acquaintances for being too personal; but, truly, I find vaguely
objurgatory language generally a mere form of what Plato calls
‘shadow-fighting.’” And long after, when a friend asked him about the
case, he said, “I am afraid of a libel action if I open my mouth; and if
I can’t say what I like about a person, I prefer to say nothing at
all.”[27]
* * * * *
Even Ruskin could not say what he liked about any one, though every one,
including the victim, might like the manner of his saying it. Still, it
will ever remain a matter of wonder how Whistler induced an English
jury, who could not possibly understand him, to give him a nominal
verdict and saddle the costs upon Ruskin, who was something of a popular
idol.
Whistler’s lawyers must have been cleverer than those of the other side.
The attorney-general probably proved, as his speech indicates, a clumsy
defender in a case involving nice questions of art.
Be it said to the credit of Whistler’s sagacity, he always employed the
best lawyers available. He once said, “Poor lawyers, like poor
paintings, are dear at any price.”
* * * * *
While Whistler had practised the gentle art of making enemies from the
beginning of his career, his suit against Ruskin was, so to speak, his
first public appearance, and he threw his dart at a shining mark.
What his real feelings towards Ruskin were no man can say,--for towards
the public and his critics he was one man, towards his art he was quite
another.
To the world he seemed the incarnation of vanity and conceit; to the few
whose privilege it was to see him at work he appeared, and was, the
embodiment of sincerity and earnestness, of simplicity to the verge of
diffidence.
It is impossible to conceive two personalities so different as Whistler
at work and Whistler at play, and all his controversies were play to
him, the amusement of his hours of relaxation.
* * * * *
He sued Ruskin, not because his status before art was in any wise
affected, but because his status before the public was assailed; not
because he cared the snap of his finger for any adverse opinion
concerning his pictures, but because he felt that he had a certain
position, pose one might say, to maintain, and because it amused him to
sue one who was considered so infallible; and he, no doubt, felt
reasonably sure he would be more than recompensed by the solemn
testimony of opposing witnesses.
* * * * *
Whistler has been so often charged with being a poser that in the eyes
of the world he really must have seemed so.
He was a poser in the sense already indicated,--namely, he was one man
before the public and another at work. In this sense every man clever
enough to forget himself at times is something of a poser, for only the
stupid who can talk nothing but “shop,” wherever they are, are the same
day in and day out.
Most men are able to leave their work behind and adopt a _rôle_ more or
less artificial in social intercourse. The brilliant few who make
society possess this faculty in an eminent degree.
The objection that social England has against the shopkeeper is, no
doubt, based upon many sad experiences that the shopkeeper brings his
shop with him to dinner, and will not, or cannot, pose to the extent of
forgetting his material concerns in the presence of the frivolous.
The preacher, the politician, the lawyer, the soldier may introduce a
little “shop” in general conversation, for these occupations are
supposed to have a more general interest; but the butcher, the baker,
and the candlestick-maker cannot. But preacher, politician, lawyer, and
soldier make the better guests if they pose a little and forget, for the
time being, their occupations.
Convictions must be introduced sparingly in social intercourse; a very
few go a great way.
Why not adopt and duly post some such salutary rule as this? In social
intercourse the utterance of one’s profound convictions shall bear the
same ratio to one’s total utterances on any given occasion that the
speaker bears to the number present and participating in the
conversation. That is to say, if the conversation is between two alone,
half that either says may be his convictions, the other half a polite,
though futile, endeavor to understand the other’s convictions. If at a
table of twelve, about a twelfth of one’s real thoughts are permissible,
and all that, in justice to others, should be attempted.
But, then, conversation is a lost art. An Athenian could talk better
about everything than a modern can talk about anything. Cast a subject,
a thought, so much as a suggestion, into a knot of Greeks, and in a
trice, like dogs over a bone, they would be wrestling with it, and the
less they knew about it the brighter the discussion.
Knowledge is the last refuge of the stupid. Facts are the sinkers of
talk. Ideas are the flash-lights of the imagination; and conversation
depends not upon knowledge but upon ideas. One who knows nothing of a
subject may have more ideas concerning it than one who knows all about.
Women are frequently better conversers than men, because less hampered
by facts.
Knowledge is a heavy weight for conversation to carry. But of all the
bores who find their way to the dinner-table the specialist in
knowledge is the most hopeless. The man who knows everything about
something is at the stupid end; the man who knows something about
everything at the brilliant, with a place at his right hand for the
woman who knows nothing about anything.
Whistler was of the choice few who would never speak seriously of his
serious pursuits in general conversation. At those very moments when he
seemed to be saying most about art and artists he was in reality saying
least of what he really thought. When he talked most of himself he said
nothing that he really felt. It was almost impossible to draw from him a
serious opinion concerning a picture or a painter. Though he might rail
by the hour against this man or that, if the mood seized him, it all
meant nothing.
In his studio, when at work, opinions and appreciations worth
remembering would drop from his lips; but he rarely committed himself;
not because his convictions were not clear, but because he seldom
thought it worth while.
* * * * *
Once he was dining with quite a distinguished company. The
conversation--possibly as tribute to the presence of so noted an
artist--turned upon art, and finally upon a notorious picture, called
“Nana,” of a naked woman on a couch, that was quite a sensation in
London. It has been seen on this side.
Loud were the expressions of approval. Whistler remained silent.
“What do you think of ‘Nana,’ Mr. Whistler?” asked the
distinguished lady at his right.
“Is it not wonderful?--so life-like,” exclaimed the distinguished
lady at his left.
But Whistler, apparently spellbound by the bird before him, was
silent.
“But, Mr. Whistler, you have not told us what _you_ think about
‘Nana,’” said the distinguished lady opposite.
At bay at last, he said:
“Really, madam, you know, it is quite--presumptious--quite, for one
who--who is simply, as one might say, a painter, and therefore--you
know--not entitled to opinions--to express himself in the presence
of so--so many distinguished connoisseurs; but--since you demand my
opinion--as a highwayman would a purse--I yield to superior
strength and say--with all deference--that ‘Nana’ is--trash.”
“Oh!”
“Oh, Mr. Whistler.”
“But have you seen it?”
“No.”
“Then, how can you say it is trash?”
“It must be--it--is so--popular.”
“Will you go to see it?”
“That is not necessary.”
“But I want you to go with me to-morrow to see ‘Nana.’” And the
charming lady on his right insisted so imperiously that he should
go with her and several of the company who wished to be of the
party, that he yielded, saying, however:
“On one condition.”
“What is it?”
“That you will go with me afterward, to the National Gallery and
see some pictures I am sure you have never seen.”
“Some new ones?”
“To you--yes.”
It was agreed; and the following day Whistler with several of the
party paid each a shilling to see “Nana” stretched at ease under a
strong light at the far end of a dark room. It might have been a
painting or “Nana” herself, the realism was so gross.
All save Whistler were in raptures over the wondrous thing. He was
silent.
Then they went to the National Gallery, and he took them before one
great portrait after another.
“But we have seen these before,” chorused the voices.
“Impossible!” exclaimed Whistler.
“Oh, yes, many times,” sang the voices.
“But you do not like them; you detest them.”
“Oh, no! no! no----!”
“But they are not at all like ‘Nana’; they haven’t ‘Nana’s’
wonderful flesh-tones, ‘Nana’s’ beautiful skin; are not so
life-like as ‘Nana,’ and beside ‘Nana’ you must consider them as
poor, wretched daubs.”
And so he took them from one masterpiece to another, repeating
before each one their raptures over “Nana” until they were silent.
Then he said:
“I have shown you some pictures that are considered good by those
whose opinions are precious, and you have not found in one a single
characteristic that you admired in ‘Nana,’ and you yourselves would
not admit her to this glorious company; therefore, again I say,
‘Nana’ is--trash.”
In the sense, therefore, that he presented a careless, trivial, or
cynical side to the public and a serious side to his art, Whistler was a
poser, and during his idle hours he had the habit of amusing himself at
the expense of any one who crossed his path. And why not? Did not the
world try so hard to amuse itself at his expense? Were his feelings
spared? Was aught of ridicule or insult that human ingenuity could
devise withheld?
But his opponents were so clumsy that, save as he himself preserved
their crude repartees, only his epigrammatic utterances are remembered;
and therefore he has all the blame for the controversies, while the
truth is that, considering the flood of opprobrium poured out upon him
in print and in speech, he said very little, took but occasional notice
of his assailants. All he said fills but a portion of a small book,--the
“Gentle Art,”--while his opponents have the balance; and if all adverse
personal comments of a despicable nature were gathered together from
both sides of the Atlantic, they would make up many closely-printed
volumes.
For a man who could write so well, Whistler exercised great restraint in
writing so little, but--that little!
* * * * *
And yet it is a pity, from one point of view, that he wrote at all; his
art did not need it, and in the way of general estimation and
recognition suffers not a little on account of it.
For twenty-odd years the public has been amused, startled, and irritated
by the letters and utterances which make up “The Gentle Art of Making
Enemies,” and it will be many a long day before they are so far
forgotten that Whistler’s art will be judged wholly upon its merits.
If the “Gentle Art” did not exist as it does in its harmony in brown,
English literature would lack a volume which is in itself a bit of art
and unique of its kind. There is nothing at all like it, and only
Whistler could have done it. The book is a perfect expression of one
side of his many-sided and extraordinary personality, and as such is
therefore a work of art, and, at the same time, material which cannot be
spared if the man is to be thoroughly understood; but it reveals the
side which is least worth understanding, it accentuates traits which are
inconsequential, and it gives the public an entirely erroneous
impression, because the public find it easy to buy and read the book,
but difficult to so much as see the pictures, and quite impossible to
understand them when they do see them.
In Whistler’s life the writing of the few lines and the putting together
of the matter contained in the “Gentle Art” occupied an almost
infinitesimal fraction of his leisure hours, whereas for fifty years he
painted, etched, and lithographed industriously; yet, so far as the
public of England and America is concerned, his controversies overshadow
his art; while to the French, who happily could not read the book, he is
known only as an artist.
* * * * *
Criticism of art afforded Whistler a world of amusement, and the art
critic was his especial aversion.
“That writers should destroy writings to the benefit of writing” seemed
to him just, but that writers should criticise painting seemed to him
altogether illogical.
And he quotes the critic of the _Times_, who said of Velasquez’s “Las
Menimas” that it was “slovenly in execution, poor in color,--being
little but a combination of neutral grays and ugly in its forms.”
And he shows how the same great critic praised a Turner that turned out
to be no Turner. When this particular critic died, a few years ago,
Whistler sorrowfully said, “I have hardly a warm personal enemy left.”
And he showed how one said that Daubigny had neither drawing nor color,
and another that the works of Corot to the first impression of an
Englishman “are the sketches of an amateur,” and another that everything
Courbet touches “becomes unpleasant.”
All these by the most eminent critics in the land,--men whose say-so in
days gone by made and unmade, for the time being, the reputations of
artists.
And he grouped together a number of Ruskin’s dogmatic utterances, where
in his enthusiasm for certain men he condemned others who were
infinitely superior,--as, for instance, where he praises without
limitations the work of the forgotten Prout, and says that Rembrandt’s
colors are wrong from beginning to end, and that “Vulgarity, dulness, or
impiety will indeed always express themselves through art in brown and
gray, as in Rembrandt;” and again where he places Rubens above Titian
and Raphael, and compares an unknown Mulready with Albert Dürer, to the
disadvantage of the latter.
These things it pleased Whistler to do, and he has done them with rare
piquancy in the “Gentle Art.”
If what is contained therein savors in aught of malice, let it be
remembered that public, critics, painters were snapping at his heels
during the years that he was doing the very work which public, critics,
and painters now worship, and a lesser man would have yielded to the
storm of adverse opinion and ridicule.
With the exception of a few friends and admirers, he was absolutely
without support during the period when an artist most needs
encouragement.
It is everlastingly to his credit that neither the ridicule of
others--“the voice of the nation”--nor his own necessities, and they
pressed heavily at times, caused him to swerve a hair’s breadth from
what he believed to be worth doing in art.
Nearly every great artist of whom we have any record has at one time or
another in his career yielded to the temptation--frequently under
pressure of dire necessity--to do something that would sell. No such
reproach can be laid at Whistler’s door.
* * * * *
The galled critics complained that he did not treat them fairly,--that
he selected small excerpts from voluminous essays; whereas, if he had
reprinted the essays entire, language apparently plain would have been
reversed in meaning. For instance, he of the _Times_, who had written of
Velasquez, complained that the quotation gave “exactly the opposite
impression to that which the article, taken as a whole, conveys.” It
must have been an extraordinary article to transform what was quoted
into praise; but Whistler, in reply, said:
“Why squabble over your little article? You _did_ print what I
quote, you know, Tom; and it is surely unimportant what more you
may have written of the Master. That you should have written
anything at all is your crime.”
Ruskin never complained of anything Whistler wrote. The one utterance
which caused the suit for libel was probably the first and last that
passed his lips. The eloquent old man never did pay very much attention
to what others thought of him; he was too busy with his own dreams and
fancies.
He did write what Whistler quoted about Rembrandt, but the whole passage
is a lament over the lack of appreciation of color, and is as follows:
“For instance: our reprobation of bright color is, I think, for the
most part, mere affectation, and must soon be done away with.
Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety will indeed always express
themselves through art in brown and gray, as in Rembrandt,
Caravaggio, and Salvator; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or
impious, nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so
in any wise. Our greatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight,
like the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. The coloring of
Scott and Byron is full and pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich
even to excess. Our practical failures in coloring are merely the
necessary consequences of our prolonged want of practice during the
period of Renaissance affectation and ignorance; and the only
durable difference between old and modern coloring is the
acceptance of certain hues by the modern, which please him by
expressing that melancholy peculiar to his more reflective or
sentimental character and the greater variety of them necessary to
express his greater science.”[28]
Again, on the subject of color, he says:
“We find the greatest artists mainly divided into two
groups,--those who paint principally with respect to local color,
headed by Paul Veronese, Titian, and Turner, and those who paint
principally with reference to light and shade irrespective of
color, headed by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Raphael. The
noblest members of each of these classes introduce the element
proper to the other class, in a subordinate way. Paul Veronese
introduces a subordinate light and shade, and Leonardo introduces a
subordinate local color. The main difference is, that with
Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Raphael vast masses of the picture are
lost in comparatively colorless (dark, gray, or brown)
shadow,--these painters _beginning_ with the _lights_ and going
_down_ to blackness; but with Veronese, Titian, and Turner the
whole picture is like the rose,--glowing with color in the shadows
and rising into paler and more delicate hues, or masses of
whiteness, in the lights,--they having _begun_ with the _shadows_
and gone up _to_ whiteness.”
Ruskin said so much about art, and said it so dogmatically, that no one
utterance gives an adequate conception of what he thought about any one
man. Furthermore, while his language is crystal itself, his thoughts are
often contradictory and confusing in the extreme.
For instance, no man with any sense of color whatsoever would group
Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Raphael together as men who painted
“irrespective of color,”--for no great Italian from the days of Giotto
to those of Michael Angelo painted regardless of color; on the contrary,
color is the one conspicuous, brilliant, and beautiful feature of their
work, and the color-sense, as it existed in those days in all its
exquisite refinement, is, generally speaking, absolutely wanting in
ours.
In all but color Rembrandt forgot more than most of the Italians ever
knew; but in the use of color--not imitatively, not after the manner of
nature, but decoratively and arbitrarily--the Italians forgot more than
Rembrandt ever knew; and, so far as color is concerned, there is
absolutely nothing in common between Rembrandt and Leonardo or Raphael,
while there is much in common between the two latter.
It was not color, but _light_, that Ruskin appreciated, as is shown by a
hundred passages, but by none more _clearly_ than that quoted wherein he
says of the three painters last named,--and the italics are his,--“these
painters _beginning_ with _lights_ and going _down_ to blackness; but
with Veronese, Titian, and Turner the whole picture is like the
rose,--glowing with color in the shadows and rising into paler and more
delicate hues, or masses of whiteness, in the lights,--they having
_begun_ with the _shadows_ and gone up _to_ whiteness.”
* * * * *
When he held his exhibition in London, in 1892, of “Nocturnes, Marines,
and Chevalet Pieces,”--a “small collection kindly _lent_ their
owners,”--he once more printed in his dainty brown-paper-covered
catalogue, beneath each picture, the early comments of press, critics,
and people, and called it all “The Voice of a People.”
And what a collection of bizarre opinions it is, to be sure, from the
serious _Times_ to the lightsome _Merrie England_, which said:
“He paints in soot colors and mud colors, but, far from enjoying the
primary hues, has little or no perception of secondary or tertiary
color.”
Which goes to show that the budding science of chromatics is not without
effect on vocabularies.
Here we have the “kitchen stuff” criticism of Turner in 1842 paraphrased
word for word in the mud and soot criticism of Whistler precisely fifty
years later.
Is the jargon of criticism at once limited and exhausted? Are we to
linger forever about the cook-stove in the depreciation of art? With the
introduction of the steel range of mammoth proportions can we not find
new terms of opprobrium? Besides, there are the gas and gasoline stoves
of explosive habit, which ought to be suggestive of novelty in
vituperation. But, alas, the critic is prone to repeat himself, and the
language of the fathers is visited upon the children unto the third and
fourth generations of them that hate.
* * * * *
And press, critics, and artists are convicted, once more, of
incompetency. But what does it matter, save as a warning that will not
be heeded? Are we any wiser in our generation? Were Whistler to appear
to-day, as he did forty-odd years ago, would he be received with the
praise his works command now? Hardly.
Many of his followers were quite as absurd in their misplaced admiration
as the maligned public in its denunciation, and no one knew it better
than he. He came upon two of them once as they were waxing eloquent
before a sketch that had somehow escaped his studio,--possibly
overlooked and left behind in some of his movings. He listened a moment
to their raptures, fitted his monocle to his eye, took a look at this
“masterpiece,” and said:
“God bless me, I wonder where that came from. Not worth the canvas it’s
painted on.”
And he turned away.
We who have been taught to see, not wholly but in part, may laugh at our
betters who, when he first appeared, could see nothing at all; but our
virtue is acquired.
* * * * *
His attitude towards critics is summed up in the short but pointed
article written in December, 1878, shortly after the Ruskin suit, and
called “Art and Art Critics.”
“Shall the painter, then (I foresee the question), decide upon
painting? Shall _he_ be the critic and sole authority? Aggressive
as is this supposition, I fear that, in the length of time, his
assertion alone has established what even the gentlemen of the
quill accept as the canons of art and recognize as the masterpieces
of work.”
All of which is undeniably true. The painter must in the end judge of
painting, and the sculptor judge of sculpture. But there are two
distinct sides to a work of art,--to every work, for that matter: there
is the relation between the worker and his work, and the relation
between the completed work and the public,--the work being the
intermediary between artist and people, his means of communication, his
mode and manner of speech.
There is, therefore, the process of creation and the process of
appreciation, of utterance and of understanding.
The painting of a picture is one thing, its appreciation by the public
is quite another.
A man need not be a dramatist to watch the effect of a drama upon the
audience; a man need not own a vineyard to know good wine.
The critic stands, or, rather, should stand, between the public and the
work he criticises, whether it be poem, painting, statue, or drama; the
mistake he commonly makes is in forcing himself between the worker and
his work, and in trying to teach him something only another and better
worker in the _same_ art is competent to do.
Critics make most of their blunders in judging works according to
preconceived notions as to how they should be done,--in condemning, for
instance, a picture because not painted after prevailing modes and
methods, because it is a departure, whereas with these considerations
the lay-critic has nothing to do; they fall entirely within the province
of the painter-critic, the one man who is competent, in the long run, to
pass upon the methods employed.