and when the man came in said, abruptly, ‘Now, then, what do you
want?’
“‘I want my money, sir.’
“‘What money?’
“‘My possession money, sir.’
“‘What, haven’t they given it to you?’
“‘No, sir; it’s you that have to give it to me.’
“‘Oh, the deuce I have!’ And Mr. Whistler laughingly gave him to
understand that, if he wanted money, his only chance was to apply
elsewhere.
“‘Well, I think it’s very hard, sir,’ the man began to snivel; ‘I
have my own family to keep, and my own rent to pay----’
“‘I’ll tell you what I advise you to do,’ Mr. Whistler returned, as
he gently pushed him out of the room: ‘you should do as I do, and
have “a man” in your own house.’
“Soon after this the man came and said that if he was not paid he
would have to put bills up outside the house announcing a sale.
And, sure enough, a few days after great posters were stuck up all
over the front of the house, announcing so many tables, and so many
chairs, and so much old Nankin china for sale on a given day. Mr.
Whistler enjoyed the joke hugely, and hastened to send out
invitations to all his friends to a luncheon-party, adding, as a
postscript, ‘You will know the house by the bills of sale stuck up
outside.’ And the bailiff proved an admirable butler, and the party
one of the merriest ever known.”[21]
The “White House” was finally sold, and it is said that when he moved
out he wrote on the wall, “Except the Lord build the house, their labor
is in vain that build it,--E. W. Godwin, R.S.A., built this one.”
Speaking of architects, the story is told that he was once dining, and
dining well, at the house of a friend in London. Towards the end of the
dinner he was obliged to leave the table and run up-stairs to write a
note. In a few moments a great noise was heard in the hall, and Whistler
was found to have fallen down the stairs. “Who is your architect?” he
asked. His host told him. “I might have known it; the ---- teetotaler!”
By the irony of fate the “White House” was afterwards occupied and much
altered by the detested critic of the _Times_,--detested possibly
because he occupied and dared to alter the house,--and Whistler asked:
“Shall the birthplace of art become the tomb of its parasite?”
It was this critic who pronounced a water-color drawing of Ruskin by
Herkomer the best oil portrait the painter had ever done,--a mistake
Whistler never let the unlucky writer forget.
* * * * *
In those days he exhibited quite frequently at the Royal Academy.
Among the earliest pictures exhibited was “At the Piano.” It attracted
the attention of the Scotch painter John Phillip, who wished to buy it.
Whistler left the price to him, and Phillip sent a check for thirty
guineas, which was entirely satisfactory, so far as any one knows.
Thirty thousand dollars has already been paid for one of his very early
pictures, and for any one of a
[Illustration]
half-dozen of his important canvases a bid of fifty thousand dollars may
be had any day.
It is a question of only a few years when Whistler’s paintings will sell
as high as Rembrandt’s. The great galleries of Europe have not yet
entered the field, and many of the great private collections have no
example of his work. A few Americans, but not many out of the large
number of those who buy pictures regardless of cost, are already
inquiring. When all these factors come into competition, as they will
soon or late, prices will be realized that will make the dearest of
English or French painters seem cheap.
* * * * *
In 1872 the portrait of his mother, an “Arrangement in Gray and Black,”
was sent in to the Academy, and accepted only after a sharp controversy,
wherein Sir William Boxall, R.A., gave the committee their choice
between hanging the picture and accepting his own resignation as one of
their number. “For,” said he, “it shall never be told of me that I
served on a committee which refused such a work as that.” The picture
was eventually placed with the “black-and-white” exhibit, drawings,
engravings, etc., and apparently only the critics saw it. What they said
Whistler has himself recorded.
Somebody has asked, Suppose Whistler had been taken up and made an
A.R.A., and in due course an R.A.--what then?
The thing is well-nigh inconceivable; and even if an A.R.A., his innate
dislike for sham and pretension in art and his sense of humor would
have prevented him from becoming a full-fledged academician in a body
wherein, as in all similar bodies, mutual appreciation, or at least
mutual restraint from honest depreciation, is essential to existence.
Whistler would probably have accepted the first degree, the A.R.A., of
the fraternity,--for all his life he was personally, but not in his art,
singularly susceptible to the praise of his fellow-men; but he would
have remained in the Academy about as long as he remained president of
the British Society of Painters,--just long enough to overturn things
generally, and then get out.
Once, when taken to task for referring to a painter who was only an
A.R.A. as an R.A., he retorted that it was a difference without a
distinction.
To the orthodox academicians his work was a mystery. Once, when dining
in a restaurant in the West End, the waiter, having difficulty in
supplying Whistler’s wants, said, “Well, sir, I can’t quite make out
what you mean.”
“Gad, sir,” he cried, in tones of amazement, “are you an R.A.?”
It is not within the range of possibilities that the Royal Academy, or
any other institution, would have had any perceptible influence on
Whistler’s art,--on _that_ side he was indifferent to the influences
which affect most men, to considerations of gain and popular
appreciation.
In the account of a certain public sale the statement was printed that
when one of his pictures was put up it was loudly hissed. He sat down
and wrote the editor acknowledging the compliment, “the distinguished
though unconscious compliment so publicly paid. It is rare that
recognition so complete is made during the lifetime of the painter.”
Another time he said, “There are those, they tell me, who have the
approval of the public, and live.”
Long after he ceased to exhibit at the Academy a lady met him at one of
the exhibitions, and expressed her surprise.
“Well, you know,” he answered, “one must do something to lend interest
to the show,--so here I am.”
* * * * *
Years after, the Academy, while Leighton was president, invited him to
send some of his pictures, and here is the account of what happened:[22]
“He was in Brussels. There came a telegram from him to me which was
a cry of exultation:
“‘MY DEAR S.: The Lord hath delivered them into my hands. I am
sending you by post their last dying confession.’
“And so next morning the post duly brought a letter from Whistler
inclosing the official proposal from the Royal Academy, signed by
Mr. Eaton, secretary to that distinguished body, inviting Whistler
to contribute to a loan exhibition then presently to be held.
Whistler wrote:
“‘Of course, I refuse. You know me too well to doubt that. Do they
think they can use me after so long trampling on me? Do they think
I don’t see what they want? Do they think I need them? At last
they perceive that they need me, but in the day of their extremity
they shall ask in vain.’
“I am quoting from memory, but I give the substance accurately. He
inclosed his answer to the Academy, long since a public document,
with permission to cable it if I liked to America. I telegraphed
Whistler begging him to send no answer till my letter should reach
him. He wired: ‘I do not understand, but I will wait till
to-morrow.’ I wrote to him in the best ink, as Merimee said, at my
command. I tried to point out that the Academy had offered him the
_amende honorable_; that their invitation was an acknowledgment of
their error, and was meant as an atonement; that if he sought to
humiliate his enemies, no humiliation could be so complete as their
public surrender, of which the proof would be the hanging of his
works on their walls, and much else which I thought obvious and
conclusive. And I begged him to remember that I had always thought
him right, and always said the world would come round to him, and
that now, as ever before, whether right or wrong, mine was the
counsel of a friend. The answer came by wire early next morning:
‘Alas, my dear S., that you too should have gone over to the
enemy!’ I believe if I had but besought him to consider that his
acceptance would have been a service to art, and if he could
himself have thought that it would be, he would have accepted. I
never saw Whistler again, never heard from him; a friendship of
twenty years came there and then to an end--on his side.”
In 1897 a circular was mailed to him, addressed, “The Academy, England.”
At the post-office they added “Burlington House,” where it was declined.
Finally the circular reached him, bearing the endorsement, “Not known at
the R. A.” He gave it to the press, saying, “In these days of doubtful
frequentation, it is my rare good fortune to be able to send you an
unsolicited, official, and final certificate of character.”
The fact was, mail addressed simply “Whistler, England,” would reach
him.
* * * * *
The Grosvenor Gallery, opened in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay, offered an
opportunity to many a man who either would not or could not exhibit at
the Academy.
It was here that some of Whistler’s best things were shown,--the
portraits of Irving as Philip II.; Miss Rosa Corder; Miss Gilchrist, the
actress; the Carlyle; Miss Alexander; and Lady Archibald Campbell,
commonly known as “The Lady with the Yellow Buskin,” and many of his
famous nocturnes.
Whistler had a very peculiar laugh,--demoniacal his enemies called
it,--and it is said that while his portrait was being painted, Irving
caught this laugh and used it with effect in the part of
Mephistopheles,--but then, who knows?
The story of the painting and the naming of “The Yellow Buskin” is worth
repeating.
Lady Archibald Campbell was an exceedingly handsome woman, and Whistler
expressed the desire to paint her portrait. She graciously consented,
and the sittings began.
In those days Whistler was looked upon in London as little less than a
mountebank in art, and one day, putting it as nicely as she could, she
said:
“My husband wished me to say that he--he appreciated the honor of your
inviting me to sit for a portrait, but that--that he did not wish to be
understood as committing himself in any way, and the picture must not be
considered a commission.”
“Dear me, no,” said Whistler, as he painted away; “under no
circumstances. Lord Archibald need give himself no uneasiness,--my
compensation is in your condescension. We are doing this for the
pleasure there is in it.”
The portrait was finished, exhibited as “_La Dame au Brodequin
Jaune_,”--and duly ridiculed.
Lady Campbell’s friends expressed surprise that she should have
permitted so eccentric an artist to do so ugly a thing. But time went
on; the picture made a profound sensation and won its way.
Some time after, Whistler met Lady Campbell in London, and she said to
him:
“My dear Mr. Whistler, I hear my portrait has been exhibited everywhere
and become famous.”
“Sh--sh--sh!” with finger on lips. “So it has, my dear Lady Archibald;
but every discretion has been observed that Lord Campbell could
desire,--your name is not mentioned. The portrait is known as ‘The
Yellow Buskin.’” It is now in the Wilstach collection, in Philadelphia.
* * * * *
Whistler preferred to exhibit his work under conditions which he
controlled. As early as 1874 he gave a special exhibition in London, and
in the years 1880, 1881, 1883, 1884, and 1886 he exhibited
[Illustration]
either prints or paintings in the rooms of the Fine Arts Society.
He always occupied the place of honor with the International Society at
Knightsbridge.
Occasionally he would use the galleries of dealers, but not often, and
then only upon his own terms.
* * * * *
While living at Chelsea he had Carlyle as a near neighbor, and of his
own notion he painted the portrait that now hangs in Glasgow.
These two extraordinary beings were quite congenial. The dogmatic old
philosopher, then past seventy-five, sat day after day to the eccentric
painter, who was nearly forty years his junior, as patiently as if he
were a professional model, and the sittings were long and tedious.
One day, as he was leaving, quite exhausted, he met at the door a little
girl in white, and he asked her name.
“I am Miss Alexander,” she said, primly, “and I am going to have my
portrait painted.”
The sage shook his head in commiseration, and muttered, as he passed on:
“Puir lassie, puir lassie!”
If proof were required of the underlying sincerity and earnestness of
Whistler in those days when the world refused to take him seriously,
this long and intimate association with Carlyle would be more than
sufficient.
They were neighbors. Carlyle had every opportunity of seeing Whistler on
the street and in his studio. Seemingly two beings could not be less
sympathetic, and yet the philosopher who had so few good words for any
one, who was the implacable foe of sham and falsehood, who was
intolerant of the society of others, who cared little for art and less
for artists, freely gave his time and society to the most unpopular
painter in England.
In truth there was a good deal in common between the two,--in the
attitude of the one towards literature and what his fellow-writers were
saying, and in the attitude of the other towards art and what his
fellow-painters were doing. Each stood in his own sphere for the highest
ideals, and no doubt each recognized in the other the quality of
sincerity in his profession.
* * * * *
Poor Carlyle! your name should never be mentioned without an anathema
for the scavengers who dealt with your memory. If they are not suffering
the torments of the damned, the mills of the gods have ceased to turn.
Froude prefaced the Life of Carlyle with a long protestation that it
contained the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; which,
it seems, according to even his notions, was a lie; for in the secrecy
of his closet he prepared a pamphlet containing the revelations of the
Jewsbury creature,--the expert opinion of “an ill-natured old maid,” as
Mrs. Carlyle called her,--to the effect that Carlyle should never have
married; and this pamphlet, containing the salacious tittle-tattle
between himself and
[Illustration]
this old maid, is given the world as presumably his last instalment of
revelations, though no one knows how much similar stuff the Jewsbury
creature, a romancer by profession, may have left pigeon-holed for still
further harm.
And the answer to it all is that Carlyle, in spite of the old maid’s
opinion, was married; and what is more to the point, remained married
forty years, with no more of differences and dissensions, even accepting
all the Froude-Jewsbury tattle, than any good wife will have with any
good Scotchman; and during their long married life she was a help and an
inspiration to her husband, and after her death she was mourned as few
wives in the history of mankind have been mourned.
A depth beyond the imagination of Dante must be found for the
Froude-Jewsbury combination.
* * * * *
As the portrait neared completion, Carlyle took a good look at it one
day, seemed pleased, and said:
“Weel, man, you have given me a clean collar, and that is more than
Meester Watts has done.”
The portrait was begun and ended as a labor of love, and for nearly
twenty years it remained unsold.
After Carlyle died some citizens of Glasgow, from purely patriotic
motives, and with no appreciation whatsoever of the painting, thought it
should be purchased, and a public subscription was started.
When the amount first talked of--quite a small sum--had been nearly
subscribed, Whistler learned that the subscription paper expressly
disavowed all approval of himself and his art, whereupon he promptly
more than doubled the price, to the dismay of the canny Scots, who
wished to buy the portrait without the art; and when they hesitated, he
again raised the price, to their utter discomfiture, and the picture was
not purchased until 1891.
It is now owned by the corporation of Glasgow, and hangs in the public
gallery surrounded by a mass of lesser works which completely dwarf its
great proportions and render adequate appreciation impossible.
It is worth while to visit Glasgow to see this portrait, but until the
authorities have the good judgment to give it a room, or at least a wall
to itself, the journey will prove an exasperation.
* * * * *
The hanging of pictures is a “lost art;” and most of the art of pictures
is lost in the hanging.
A picture is painted in a certain environment of light, color, and
tone,--and to Whistler this environment was a vital consideration. For
the time being the canvas is the one conspicuous thing in the studio, of
even greater importance than subject or model. From this environment of
creation, and with which it is in perfect harmony, it is violently
forced into conjunction with great squares of atrocious gilt frames and
expanses of clashing canvases.
A gallery of pictures is the slaughter-house of art; annual exhibitions
are the shambles of beauty.
So far as galleries are concerned, the advantage is usually with the
dealer, for he knows the value of arrangement and shows his best things
more or less detached. One by one the gems of his collection are
presented to the customer and time given for appreciation.
* * * * *
There are but two uses to which a painting can be put with any sense of
the fitness of things: it may be used decoratively alone or in
connection with one or two others which harmonize and which are
distributed to produce a perfect effect; this is the noblest use to
which a painting of any kind can be put, the production of an effect in
which the painting, however great, is but an element in a perfect whole.
Another and commoner use is the enjoyment of a picture by itself, as one
reads a poem or listens to music, more or less oblivious to all
surroundings. It is obvious that this sort of enjoyment implies the
subordination of all surroundings to the painting, or the poem, or the
music, the arrangement of the environment so as to secure the greatest
possible freedom from intrusive and distracting sights and sounds,--in
short, as regards painting, the reproduction in a sense of the
atmosphere of the studio where the picture was created, or of the place,
altar, or chapel for which it was intended; and it means most
emphatically freedom from sharp contrast with pictures by other men and
of other times, schools, and conditions, however good, which will clash
precisely as would two orchestras playing different pieces in the same
hall.
One can imagine Whistler and Carlyle--painter and philosopher, two
masters, each in his vocation--in the studio, and the growing portrait,
a thing of beauty _there_, a bond of union between two men so divergent,
and one can imagine how beautiful the portrait would be anywhere if by
itself amidst harmonious surroundings, whether used as the chief
ornament of a dignified hall or placed in a more neutral atmosphere for
study and appreciation. But one cannot imagine more destructive
surroundings than those of a public gallery, the walls of which teem
with writhing, wriggling things in huge gilt frames and glaring colors.
And the painters, who ought to know better, but who encourage these
great collections and exhibitions, who live for them, work for them,
slave for them, are more to blame for the existence of these
heterogeneous conglomerations than the public, who do not know better,
but walk helplessly about amidst endless rows of staring canvases, dimly
conscious that all is not right.
* * * * *
Pictures of equal merit do not necessarily hang together. A Velasquez
and a Raphael, each supremely beautiful in the place for which it is
intended, produce an inharmonious effect if placed side by side.
A rabble, with men or pictures, is a throng composed of more or less
incongruous and unsympathetic units.
With the exception of the few instances, as in the Turner room in the
National Gallery in London, where the works of one man are grouped for
the express purpose of comparison and study, every collection of
pictures is a rabble, and as a whole--ugly.
Nor does the grouping of the works of one man in one room produce a
beautiful effect, a beautiful room; not at all, for they are grouped for
a scientific rather than an æsthetic purpose, for the purpose of study
and comparison in a room which is, as it should be, otherwise barren and
neutral.
One or, at most, two fine pictures are all any ordinary room will stand,
and to produce an effect wherein nothing overwhelmingly predominates,
but everything finds its place and remains there, requires genius
different from but of the same high order as that of the painter, and
that sort of genius has been lacking in the Western world for some
centuries.
So low has the once great art of painting fallen that it has helplessly
relinquished its original field of great achievement, the adornment of
buildings inside and out, and that has become a separate trade so
incompetently followed that the phrase “interior decorator” is one of
reproach.
And yet little as the commercial “interior decorator” knows about
decoration, it is safer to trust to his fustian stock of burlaps,
wall-papers, imitation leathers, metals, lustres, and illuminations than
follow the guidance of the painters themselves,--for, with rare
exceptions, they know nothing beyond the narrow confines of their
frames, and their own houses and studios resemble curiosity-shops.
The art of decoration, which implies the co-operation of architect,
sculptor, and painter as a unit, has not been practised since the
sixteenth century, and not in any high degree of perfection since three
hundred years before.
With the disintegration of the union among the arts, each has
accomplished endless detached and isolated perfections, but nothing that
is really worth while in the sense that a Greek temple or a Gothic
cathedral was worth while,--for nothing so chaste and perfect as the
former or so sublime and beautiful as the latter has been done since
each of the three constructive arts began to work in jealous
independence of the others.
* * * * *
Rossetti and Whistler were both friends of the wealthy and eccentric
ship-owner F. R. Leyland, of No. 50 Prince’s Gate. He was a collector of
things rare and beautiful, a “patron” of art and artists, a musician,
and altogether a character one associates with Romance rather than with
London.
It was for him that Whistler painted the famous “Peacock Room,” under
the following circumstances:
Leyland had bought the “Princess of the Land of Porcelain,” and one day
Whistler went to see it in place. He found it in a dining-room which was
richly decorated with costly Spanish leather and a heavy ceiling of
wood, a place altogether too sombre for his bright and brilliant
“Princess,” and he protested against the discord.
* * * * *
“What would you do?” asked Leyland.
“Paint the room.”
“What! paint that beautiful Spanish leather?”
“Most assuredly,--if this is to be the boudoir of the ‘Princess.’”
Whistler was told to go ahead and make the room harmonize with the
painting.
He started in and covered every inch of wall surface, even the insides
of the shutters, with a wonderful scheme of decoration in blue and gold,
the brilliant coloring of the peacock, making a color-effect rich beyond
description.
Unhappily, nothing had been said concerning the price, and that finally
named by Leyland seemed to Whistler quite inadequate; but he made no
complaint and went on with the work. The trouble came when Leyland paid
in pounds instead of in guineas. That was more than Whistler could
stand.