englishman.
* * * * *
The finer the art the more universal its qualities. And yet there is no
poem and no picture that is absolutely without the marks of its master;
and the marks of the master mean the marks of his race,--in fact, the
racial indications are inversely in number to those of the individual;
the deeper a man buries his personality in his work the stronger the
indications of his race. Shakespeare so lost himself that his personal
characteristics nowhere appear in his great plays, and a conception of
the poet’s personality could not be formed from a reading of the
lines--so universal was his genius; yet his poetry is essentially and
everlastingly English,--far more conspicuously English than the poetry
of lesser men who sing about England and things English. It is more
English than Chaucer, more English than Spencer, more English than
Browning, Tennyson, or Swinburne; it breathes more fully and more truly
the spirit of the English people in their greatest days than any poetry
ever uttered by the English tongue.
* * * * *
The greater the man, the more completely does he express his people. It
takes a great race to produce a great man; and once produced, he is
everlastingly linked with his tribe.
But greatness implies the suppression of the petty, including all petty
resemblances; therefore, a man by the universal qualities of his genius
may seem to belong to the world, whereas in truth he is but the
expression of the best there is in his countrymen.
Rembrandt suppressed all provincialisms and seemed to etch and paint for
mankind rather than for a limited public in Holland; and yet to the last
he was simply the greatest of Dutch artists. And because he was so
essentially and truly Dutch he is one of the world’s great artists; in
the chorus of the world’s proud voices there is no mistaking his
accent.
Velasquez is at the same time the least Spanish of painters and the most
Spanish of artists. Suppressing all eccentricities of time and place, he
rose to universal heights, and the world claims him as its own; and yet
his fame depends upon the fact that he was from first to last a
Spaniard,--a Spaniard in precisely the sense that Cervantes was the
expression of inarticulate forces behind him. Deriving more or less help
from his contemporaries, and from this quarter and that, from the visit
of Rubens and from his own journey to Italy, he, after all, was the
achievement of the Spanish people in painting. He was not an Italian, he
was not a Frenchman, he was not a Dutchman,--he was a Spaniard of the
Spaniards, as Shakespeare was an Englishman of the English.
* * * * *
Having wandered far afield in the endeavor to point out the intimate
connection between, first, a man and his work,--which connection every
one admits,--and, secondly, between the race and the work,--a connection
which is not so readily perceived,--let us return to Whistler, whose
work furnishes proof positive of what has been said.
It is commonly taken for granted that if a man lives and studies and
works abroad for many years he loses his individuality and becomes in
some mysterious manner the offspring of the country where he works. It
is assumed that American painters residing in Rome become more or less
Italian; that those residing in Paris become more or less French; that
those residing in London become more or less English; while those who
move restlessly from place to place become more or less of characterless
cosmopolites. All of which is true inversely to the real strength and
genius of the artist. A weak man is swerved by this influence and that
and--chameleon like--takes on the hues of his surroundings, but a strong
man simply absorbs and assimilates without in the slightest degree
losing his individuality. Unhappily, many American artists residing
abroad possess so little stamina, so little of real character, so little
of genius, that they are--like topers--dependent upon the daily stimulus
afforded by the manifold art activities about them; they never get out
of school, but remain helplessly dependent upon teachers and copy-books.
The annual Salon, like a college commencement day, is their great
incentive; their petty exhibitions are so many field-days necessary to
sustain childish enthusiasm.
Happily, all do not yield to those influences, and no two yield in
precisely the same degree,--the extent to which individuality is lost
depending upon the weakness of the man. A poor, weak, wishy-washy
American quickly falls into the habit of painting pictures after the
manner of those about him, and his mannerisms out-Herod Herod; others,
with more character, yield less to their environment; while the chosen
few simply absorb whatever of good they find, and without yielding a jot
of their individuality, without swerving to the right or to the left, go
on producing after their own fashion things which belong to them and
the race that produced them.
For more than forty years Whistler was the conspicuous example of the
last-named class,--a class so small that it included besides himself--no
others.
Great as certain of our American artists residing abroad undoubtedly
are, good as many of these surely are, creditable on the whole as all
are to American art, there is not one whose work does not betray the
influences of his environment; there is not one who has not sacrificed
something of his originality, something of his strength, something of
his native force and character on strange altars, saving and excepting,
always, Whistler.
* * * * *
The most that men have ventured to say is that he was influenced by
Velasquez, though he himself has said he never visited Madrid,--a
statement many insist cannot be true; others say he has been influenced
by Japanese art,--but Velasquez and the art of Japan are far from French
or English art of the nineteenth century; and the assertion that he was
influenced by either is a confession that he lived unscathed amidst his
surroundings.
Back of the art of Japan is the purer art of China; and to that source
must we go if we seek the factors that influenced Whistler, for he loved
the porcelain and pottery of China long before they were collected by
the museums and amateurs of Europe.
“When no one cared for it,” he said, “I used to find in Amsterdam the
most beautiful blue-and-white china. That was a good many years ago; it
is all gone now.”
Old Delft did not inspire him with any enthusiasm. “Crude, crude,
crude.”
This art of China, as reflected and elaborated in that of Japan,
influenced him,--of that there can be no doubt,--and he recognized what
was good in Japanese art before others gave it any attention.
The art of Velasquez had its due weight, for he loved the work of the
Spanish master; and if he never visited Madrid, perhaps it was because
he feared falling too much under its influence. But he went frequently
to the Louvre, and invariably to the little “Infanta,” which he would
look at long and earnestly, and to Titian’s “Man with the Glove,” which
was a favorite, and to certain Rembrandts, and to Franz Hals, and a few,
a very few others,--the gems of the collection,--ignoring completely the
pictures which commonly attract, never once glancing up at the huge
canvases by Rubens and his pupils; in fact, so far as he was concerned
the walls might have been bare save for a half-dozen masterpieces; and
these he really did love. There was no mistaking his attitude towards
them. It was one of reverential affection. He appreciated a really good
thing, whether he or some one else had done it, and he hated above
everything sham and pretence and foolish display. To him a picture the
size of one’s hand, if well and conscientiously done, was just as
important as a full-length portrait.
The Italian masters influenced him, for he often spoke of them, of the
wonderful effects they obtained with such simple materials and such
straight-forward methods; their mastery of color influenced him, and he
sought, so far as possible, to discover the pigments and the methods
they used.
Those are the factors which helped to make Whistler,--the purest art; he
was not influenced by what went on about him, or by what was said about
him. So little did he care what others were doing or how they did it
that his very brushes and pigments were different; and his methods were
so peculiarly his own that no one painted at all like him, and his
fellow-artists looked on in amazement.
* * * * *
The wave of impressionism which submerged all Paris in the very midst of
his career left him unaffected,--for his art was an older and truer
impressionism, an impressionism that did not depend upon the size of
brushes or the consistency of pigments.
A visitor once said to him:
“Mr. Whistler, it seems to me you do not use some of those very
expensive and brilliant colors which are in vogue nowadays.”
“No.” And he diligently worked away at his palette. “I can’t afford
to,--they are so apt to spoil the picture.”
“But they are effective.”
“For how long? A year, or a score of years, perhaps; but who can tell
what they will be a century or five centuries hence. The old masters
used simple pigments which they ground themselves. I try to use what
they used. After all, it is not so much what one uses as the way it is
used.”
* * * * *
Much of the foregoing argument concerning the Americanism of Whistler
and his art may seem to be contradicted by his own express utterances.
For did he not say in his “Ten o’Clock”?
“Listen! There never was an artistic period.”
“There never was an art-loving nation.”
And he pointed out how the man who, “differing from the rest,” who
“stayed by the tents with the women and traced strange devices with a
burnt stick upon a gourd, ... who took no joy in the ways of his
brethren, ... who perceived in nature about him curious curvings, as
faces are seen in the fire, this dreamer apart, was the first artist.”
“And presently there came to this man another--and, in time, others--of
like nature, chosen by the gods; and so they worked together; and soon
they fashioned, from the moistened earth, forms resembling the gourd.
And with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist, presently
they went beyond the slovenly suggestion of nature, and the first vase
was born, in beautiful proportion.”
And the toilers and the heroes were athirst, “and all drank alike from
the artist’s goblets, fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of
the craftsman’s pride, and understanding not his glory in his work;
drinking at the cup, not from choice, not from a consciousness that it
was beautiful, but because, forsooth, there was no other!”
“And the people questioned not, _and had nothing to say in the matter_.”
“So Greece was in its splendor, and art reigned supreme,--by force of
fact, not by election,--and there was no meddling by the outsider.”
Again he says:
“The master stands in no relation to the moment at which he occurs a
monument of isolation, hinting at sadness, having no part in the
progress of his fellow-men.”
* * * * *
Those are the propositions which called out the reply--positive and
intemperate--from Swinburne,[6] and so estranged the two, and which to
this day have proved huge stumbling-blocks in the paths of those who try
to understand Whistler.
For the world does believe that there have been “artistic periods,” that
there have been “art-loving nations,” that in some mysterious manner the
master does stand in “relation to the moment at which he occurs.”
And the world is right; though it does not necessarily follow that
Whistler was wrong in the particular views he had in mind when he
uttered his epigrammatic propositions.
* * * * *
In one sense it is undoubtedly true that the master does seem to stand
apart, “a mounment of isolation,” that he does seem to happen without
any causal connection with either parents or country, time or
place,--for who could have foretold the greatness of Shakespeare from an
acquaintance with those obscure individuals his father and mother, or
from a knowledge of Stratford and its environs? Who could have predicted
the triumphs of Napoleon from a study of his Corsican forbears, or the
strange genius of Lincoln from his illiterate progenitors and humble
surroundings, or the elemental force of Walt Whitman from his ancestry
and American conditions?
No one; and yet there is the profound conviction that each of these men,
like every great man,--prophet, king, statesman warrior, poet, or
painter,--appeared, not miraculously, but as the inevitable result of
irresistible forces; that the brilliant man is, after all, the son of
his parents and the child of his times.
In the mystery of generation two stupidities fused in the alembic of
maternity produce a genius.
* * * * *
The occasion does not create, but calls forth its master. Every war has
its great general, every crisis its great leader, and in the world of
art great artists respond to meet the requirements of the hour.
The bent of a nation determines the occupations of her sons,--towards
war and conquest, towards peace and industry, towards things artistic or
things commercial, all as the case may be.
It is not the birth of the poet that turns the nation from commerce to
poetry; it is rather the imperceptible development of the nation itself
in the direction of the ideal that calls into activity--not being--the
poet.
Neither race nor nation can by its fiat create a poet; but it can by its
encouragement stimulate his activity and rouse him to his best. It could
not create a Keats; but it might have urged him on to even greater
heights than he attained,--for who can doubt that his clear, pure
crystalline song was stifled for lack of appreciation?
* * * * *
Now and then a genius, such as Carlyle, such as Whistler, such as
Whitman, asserts himself in spite of all rebuffs, for each of these men
pursued his chosen path regardless of all revilings; but, so susceptible
is genius to encouragement and discouragement, that, for the most part,
it droops before the withering blast of adverse criticism, and only
those of hearts so strong and wills so stubborn that opposition inflames
them to greater efforts make headway against the world.
It was no one genius that made the monuments and literature of Greece,
the art of China and Japan, the paintings of Italy, the Gothic
cathedrals of France and England; it was the demand for all these things
and their appreciation by those who could not do them that called forth
and encouraged the doers.
* * * * *
The first artist may neglect the chase and the field and remain by the
tents idly tracing strange designs upon gourds; but unless those who
till the soil and bring in the food see his decorated gourds and like
them, and prefer them to the plain ones which abound, and are willing to
give him food and shelter for his work, he will not remain by the tents
very long, and his artistic career will be foreshortened by necessity.
But if the toilers and the hunters like the decorated gourds, and the
demand for them increases, others of the tribe who have talent for
designing and decoration will join the master and imitate his work, and
every now and then a pupil will prove a genius and surpass the “first
artist,” and art will grow and art-products will multiply, but only so
long as the rest of the tribe are willing to work and toil and to
exchange the necessaries of life for paintings and carvings and pottery;
and the greater the demand, the keener the desire of the people for
decorated things in preference to those that are plain and cheap, the
larger will be the chance of uncovering now and then a genius, until, as
with the Greeks, the effective demand for things beautiful, for poetry,
music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, becomes so great that we
have an artistic people and an art-epoch,--that is to say, a people that
is only too glad to encourage and support a large number of artists of
every kind, and an era when of a given population an unusually large
percentage is devoted to the service of the beautiful.
* * * * *
The master does _seem_--as Whistler says--to come unbidden; but he will
not remain long, and others will not follow in his footsteps, unless he
arouses at least sufficient appreciation to give him life.
The future of art--of literature, of the drama, and of all the
handicrafts--in America depends not upon the coming of a genius, but
upon the growth of an effective and irresistible demand for good things;
when that demand is sufficiently imperative, a Phidias, an Angelo, a
Shakespeare will respond, for genius is latent everywhere.
The sudden degradation of the arts in Japan within the memory of man was
not due to the disappearance of the talent and genius which for nearly a
thousand years had been steadily--almost methodically--producing things
beautiful, but it was due to the suppression of the feudal system, of
those great lords who from the beginning had been the sure patrons of
art and supporters of artists, and to the throwing open of ports to the
commerce of the world and the introduction of the commercial spirit.
The genius for the creation of beautiful things remains,--for a people
does not change in the twinkling of an eye,--but the talent is no longer
in demand, or, in many cases, is diverted to the more profitable
pursuits of the hour.
_IV_
_Early Days in Paris and Venice--Etchings, Lithographs, and
Water-Colors--“Propositions” and “Ten o’clock."_
After leaving the coast survey, Whistler went to England, and thence to
Paris in 1855, and entered the studio of Charles Gabriel Gleyre, where
he remained two years.
Beyond the fact that Whistler was for a time in his studio, Gleyre has
not much claim on fame. There could not have been anything in common
between the master and his pupil, for he was academic to the last
degree. “Not even by a tour in the East did he allow himself to be led
away from the classic manner; and as the head of a great leading studio
he recognized it as the task of his life to hand the traditions of the
school of Ingres,” whom Whistler used to call a “Bourgeois Greek,” “on
to the present.” He “was a man of sound culture, who during a sojourn in
Italy, which lasted five years, had examined Etruscan vases and Greek
statues with unintermittent zeal, studied the Italian classics, and
copied all Raphael. Having come back to Paris, he never drew a line
without having first assured himself how Raphael would have proceeded.”
However, there must have been a certain combative streak in his
character which did appeal to Whistler, for in 1849 he quarreled with
the Salon over the success of Courbet, and thereafter sent his pictures
to Swiss exhibitions.
* * * * *
Whistler’s first commission grew out of an acquaintance made at West
Point. At one of the commencement festivities he met a charming young
girl, a Miss Sally Williams, and her father, Captain Williams.
While a student in Paris, the pretty daughter and the bluff old captain
called on him, and the captain said:
“Mr. Whistler, we are over here to see Paris, and I want you to show us
the pictures.”
Nothing loath, Whistler took them to the Louvre, and after they had
walked a mile or two the captain stopped before some pictures that
pleased him and asked:
“Do you suppose you could copy these pictures?”
“Possibly.”
“Then, I wish you would copy this, and that, and that,” pointing out
three paintings. “When they are finished, deliver them to my agent, and
he will pay you your price.”
Whistler made the copies, and received the first money he ever earned
with his brush.