make it such; therefore, every work challenges the critical faculties,
great or small, of those who see it. It is inevitable that some more
interested should spring up to interpret, rightly or wrongly, the work
to the public; the artist seldom takes the trouble,--in fact, has
neither the time nor the temperament; his message is complete in the
picture, others must understand it as best they can.
The playwright cannot address the audience save through the play, the
poet speaks only through his poetry, the painter through his pictures,
the sculptor through the forms of his creation. Seldom is an artist
gifted with more than one tongue, and that tongue is his art. How, then,
can artists interpret the work of artists? How can the painter, who is
dumb save with his brush, or the sculptor, who is mute save with his
clay and chisel, tell the world anything about the work of others?
It is the business of those who can speak and write to tell the people,
not how the work was created, unless they were present, but how it
impressed them as a finished thing. That is the province of legitimate
criticism.
Every man who has done his best to understand, though at the risk of
betraying his ignorance, has the right to say how he likes what he sees
or hears or tastes. The opinions of some are worth more than those of
others; and these opinions, with the reasons therefor, we are delighted
to hear. That is about all there is to sound criticism; and in that
sense comment and those whose profession is to comment are
inevitable,--until the æsthetic millenium, when critics cease from
troubling and the artists are at rest.
Ruskin, unfortunately, attempted the double duty of telling painters how
to paint and the public what to like. With all his industry and
considerable talent for drawing, he was not competent to tell painters
how to paint,--though much that he said is accepted as sound,--and his
judgments of the relative merits of painters and pictures were biassed
by his own convictions regarding the way the work should be done.
His limitations were due to his strong preferences and violent
prejudices. His devotion to Turner--a great painter--was one limitation;
lack of appreciation of Rembrandt was another; failure to estimate
Velasquez at his real worth was another; and a lot of enthusiasms for
men who are now forgotten are so many additional evidences of lack of
judicial temper in Ruskin. But all these things are as nothings in
comparison with the rich store of things said in English so strong, so
simple, and yet so beautiful that it fairly intoxicates and rouses
something akin to a religious enthusiasm.
* * * * *
A word concerning the “Voice of a People,” as Whistler called his little
collection of criticisms. What is it?
In literature the “Voice of a People” makes itself heard at the
bookseller’s counter and over the desk of the circulating library,--and
that, too, regardless of critics who praise this book and condemn that.
Sometimes, before the Critic has spoken, the “Voice” is heard, and the
presses groan with the burden of their task; or, more often, after the
Critic has had his say, the “Voice,” disregarding labored precepts,
calls loudly for what it is told it should not have; and so in
literature the “Voice” makes itself heard loud and clear and natural,
and there is no mistaking it.
Likewise in the drama the insistent “Voice” demands trash or otherwise,
quite regardless of the protest of the Critic. The run of a play is not
determined by the criticisms. The opinion of the Critic is often
foreseen and defied; but neither writer, manager, nor actor can foretell
the verdict of the “Voice,”--favorable often when least expected;
adverse often when least deserved.
But in art the “Voice”--stentorian in literature and the drama--sinks to
a whisper so diffident that it cannot be heard amidst the trumpetings of
the Critics.
The Critics--those whose business it was to write and talk about
art--ridiculed Whistler, not the “Voice.” Left wholly to itself, it is
quite likely the “Voice” would have found much that it liked in the
beautiful combinations of tones and colors, for there is nothing
inherently repulsive in Whistler’s work, as in much other that Critics
command the “Voice” to praise; on the contrary, his paintings are
exceedingly restful to the eye, and exceedingly attractive as schemes of
color if nothing else. The “Voice,” left to itself, would say, “I do
not understand them, but I like them,--just as I like music, without
knowing much about it.”
* * * * *
But the “Voice”--independent enough in literature, the drama, and even
in music--dares not lisp in art until the Critic speaks. Then the
“Voice” praises what he praises, condemns what he condemns, until the
secret purchases and growing demand for the outcast confounds both
Critic and echoing “Voice.” Then the “Voice” turns--as it has in the
case of Whistler--and rends the Critics, unless those agile gentlemen
change sides and praise what they formerly condemned.
Too bad that Whistler attributed the “Voice” of the Critic to that
long-suffering animal--the Public, which, if often wrong, is always
honest, and, in all but art--vociferous.
* * * * *
Concerning his habit of persistently impaling the critics, a writer
says:[29]
“We wish that the catalogue did not, for the tenth time, contain
quotations from all the dull things which bewildered criticism has
said about him. Mr. Whistler is a wit, and should recollect that
the same old joke must not be told too often to the same old
audience.”
But where is the joke? In the criticisms or in their repetition? If the
criticisms were serious, then repetition is doubly serious.
Nor is it “the same old audience,” but each year, each hour, a new
audience. Of all the English-speaking people not one in a million have
ever heard the joke; and if joke there be, it is surely a gracious act
to make it known.
The far-seeing publisher deftly detaches the favorable comment from
uncongenial context and prints it boldly on the fly-leaf of the volume.
Why should not author or painter print his page of depreciations that,
as Whistler says, “history may be cleanly written”? And if preserved and
printed once, why not for all time?
The record of a people is not complete unless their likes and dislikes
be known. What would we not give for the adverse criticisms of
Shakespeare? And there must have been many besides poor Greene’s. What
would we not give for some of the off-hand comments of his fellow-actors
and his fellow-managers?
The world conspires to deceive the world. The literature of adulation is
carefully conserved until mortals, denuded of their frailties, become
gods.
* * * * *
In the course of his career Whistler met with many bizarre
appreciations, but none more astonishing than this:[30]
“To understand Mr. Whistler you must understand his body. I do not
mean that Mr. Whistler has suffered from bad health,--his health
has always been excellent; all great artists have excellent
health, but his constitution is more nervous than robust. He is
even a strong man, but he is lacking in weight. Were he six inches
taller and his bulk proportionally increased, his art would be
different.”
The classification of the prize-ring into feather-, light-, middle-, and
heavy-weights makes its appearance in art; genius, like jockeys, must
weigh-in and-out. By rights, therefore, Paganini should have played the
bass-viol and Napoleon should have been a drummer-boy. The painter must
measure his canvas by his belt, and bant the masterpiece into shape. The
gymnasium is the true school of art, and the dumb-bell is mightier than
the brush.
“For if Whistler had been six inches taller and his bulk
proportionally increased, ... instead of having painted a dozen
portraits,--every one, even the ‘Mother’ and ‘Miss Alexander,’
which I personally take to be the two best, a little febrile in its
extreme beauty, whilst some, masterpieces though they be, are
clearly touched with weakness and marked with hysteria,--Mr.
Whistler would have painted a hundred portraits as strong, as
vigorous, as decisive, and as easily accomplished as any by
Velasquez or Hals.”
This is the sort of comment that follows but never precedes
acquaintance. After knowing a painter, it is easy to discover all his
physical characteristics and idiosyncrasies in his work,--so easy, in
fact, that many critics prefer to pass on books, plays, and pictures on
their merits without knowing anything about the authors, the actors, or
painters; for in the end a work must stand or fall by itself.
From an examination of the “Hermes,” can this critic give us the stature
of Praxiteles? From the “Nike” in the Louvre can he describe the unknown
master? What does the “Sistine Madonna” tell him of the weight of
Raphael, or the “Lesson in Anatomy” of the “bulk” of Rembrandt?
* * * * *
A man’s physical condition may be--frequently is--reflected in his work.
If he is an invalid, what he does is apt to show it,--though Herbert
Spencer is a case to the contrary; but his physique is another matter.
Genius is not a matter of inches. The weight of the brain is not
controlled by the size of the body; still more independent is the
organization and development of the brain.
If a man have strength and health--and these the critic concedes to
Whistler--his work may be the work of a giant.
One of the greatest and strongest of Germany’s living artists is almost
a dwarf; the most virile painter in America to-day is short and slight.
* * * * *
The same critic, referring to the letters in the “Gentle Art,” says, “If
Mr. Whistler had the bull-like health of Michael Angelo, Rubens, Hals,
the letters would never have been written.” But, as a matter of fact,
Angelo was “a man of more than usually nervous temperament.” As any one
at all familiar with his career, his many controversies, his voluminous
letters, well knows, “his temperament exposed him to sudden outbursts of
scorn and anger which brought him now and then into violent collision
with his neighbors.” His habit of ridiculing and annoying his
fellow-pupils invited the blow from Pietro Torrigiano which gave him his
broken nose. He was a weakly child and suffered two illnesses in
manhood, but by carefully refraining from all excesses he regained and
preserved his health. “His countenance always showed a good and
wholesome color. Of stature he is as follows: height middling, broad in
the shoulders; the rest of the body somewhat slender in proportion.”
The foregoing scarcely bears out the sweeping generalization that “the
greatest painters, I mean the very greatest,--Michael Angelo, Velasquez,
and Rubens,--were gifted by nature with as full a measure of health as
of genius. Their physical constitutions resembled more those of bulls
than of men.”
As for Velasquez, who can speak authoritatively for him?
* * * * *
While the physical characteristics of geniuses are habitually
exaggerated, and the weak, the nervous, the delicate are made well and
strong and “like bulls” in the enthusiasm of appreciation or the
exigencies of theory, it would not be difficult to point out in history,
art, and literature innumerable instances of men whose achievements
afford no indications whatsoever of their bodily make up,--in fact, it
is common experience that neither poet nor painter ever corresponds with
preconceived notions, and to meet the one or the other is to court
disenchantment.
If Whistler had been six inches taller he would not have been Angelo, or
Rembrandt, or Velasquez, but--in all probability--a soldier.
_VII_
_Supreme as a Colorist--Color and Music--His Susceptibility to
Color--Ruskin and Color--Art and Nature._
Supreme as a colorist, Whistler achieved fame as an etcher long before
the world acknowledged his greatness as a painter. Even now it is the
fashion to exalt his etchings to the depreciation of his paintings,--to
say that he was a great artist in the one medium but unsuccessful in the
other.
The following is a fair illustration of this sort of comment:
“Cool-headed conservatism should clarify the halo which encircles
Whistler’s portraits. The periodic ‘symphonies,’ ‘harmonies,’ and
‘arrangements,’ in gray and green, green and rose, purple and gold,
or brown and black, have, or had, novelty to recommend them,--more
novelty, however, than psychology. Apart from one or two, they are
little beyond essays in subdued _Japonisme_ with subtle dashes of
Velasquez. The portrait of his mother alone shows adequate depth,
for the overlauded Carlyle is merely a male replica of the single
canvas wherein the artist seemed to lose--and to find--himself. It
is not in portraiture, but in etching and lithography, that
Whistler has disclosed the validity of his talent.”[31]
To which may be added the following comments since his death from
leading American papers:
“Whistler in earlier life was a real etcher, easily the first of
the nineteenth century. The number of his plates of the best
quality is comparatively small. He soon lost his power or the
incentive to execute it. His hand degenerated, his work became
trivial and insincere. As a painter none of his pictures will ever
explain to posterity the reputation, or the apparent reputation,
that he enjoyed during his lifetime.”
“It is, however, as an etcher rather than as a painter that
Whistler will be remembered.”
“Thus, setting aside the portraits of his mother, of Thomas
Carlyle, Lady Campbell, and Miss Alexander, and the startling
‘Nocturne in Blue and Silver,’ and the ‘Arrangement in Black,’ it
might be possible to count upon the fingers of one hand the finest
examples of his brush.”
Many others of similar import might be gathered, but the foregoing
suffice. In reading them it should not be forgotten that the etchings,
which are now praised without reserve, passed through the same stages of
depreciation through which the paintings are passing; so that, guided by
the parallel, it is reasonable to expect the complete acceptance of the
latter as masterpieces in the near future.
Broadly speaking, the order of acceptance has been:
First. Etchings and lithographs.
Second. Portraits.
Third. Color harmonies,--such as many of his figure-pieces, marines,
nocturnes, and pure color compositions generally, none of which is fully
accepted, some of which are scarcely known, and
[Illustration]
all of which are misunderstood, in spite of his many explicit words of
explanation.
Such has been the order of general acceptance of his work; but the order
of real merit is almost precisely reversed.
Whistler stands supreme,--
First as a colorist.
Secondly as a painter of portraits.
Thirdly as an etcher and lithographer.
As an etcher comparisons are drawn between him and Rembrandt.
As a painter of portraits comparisons are drawn between him and
Velasquez.
As a colorist he is beyond comparison save with the masters of the far
East.
In etching and lithography and the painting of portraits he, at most,
simply did as well or better what others have done before; but in the
composition of harmonies of color to please the eye, as harmonies of
sound please the ear, he accomplished results which are unique.
What he did with the needle is not so wholly and absolutely unlike all
that had been done before as to render comparisons impossible; whereas
with the brush in his domain of color Whistler stands alone. His art was
his own; he painted like no other man dead or living.
His etchings were so fine, so subtle, that the world had difficulty in
comprehending them; but it did learn to like them, and that, too, at a
comparatively early date. But even now his pictures are fully
understood by no one; and yet they have had a profounder influence upon
the art of to-day than those of any other master.
He opened the door of the East to the painters of the West and showed
them how they might paint after the manner of the best there is in the
Oriental world, and not only retain, but accentuate their own
individuality.
The secret of Whistler’s art, as of all great art, is that it was the
absolutely true and unaffected expression of his convictions and of his
impressions of the life and world about him; and his impressions and
convictions in the domain of color, like those of Beethoven in the world
of sound, were worth recording.
He is to color what Beethoven is to sound, and his distinguishing merit
is that of all the men of his century or of many preceding centuries he
was the only one to treat color as a composer of music treats sound,--as
material for the arrangement of harmonies to please the eye as music
pleases the ear.
* * * * *
When Burne-Jones, in the Ruskin suit, was asked if he saw any art
quality in “The Falling Rocket,” he apologetically said, “I must speak
the truth, you know,” and then testified: “It has fine color and
atmosphere,” but of detail and composition “absolutely none.”
As if the shower of fire of a falling rocket against the blackness of
night could have sharp detail and composition; as if anything were
possible beyond “fine color and atmosphere;” and color and atmosphere
are all Whistler intended. “My whole scheme,” he himself testified, “was
only to bring about a certain harmony of color,” and, according to the
only decently qualified witness for the other side, he succeeded.
Even Frith, the painter of “Derby Day” and the “Rake’s Progress,” said,
“There is a pretty color which pleases the eye, but there is nothing
more.”
Why should there be anything more, if to please the eye were the
painter’s sole intention? Is it not as legitimate to please the eye with
compositions of color, otherwise meaningless, as it is to please the ear
with compositions of sound?
Profoundly speaking, color has no other object than to please the eye.
The story should be told, the moral pointed, in black and white. The use
of color imitatively, or to accentuate the characterization, is as base
as the use of sound imitatively.
Color is to the eye precisely what sound is to the ear, and the highest
use to which either can be put is the production of pure, not to say
abstract, harmonies for the satisfaction of its respective sense.
* * * * *
As long ago as 1868 Swinburne, in a pamphlet on the Royal Academy
exhibition of that year, said:
“No task is harder than this translation from color into speech,
when the speech must be so hoarse and feeble, when the color is so
subtle and sublime. Music and verse might strike some string
accordant in sound to such painting, but a version such as this is
a psalm of Tate’s to a psalm of David’s. In all of the main
strings touched are certain varying chords of blue and white, not
without interludes of the bright and tender tones of floral purple
or red. They all have immediate beauty, they all give the delight
of natural things; they seem to have grown as a flower grows, not
in any forcing house of ingenious and laborious cunning. This is,
in my eyes, a special quality of Mr. Whistler’s genius; a freshness
and fulness of the loveliest life of things, with a high, clear
power upon them which seems to educe a picture as the sun does a
blossom or a fruit.”
In language too plain for the slightest misunderstanding he has himself
told the world precisely what he meant his pictures to be, but the world
will not take him at his word.
Nearly thirty years ago, when the people wondered at his calling his
works “symphonies,” “arrangements,” “harmonies,” and “nocturnes,” he
wrote:
“The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a
picture apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.
“My picture of a ‘Harmony in Gray and Gold’ is an illustration of
my meaning,--a snow-scene with a single black figure and a lighted
tavern. I care nothing for the past, present, or future of the
black figure, placed there because the black was wanted at that
spot. All that I know is that my combination of gray and gold is
the basis of the picture. Now, this is precisely what my friends
cannot grasp.
“They say, ‘Why not call it “Trotty Veck,” and sell it for a round
harmony of golden guineas?’ naively acknowledging that without
baptism there is no ... market!’”[32]
And farther on he said:
“As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of
sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of
sound or color.
“The great musicians knew this. Beethoven and the rest wrote
music,--simply music; symphony in this key, concerto or sonata in
that.
“On F or G they constructed celestial harmonies,--as
harmonies,--combinations evolved from the chorus of F or G and
their minor correlatives.
“This is pure music as distinguished from airs,--commonplace and
vulgar in themselves, but interesting from their associations,--as,
for instance, ‘Yankee Doodle’, or ‘Partant pour la Syrie.’
“Art should be independent of all clap-trap, should stand alone,
and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or er, without confounding
this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love,
patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with
it; and that is why I insist on calling my works ‘arrangements’ and
‘harmonies.’”[33]
And concerning the portrait of his mother, which nearly every one
admires for the subject while few pause to consider the color, he wrote:
“Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as
an ‘Arrangement in Gray and Black.’ Now, that is what it is. To me
it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought
the public to care about the identity of the portrait?”[34]
Within these few lines are contained Whistler’s whole philosophy of art,
his convictions and his intentions; the words are so plain a child may
read and comprehend their meaning, and yet people will not understand
him.
Whistler’s art was purely sensuous, as the finest music is sensuous. He
had no interest whatsoever in the many problems of life and death, in
the story of any person or the traditions of any place.
He had less interest in the associations connected with Old Battersea
Bridge than the boatman lazily floating by; but at certain hours and
under certain conditions, at twilight or at dusk, or in the fog, it made
a long, tremulous line which pleased him, and he painted it.
The fact that the Thames bounds English history was of no consequence to
him; but the muddy river between lines of buildings and wharves and
shipping, and covered by boats and crossed by bridges, furnished him
endless compositions in line and color.
The glory and the romance of Venice made no impression on his art; but
in out-of-the-way places, where others saw nothing, he found scenes
which inspired his etchings.
As an etcher and a lithographer Whistler played with the mystery of
line, as in painting he played with the mystery of color.
There is an art of pure line as there is an art of pure form and of pure
color. It is just as possible to make a lot of meaningless lines which
please the eye in their curves and endless variety as it is to please
the eye with combinations of colors.
Decorative patterns and designs, aside from color, are simply line
harmonies.
A child loves to make straight and round and curved lines upon slate or
paper.
The eye follows lines with a delight akin to that taken in form and
color.
When the Savoy Hotel was in process of construction, and the great steel
beams thrust themselves upward towards the sky, and there was a
lattice-work of girders and a veritable song of line, Whistler, seeing
it one day from a neighboring window, exclaimed:
“Hurry; where are my things? I must catch that now, for it will never
again be so beautiful.”
* * * * *
High buildings, mechanical processes, modern costumes had no terrors for
him, simply because he had no sentiment concerning them; if they
furnished him beauties of line or color he cared not whether they were
new or old.
Whistler’s art was as devoid of sentiment as that of a Japanese.