in Japanese art seems hopelessly monotonous. To them our painstaking
characterization of the features and peculiarities of each person is no
art at all, but grotesque caricature; it is the subordination of art
which is of universal interest to the eccentricities of the individual
which are of local interest.
In Whistler’s art one must not look for any solution of the problems of
life, for any sign of the emotions which control human conduct,--for
love and hate and fear, for hope and ambition, for the tortures of
jealousy or the bitterness of despair,--these are all absent; his art is
pure and serene. His works are to painting what the “Ode to a Grecian
Urn” or “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is to poetry, and hence in human
interest they fall far short of the tragedies, the epics, the romances
of literature and art, and they must not be judged by standards he did
not seek to emulate. He could no more have painted a “Crucifixion” or a
“Last Judgment” than he could have carved the “Moses” or written
“Hamlet.” In every sense, save that of abstract beauty of line and
color, other painters have excelled Whistler, but as the master of pure
line and color harmonies he is supreme.
* * * * *
Whistler’s etchings and photographs were simply compositions in line,
delightful harmonies in black and white. It is too bad to preserve their
names or identify them with any locality, for their exquisite art is
better appreciated if no distracting consideration is aroused. But,
oddly enough, he occasionally made concessions in the naming of these
that he did not in the naming of his paintings.
Take, for instance, that charming lithograph, “Confidences in the
Garden,”--two ladies walking in the corner of an old garden. The garden
is in the rear of his Paris home on the Rue du Bac. The ladies are
probably Mrs. Whistler and her sister. But what does it add to the
print to call it “Confidences in the Garden”? Nothing at all. On the
contrary, the title at once suggests a host of considerations which
conflict with the abstract enjoyment of the composition.
That sort of a title is precisely what he condemns for his paintings. It
is, however, one of the very few instances where his titles suggest
anything more than the obvious subject. For the most part he was
consistent in choosing names that do not distract.
Even the portraits he did not care to have known as “Portrait of Mr.
A----,” or “Portrait of Lady C----,” thereby catering first to the
vanity of a sitter, then to the idle curiosity of the multitude. His
portraits were compositions in line and color, and, as such, were
artistic creations. That they happened also to be portraits of certain
individuals was a mere coincidence. The portrait feature, upon which
people lay so much stress, was of the least consequence to him; and just
because he did not permit the photographic element to move him, he
secured results which are far beyond the art of the “portrait-painter.”
* * * * *
The sense of color is so lost to painters, as well as to laymen, that to
talk of color compositions as one speaks of sound compositions is to
challenge doubt and occasion surprise. And yet there is a music of color
even as there is a music of sound, and there should be a delight in
color composition even as there is a delight in sound composition; and
this delight should be something fundamentally distinct from any
interest in the subject of the composition. The subject may be a man, or
a woman, or a field, or a tree, or a wave, or a cloud, or just nothing
at all--mere masses or streaks of color; the perfection or the
imperfection of the color arrangement remains the same.
That the color-sense is lost to laymen, critics, and painters is
evidenced by the ridicule that for thirty years was heaped upon Whistler
for calling his pictures “harmonies,” “symphonies,” “nocturnes,” etc.;
for adopting the more or less abstract nomenclature of sound
compositions--music--to describe color compositions.
One paper described them as “some figure pieces, which this artist
exhibits as ‘harmonies’ in this, that, or the other, being, as they are,
mere rubs-in of color, have no claims to be regarded as pictures.”
Another says, “A dark bluish surface, with dots on it, and the faintest
adumbrations of shape under the darkness, is gravely called a ‘Nocturne
in Black and Gold.’” Again, “Two of Mr. Whistler’s ‘color-symphonies,’ a
‘Nocturne in Blue and Gold,’ and a ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold.’ If he
did not exhibit these as pictures under peculiar and, what seems to most
people, pretentious titles they would be entitled to their due meed of
admiration. But they only come one step nearer pictures than delicately
graduated tints on a wall-paper do.”
And so in endless iteration and reiteration.
It never occurred to either painters or critics to judge the pictures
as if they were in reality so many “delicately graduated tints on a
wall-paper.” The color-sense was deficient. The pictures were judged by
their composition, their subjects,--or, rather, not appreciated at all,
but condemned, on account of their titles, which expressed exactly what
the painter desired to convey,--namely, his attempts to produce
harmonies in color independently of subject.
So far from Whistler’s titles being absurd, they were so many frank
attempts to tell the public what the painter was really trying to do. He
might have been more obscure, like many a composer of music, and simply
said, “_Opus_ I.,” or “_Opus_ XX.,” and so on. He did call three of his
early pictures “Symphony in White, No. I.,” “Symphony in White, No.
II.,” and “Symphony in White, No. III.;” but the first, a full-length
figure, was also known as the “White Girl” of the “Salon des Refusés,”
1863; the second, a three-quarter length of a young girl in white,
standing by a mantel, as “The Little White Girl;” while the third, with
no other title, is of two girls in white.
But for the most part he chose to describe each particular work as an
arrangement of blue and silver, or black and gray, or flesh-color and
brown, according to the predominating tones of the composition, thereby
aiding the eye of the observer.
There are beauties of form devoid of color;
There are beauties of color devoid of form;
There are beauties of form and color combined.
Of the foregoing the first is familiar in sculpture, and the third is
familiar in painting, but the second is scarcely observed at all, though
color without form is found wherever color is used decoratively.
The ordinary house-painter endeavors to secure agreeable effects by the
mere arrangement of colors. The interior-decorator endeavors--for the
most part with disastrous results--to secure agreeable effects by the
mere distribution of color. In a crude way the house-painter, the
sign-painter, the decorator, the dyer, the dress-maker, are all
color-composers, their object being to produce harmonies in color quite
irrespective of line and form. They know nothing about drawing, they
know nothing about modelling, but they try to please the eye by color
arrangements.
To rightly understand the color-sense let us briefly consider the matter
from its scientific side.
* * * * *
The ear has a range of musical sounds of from sixteen and one-half
air-vibrations per second--the note of the lowest pipe of the great
organ--to four thousand seven hundred and fifty-two vibrations per
second, the highest note of the piccolo of the orchestra,--a range of
about eight octaves.
Below sixteen and one-half vibrations per second, and above four
thousand seven hundred and fifty-two,--as high, in fact, as forty
thousand,--sounds are audible, but not musical, being either too low and
throbbing or two high and piercing to be agreeable.
In all countries this range of musical sounds is divided into
octaves,--the octave of any given note having simply double the number
of air-vibrations.
At the present time, in the Western world, each octave is divided, as
every one knows, into twelve notes, indicated on the piano by the seven
white keys and the five black.
For instance, the middle C of the piano has two hundred and sixty-four
vibrations per second, the C above has, of course, just double, or five
hundred and twenty-eight vibrations per second. In the chromatic scale
these two hundred and sixty-four vibrations, which make the octave, are
divided into only twelve intervals, an average of twenty-two vibrations
to the interval. In the octavo above the average would be twice that, or
forty-four, and so on doubling to the end.
There is a change in pitch with the addition of so much as a fraction of
a vibration per second. As a matter of fact, musicians can detect the
variation of pitch caused by the difference of half a vibration per
second in the middle octaves; the power to detect changes in pitch due
to fractional changes in vibrations decreasing towards the bass and
treble.
With this power of discriminating a thousand degrees of pitch in a
single octave the Western world is content to arbitrarily and
mechanically divide the octave into but twelve tones and semi-tones.
The Arabic octave contains twenty-four quarter-tones, and Oriental
nations generally take cognizance of intervals so small they seem to us
discords.
Helmholtz requested a distinguished musician to investigate this matter
in Cairo, and this is the report:
“This evening I have been listening attentively to the song on the
minarets, to try to appreciate the quarter-tones, which I had not
supposed to exist, as I had thought that the Arabs sang _out of
tune_. But to-day as I was with the dervishes I became certain that
such quarter-tones existed, and for the following reasons: Many
passages in litanies of this kind end with a tone which was at
first the quarter-tone and ended in the pure tone. As the passage
was frequently repeated, I was able to observe this every time, and
I found the intonation invariable.”[35]
All of which goes to show how susceptible the highly-trained ear is to
fine gradations and combinations of sound and how easy it is to become
accustomed to coarse intervals when the finer are no longer used.
* * * * *
The various notes as sounded by a great variety of musical instruments
constitute the raw material from which the composer and performer
produce melodies and harmonies absolutely unknown to nature, and
which--judged by the only possible standard, their emotional and
intellectual effects--are incomparably finer than any sounds in nature,
finer because a human utterance, the play of soul upon soul.
* * * * *
The eye has a range of color-notes from four hundred millions of
millions of ether-vibrations per second, the rate of the deepest red of
the spectrum, to seven hundred and fifty millions of millions, the rate
of the violet rays. The following table of vibration rates of the colors
of the spectrum shows the vibration intervals which divide the
pronounced colors:[36]
Color-sensation. Ether-vibrations per second.
Deep red 400 millions of millions.
Red-orange 437 “ “
Yellow-orange 457 “ “
Yellow 509 “ “
Green 570 “ “
Blue-green 617 “ “
Blue-violet 696 “ “
Violet 750 “ “
This color-scale, as produced by a great variety of agents,--such as
colored lights, glass, stones, metals, fabrics, dyes, stains, pigments,
etc.,--constitutes the raw material from which the color-composer,
painter, and decorator produce melodies and harmonies absolutely unknown
to nature, and, judged as musical sounds are judged, are incomparably
finer than effects in nature, because essentially human, because
produced by man for their emotional and intellectual effect upon man.
Theoretically the variation of a single ether-vibration per second
changes the shade of the color; but while the trained ear can detect the
variation in pitch due to a half-vibration of air per second more or
less, ether-vibrations are so incomparably more rapid that the best the
trained eye can do is detect about one thousand different tints in the
spectrum. In other words, there must be an increase or decrease of three
hundred and fifty thousand millions of ether-vibrations before even the
practised eye is consciously affected.
It is, however, altogether likely that while the eye is not consciously
affected without these great variations in frequency, it is
_unconsciously_ affected, and susceptibility to and skill in handling
color depend upon this unconscious susceptibility.
It is pretty well established that the range of color-vision cannot be
materially extended below the red or above the violet by practice, but
susceptibility to color variations and the ability to distinguish
gradations of tone within the scale can be increased almost
indefinitely.
Education of the color-sense is the development of this _unconscious_
susceptibility,--of the _feeling_ for, as distinguished from a knowledge
of, color.
A man may _know_ all about color and have no _feeling_ for it. On the
other hand, a man may be singularly susceptible to color-effects without
being able to name correctly a dozen shades.
Nothing educates the color-sense so much as steady contemplation of
color-harmonies in nature and art. But unless a man possesses an
instinctive feeling for color he will never select the best examples;
whereas if his eye is exceedingly susceptible he will intuitively cling
to the best the world affords.
* * * * *
Whistler was gifted with susceptibility to color in an extraordinary
degree. Where, by way of illustration, the untrained eye can distinguish
one or two hundred shades of color in the spectrum and the
highly-trained eye a thousand, Whistler could probably distinguish two
thousand, and possibly _feel_ as many more.
In fact, so keen was his susceptibility to color that intervals--to use,
very legitimately, the musical term--quite imperceptible to others
affected him greatly.
* * * * *
The neck-tie of a sitter once caused him no end of trouble.
The suit the sitter was wearing was of a light-brown tone; the ulster
was of a darker Scotch plaid,--all softened in tone by time and wear. In
so many shades of brown it certainly seemed to the casual eye that the
shade of the brown silk tie the sitter had on found a place. But, no; to
Whistler it was a discordant note, though half hidden by the garments.
All available ties were exhausted,--even those of friends and
neighboring artists were levied upon. Others could see nothing
inharmonious in many of the ties that were tried; but they made Whistler
positively uncomfortable,--just as uncomfortable as the leader of an
orchestra is when an instrument plays a discord; and it was not until
the “Bon Marché” had been ransacked--for, not ties, but simply fabrics
in shades of brown--that a piece was found that would answer.
Then, mark you, the brown of the tie was by no means reproduced in the
portrait, but the brown as modified by all the browns and notes of the
entire costume, and as still further modified by all the browns and all
the notes and shades and lights of the studio.
During this search for a note of brown--a search which seemed to the
sitter, and even to artist friends, finical in the extreme--the great
painter one afternoon justified himself by showing some little pastel
sketches of a model with bits of transparent drapery floating about her.
The sketches were on coarse brown board, and about ten or twelve inches
high by five or six wide, and there were just a few strokes of almost
imperceptible color to indicate the flesh tones and the draperies, all
so slight as to scarce attract notice; and yet each of the filmy bits of
drapery had been dyed by the painter with as much care to secure the
desired notes as he would take in painting a portrait.
No one who has not seen him at work can form any adequate notion of his
extreme susceptibility to infinitesimal variations of color; it exceeded
that of any painter of whom the Western world has sufficient record for
comparison.
A Frenchman has said:
“Whistler’s works are dreams of color. The gray of them is unique.
It is made of white, blue, green, of all the tints. It is the
tender gray of England’s coasts, of the North Sea, and of the sky
that in summer is above it; the horizon gray where the pale blue of
the sky and the pale green of the sea unite and form one.
“It is a subtle shade, in accord with the penumbras in which he
delighted. He was the musician of the rainbow. No one understood as
well as he the mysterious relations of painting and of music, the
seven notes and the seven colors, and the way to play these with
the sharps and flats of the prism. Even as a symphony is in D or a
sonata is in A, his pictures were orchestrated according to a
tone,--the ‘Lady with the Iris,’ for example, a mauve flower placed
in the hand of the figure, as a note and signifying that the
portrait was to be a colored polyphony of lilac and of violets.
“More precision is lent to this curious æsthetic by the titles that
he gave to certain small canvases representing twilights of Venice
and of London, which he entitled ‘Nocturnes,’ in a parallel with
those of Chopin, but of a Chopin serene and who dreams instead of a
Chopin ill and who weeps. There, as in portraits, the gray of
England’s coasts appears, but bluer. It has in portraits the tints
of twilight in ashes. In all his works he reveals the land of his
origin, the land that has produced Edgar Allan Poe.”
Many stories are told illustrating his susceptibility to color. Some of
them are pointless; but the fact they are told at all shows how this
trait impressed both the artists and the public.
“One morning he had an engagement at a banker’s, where he was to
receive a large sum of money for a set of etchings, a sum that he
happened to need very much at that time. He was busy chatting and
showing some of his things to an appreciative visitor, who happened
to know the circumstances, and considerately reminded him that he
had far to go and that the American would probably be in a hurry
and would not wait.
“‘Yes,’ said Whistler; ‘but just look at this now,’ pulling forward
another canvas. And so it went on, until his friend said:
‘Whistler, you really must go! That man will never wait for you.’
“‘What a nuisance you are!’ he exclaimed; but he got ready, and
they started.
“They were tearing down the street at a great rate, when Whistler
suddenly stopped the cab and made the driver go back to a certain
spot,--and they had to go backwards and forwards for quite a while
before they found the exact place,--in order to get a view of a
certain little green-grocer’s shop, with his fruit and vegetables
outside, striped awnings, etc.
“Whistler put up his hands for a frame, squinted and twisted.
‘Beautiful!’ he exclaimed. ‘Lovely! I’m going to do that; but I
think I’ll have him move the oranges over to the right more, and
that green, now--let me see----’
“‘Whistler!’ cried his friend, ‘_do_ come along! That man will be
home in New York before we get there!’
“‘What a nuisance you are!’ declared Whistler, and was sulky the
rest of the way.
“It was not a pose. The painter was so enchanted by what he saw
that banker and money were nothing to him at that moment.”
And it is said a visitor once found him at work in his studio.
“The furniture was of a pale gray; the hangings were of the same color;
the window shades were of gray; the model a woman with gray eyes,
wearing a gray costume; and the costume of the painter was also of the
same prevailing color.
“Whistler refused to talk with his visitor until he had removed his
flaming red cravat; and, after a few minutes’ conversation, commented
upon the fact that the tone values of his coat and trousers were out of
harmony.”
An exaggeration, but it all might have occurred; for has he not himself
described, in “Gentle Art,” how the loud dress of a critic destroyed his
exhibition. “To have seen him, O, my wise Atlas, was my privilege and my
misery,--for he stood under one of my own ‘harmonies,’ already with
difficulty gasping its gentle breath, himself an amazing ‘arrangement’
in strong mustard-and-cress, with bird’s-eye belcher of Reckitt’s blue,
and then and there destroyed absolutely, unintentionally, and once for
all, my year’s work!”
* * * * *
The analogy between the musical scale and the color scale has been many
times noted.
Helmholtz[37] draws the following analogy:
F ♯ End of the red.
G Red.
G ♯ Red.
A Red.
A ♯ Orange-red.
B Orange.
c Yellow.
c ♯ Green.
d Greenish-blue.
d ♯ Cyanogen-blue.
e Indigo-blue.
f Violet.
f ♯ Violet.
g Ultra-violet.
g ♯ Ultra-violet.
a Ultra-violet.
a ♯ Ultra-violet.
b End of the solar spectrum.
There is, of course, this fundamental difference between the two senses:
the action of air-waves upon the ear is mechanical, simply a succession
of beats, while the action of ether-waves upon the retina is chemical in
its character.
The true analogy lies in the simple fact that the ear is susceptible to
certain sounds produced by air-waves of certain frequencies, while the
eye is susceptible to certain colors produced by ether-waves of certain
frequencies, and it is possible to mechanically combine in one case the
sounds so as to produce harmonies that please the ear, and in the other
case the colors so as to produce harmonies that please the eye; and so
far as pure sound and pure color is concerned, the harmonious
compositions need have no relation, imitative or otherwise, to anything
in nature.
* * * * *
The uneducated ear prefers melodies which are more or less suggestive of
sounds heard in nature,--more or less realistic imitations of songs of
birds, rippling of waters, falling of rain, rustling of leaves, crashing
of thunder, etc.; or if familiar sounds are not imitated, the title of
the composition must suggest some incident, place, or scene more or less
familiar, so the deficient ear may be helped out by the imagination.
The highly-trained ear, on the other hand, delights in abstract
compositions of sound, in harmonies which have no perceptible relation
to any sound in nature, and which do not suggest any person, scene, or
incident in literature or history.
The purer the taste in music the more abstract the compositions that
satisfy.
So far as the appreciation of color harmonies is concerned, the taste of
the Western world is like unto that of the uneducated ear in music.
We are not content with pure color compositions as we are with pure
sound, but we demand either imitations of natural objects or
representations of historical, literary, religious, or emotional
subjects. We must have something besides pure line and color.
A musician may strike a succession of notes, or a chord, and we are
pleased, the ear is satisfied; but if the painter simply sweeps his
brush several times across the canvas, we are not satisfied, though the
combination of colors be something more beautiful and harmonious than
anything ever seen. It is not a “picture” to us; it lacks the “subject”
to which we are accustomed.
And yet there are in existence certain canvases by Whistler which are
little more than color-schemes, and which in color-effects are among the
most beautiful things he ever painted; and in all the galleries of
Europe there is nothing to compare with them in pure joyousness of
color.
As children and men we enjoy the color-effects of fireworks against the
blackness of night, and we enjoy the darkness and the shadows about us,
the sudden light upon expectant faces, the dark-moving figures in the
intervals. All this is delight in color,--color without sentiment, color
without story, color without other thought or reflection than pure
sensuous enjoyment; and we even feel the tawdry cheapness of the attempt
when by set arrangement the features of some local or national celebrity
are presented. But when an artist who sees such a night-scene and paints
it in such manner that the color-scheme is preserved and its beauty
enhanced in translation, we demand something more. We demand, as did
Burne-Jones, “detail and composition,”--in short, we demand the features
of our local celebrity.
Until we learn to love color, as we love music, for its own sake, there
will never be any decorations of homes and public buildings that will be
worth while.
* * * * *