THE BUTTERFLY
The famous butterfly monogram, originally a decorative combination of
the letters "J. M. W.," which evolved into a decorative design of a
butterfly, enclosed in a circle, as it appeared in his "Sarasate" and
"Carlyle," and, frequently, a mere stencil-like silhouette as seen in
his correspondence, began to appear in Whistler's pictures in the late
sixties. The "Symphony in Gray and Green--The Ocean" (painted in 1866)
was probably the first important canvas in which it was introduced. In
his earlier pictures he had made use of an ordinary written signature as
most painters use. It is strange that it took an artist of Whistler's
sensitiveness so long to realize the incongruities of these crude
calligraphic displays. They disfigure many a good picture and smack of
the materialism of this age. Every picture should have a signature, if
for no other reason than to prove the authenticity at some future time.
But surely it can be treated with more discretion than it is to-day.
The Old Masters frequently handled it with ingenuity and some degree of
modesty. It was the Japanese artist who gave it a decorative
significance. The red cartouches of Hiroshige are known to every print
collector. He considered it a part of the picture, a colour note or
vehicle of balance in an empty space, as important a detail of
composition as any other.
Whistler treated his monogram in the same conscientious and picturesque
fashion. He used it with preference in his symphonies, nocturnes and
large portraits, but, at times, also in white, as on a rail post in the
lower right corner of his "Bognor." He handled it with more than
ordinary reverence, as everything that pertained to the exploiting of
his own personality. He often introduced it at the first painting to
judge the effect, and, of course, he wiped or scraped it out over and
over again until he procured the desired effect. He continually made
slight changes in the design, he toyed with it as with some curio,
elaborated it in many ways, and, eventually, even bestowed a sting upon
the insect, as it appears in his "Gentle Art of Making Enemies."
The butterfly teaches a lesson. It proves that an artist can be
self-assertive, arrogant and yet refined. Whistler thus introduced a
method of picture signing that should be generally adopted. Every artist
should have his own monogram, and use it with discretion.
But it has even a deeper significance in Whistler's life. It is in a way
a symbol of his evolution as a painter. As we study his work we find
that the butterfly monogram does not appear before Whistler freed
himself from foreign influences, and invented an individual and
independent style of his own. The butterfly may well stand for the full
awakening and realization of his own faculties. Did he not say himself:
"In the pale citron wing of the butterfly, with its dainty spots of
orange, he saw the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender
saffron pillars, and was taught how the delicate drawing high upon the
walls should be traced in slender tones of orpiment and repeated by the
base in notes of graver hue."
Like all painters Whistler had to learn his trade, and then find his
peculiar way of expression. It took him well nigh a quarter of a
century. He entered the studio of Gleyre in the summer of 1855 as a
young man of twenty-one, and was nearly forty-seven when he had finished
the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" and had painted a few nocturnes.
All his earlier pictures remind us of some other master. "The Music
Room" recalls Stevens, "The Blue Wave: Biarritz" the forceful style of
Courbet, and "The White Symphony" even the light manner of Alma Tadema.
Charles Gleyre was an excellent draughtsman of the Ingres school, but
all he could teach his pupils was to draw. That he had once been capable
of some finer appreciation of colour and atmosphere, students of art may
notice in his "Evening," painted in 1843, but he became, like so many
other painters of this period, the victim of the academic style. Outline
drawing reigned supreme, there was room for nothing else, and it was
surely not a congenial environment for young Whistler, who, even at that
time, differed with the prevalent ideas of art. Drawing, however, is one
of the most important factors of the technique of painting. Velasquez
even thought it was the most important one, and Whistler, with the
peculiar tendency of his art, was, no doubt, fortunate that he reached
Paris while draughtsmanship was still honoured and not neglected, as in
the later days of the impressionists. A student in Paris either becomes
an enthusiastic worker from the nude, making one study after the other,
like all those Julian and Colarossi pupils--or he gets so imbued with
the art atmosphere that he sets about on conquests of his own, and the
city of Seine, with its museums, monuments, artists, population,
pleasures and sights is just the right place for "free lance" education.
Whistler chose the latter way.
The canvases of this period show strong influences of Stevens and
Courbet. He must have been enamoured with the style of that great
painter of woman, as he was undoubtedly with the rude sincerity of
Courbet. If any man could paint at that time it was Courbet. He was the
simplifier of planes and values, who advocated frankness and freedom of
expression, and detached painting from all the absurdities and
abstractions of the classic and romantic periods. From him Whistler
learned to put on his pigments in a bold, vigorous way. He was never
fond of brushwork, but at that time he liked to pile it on in a flat and
solid manner. Only gradually his brushwork became thinner and thinner,
invisible and almost untraceable, carrying out his maxim: "A picture is
finished when all traces of means used to bring about the end have
disappeared." As is the case with all great paintings, one must forget
all about technique.
From Stevens he learned, as he often said in later years, all that
could be learned from him. I believe that the influence was subtler and
more spiritual, and one that lasted all his life. Stevens was for him
what the chart from which we learn history in school days remains for
us. We can never forget it and entirely get away from it. In the
beginning, of course, it was a technical preference. Like Stevens, he
used precise outlines, a profusion of details and yet with all a poetic
atmosphere that is produced principally by a beautiful juxtaposition of
colour values. Even to-day few of Whistler's earlier canvases have more
admirers than the "Harmony in Green and Rose," perhaps better known as
"The Music Room" (in the possession of Frank J. Hecker). It was painted
in 1860, in the London home of Haden, the painter-etcher. This picture
was first known as "The Morning Call." In the corner of the room a
mirror reflects the profile of a woman, who is not represented in the
picture. This is a portrait of Lady Seymour Haden, Whistler's
stepsister, with whom he was lodging at the time. In front of the window
hang a pair of white curtains with a green and red flower pattern. A
young woman (Miss Booth, a relative of the Hadens) in a black riding
habit, which she holds up with her gloved hand, stands on the dark red
carpet. In the background sits a little girl reading.
[Illustration: _Owned by Frank J. Hecker_
HARMONY IN GREEN AND ROSE: THE MUSIC ROOM.]
Another more exotic influence became palpable in his work soon after,
and exercised an almost despotic control for several years. At the Paris
_Exposition Universelle_ of 1863 Whistler became acquainted, for the
first time, with Japanese art. The Parisian artists, particularly the
set with which Whistler was acquainted, got colour mad. The
suggestiveness of Oriental composition, which accentuates detail here
and neglects it there; the peculiar space arrangement and the decorative
treatment of detail, captivated all modern spirit.
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, the æsthetes of the Empire, and the
forerunners of the Japanese enthusiasts, and specialists like Cernuschi,
Regamey, Guimet, and Bing became the spokesmen for Japanese _bibelots_.
Paris was deluged with little art objects fashioned out of bronze,
porcelain, cloisonne, jade, ivory, wood and metal. Everybody started a
collection, and became a member of the "Societé du Jinglar," with annual
meetings at Sèvres, which was fanatically devoted to the worship and
exploitation of Eastern art.
The harmonious arrangement of the Japanese colour prints in particular
fascinated the cognoscenti. The application of colour in Japanese art
is somewhat different to ours. It is more primitive, and based on the
decorative principle of simultaneous contrast. It deals solely with flat
tints with occasional gradations on the outer edges, and vibration is
produced by the simple method of letting the paper, or silk, shine
through the pigment. If Japanese colouring does not directly recall the
polychromic designs of primitive people, of pottery decorations, wall
designs, carpets and mats, Scandinavian wood ornamentation, etc., the
reason is entirely to be found in its refinement and finish. It has the
same origin; a totem pole is the beginning, and a Japanese print about
the end of the development.
True enough, coloured prints were classified as vulgar art. They were
considered ordinary pictorial commodities of no more importance to the
natives than coloured supplements to our Sunday readers. But they were
of such exquisite finish that we wonderingly ask ourselves if the nobler
branches of art in this country really reached a higher standard of
perfection. It is hardly possible. It was rather their application than
their art value which offended the nobility. Many of the most cherished
prints of Kiyonaga, Sharaku, Shunsho, and Outomaro, depicting teahouse
scenes, actors, wrestlers and ladies of the Yoshiwara, were drawn for
no other purpose than to serve as souvenir cards and advertisements.
The colour appreciation of the Japanese clerk, labourer and peasant must
have been developed to an exceptional degree, if these designs, that
were so cheap that everybody bought them as we do newspapers, could
arouse nothing but ordinary appreciation and matter-of-fact comment.
The Japanese used colours in combinations that seem strange and unusual
to us. They did not seem to care about any complementary laws, but
introduced yellow with pink, purple with green, brown with red without
the slightest hesitation. This may be explained by the restraint of
their palette. Their old hand-made colours are all keyed in middle
tints; they did not lack decision or strength, but they were never loud
or vehement. Thus arrangements were possible that would look crude with
the use of Western colours. Cheret's and Toulouse Lautrec's posters,
even when of three-sheet dimensions and seen in open air, seldom
expressed more than contrast and animation. They worked on the principle
of the Japanese colour print, but in a very crude and superficial
fashion. They wished to startle, not to please.
If colour is seen in flat tint patches it produces a more vivid image
on the retina than a pictorial representation of mixed pigments, as flat
tints are more favourable to the brilliancy of colour. Each separate
soft tint creates a complementary image, and the eye would be easily
fatigued if the colours were strong. In the Japanese colour print they
are softened and blended together not so much by the skilful and
harmonious juxtaposition, as by the suavity of the medium, the
introduction of neutral tints, the mellow white foundation of the paper,
and the arrangement of shapes encased in precise lines.
The European painter had a different idea. Although recognizing the
supremacy of colour, he took visual appearances as they were and
actually appeared in life as guiding models for his representations.
Colour became submerged in other qualities almost equally important, as
those of line, perspective, chiaroscura, relief drawing and minute
observation. The Eastern artist applied colour for colour's sake, and
kept all other elements, notably those of line, feeling, shape and space
arrangement independent--not independent as far as the tonality of the
final effect was concerned, but independent in their function as
vehicles of expression. They were never diffused in the same way as in
an Old Master. Each line, shape and colour had to tell its own story,
while in Western art composition, colour and idea often became
inseparable by the application of the blurred outline.
Whistler, at this stage of his development, was interested simply in
recreating Japanese colour arrangements, to paint local values in such a
way that they would reflect the beauty, contrast and variety of an
Outamaro print. The pictures of this period remind one of that
capricious Chinese princess, of whom Heinrich Heine speaks, whose quaint
and solitary pleasure consisted of tearing costly silks into tatters, to
scatter the rags to the winds and to watch them flutter like rose, blue
and yellow butterflies to the lily ponds below.
Already in his "Woman in White" Whistler had shown some preferences for
colour, but not until after he had taken his first house in London, when
his mother came to live with him, did he show those peculiar outbursts
of colour that were a direct outcome of the study of Japanese prints. In
later years it was all tone, but in the years 1863-66, it was all
colour, with a preference for white. The principal pictures of this
period were "Lange Leizen of the Six Marks: In purple and rose" (in the
possession of John G. Johnson); "The Little White Girl" (owned by Arthur
Studd), "The Golden Screen," "The Princess of the Porcelain Land," and
"The Balcony: Variations of Flesh Colour" (owned by Charles W. Freer)
and "The White Symphony" (owned by John G. Whittemore).
Whistler clothed his English models in Eastern dress, and reproduced the
beautiful colours with Japanese detail. He was among the first to
appreciate the beauty of Chinese porcelain, of which he owned many
choice pieces. In his "Lange Leizen" is shown a young woman in a
Japanese costume, seated and holding with her left hand on her lap a
blue and white vase of the shape known in Holland as the "Lange Leizen
of the Six Marks" (referring to the potter's mark on the bottom of the
vase). Her right hand, covered by the sleeve of the kimono, is raised
and holds a brush. Her skirt is black with a delicate design in colours.
The kimono is cream white, decorated with bright flowers and lined with
rose colours. Around her hair, which falls over her shoulders, is tied a
black scarf. On the floor are several blue and white vases and an
Oriental carpet. To the right is a red covered table, and behind the
figure is a chest. The painting is signed "Whistler, 1864," in the upper
right-hand corner. The frame was designed by Whistler himself and
decorated with Chinese fret and six marks. It was shown in the Royal
Academy of 1864.
[Illustration: _Owned by John G. Johnson_
LANGE LEIZEN OF THE SIX MARKS: PURPLE AND ROSE.]
Another picture of this period is the "Golden Screen." A young woman in
Japanese costume is seated on a brown rug, her head seen in profile, as
she examines a Japanese print. She wears a purple kimono decorated with
multicoloured flowers and bordered with a vermilion scarf, and a green
obi tied around her waist; her outer kimono is white with a red flowered
design. To the left is a tea box, some roses and a white vase with
pansies. Hiroshige prints are scattered over the floor. The background
consists of a folding screen with Japanese houses and figures, painted
on a gold ground. These two pictures are far from being satisfactory.
The composition is restless, the colours do not harmonize, and the
figure is one of that peculiar nightmarish type which some artists
affect; a being belonging to that peculiar class of humanity who wear
slouch drapery instead of tailor-made costumes, and carry crystal balls,
urns and sunflowers as an æsthetic amusement, I suppose, about their
person.
The model for both these pictures was Joanna Heffernan, an Irish girl,
neither particularly handsome nor well educated; but she was a good
model, who adapted herself easily to a painter's idea, and her native
wit and willingness to learn atoned for any lack of knowledge. She
generally read while she was posing for Whistler, and as she talked with
his friends, posed for other artists and visited picture exhibitions,
she played quite an important part in the painter's life during his
early years in London. She went to Paris in the winter of 1861-2 to pose
for "The Woman in White," in his studio on the boulevard des
Battignoles. He painted her in a number of other pictures, notably as
"Jo" and "The Little White Girl." Although different in each picture,
now young, now more mature, in one case a lady and in another a buxom
girl, she is really beautiful in none, though always attractive. He
probably merely used her as a suggestion. He liked to have her in his
studio even when he did not paint her form or features. There is also a
dry point of "Jo," dated 1861, which shows her with streaming hair,
which is probably the nearest approach to a likeness. It is a beautiful
bit of drawing and interesting as a space arrangement. It shows how a
head can almost fill the entire space of a picture without becoming
obtrusive or looking too large. The line work is excellent in its purity
of design and apparent carelessness.
A change of method is noticeable in "The Little White Girl," the colour
scheme of which is exquisite. The white dress of the young girl, in
profile, with loosened hair, leaning against a mantelpiece, and her
reflection in the glass, are accentuated in a beautiful manner by the
brilliant colour notes of a red lacquer box, a blue and white vase, a
fan with a Hiroshige-like design and a decorative arrangement of pink
and purple azaleas. The painting is thinner and there is greater repose
in the composition. Swinburne saw the picture before it was sent up to
the Royal Academy in 1865, and expressed his admiration by writing
"Before the Mirror. Verses under a Picture:"
"Come snow, come wind or thunder,
High up in the air
I watch my face and wonder
At my bright hair.
Naught else exalts or grieves
The rose at heart that heaves
With love of our own leaves, and lips that pair.
"I cannot tell what pleasures
Or what pains were,
What pale new loves and treasures
New Years will bear,
What beam will fall, what shower
With grief or joy for dower.
But one thing knows the flower, the flower is fair."
[Illustration: _Owned by Arthur Studd_
SYMPHONY IN WHITE, II: THE LITTLE WHITE GIRL.]
"La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine" (Whistler apparently was fond of
using elaborate titles) is perhaps his finest work in vivid colouring.
The colour differentiations are well placed, but the canvas, after all,
looks too much like a huge Japanese print, painted in the Western style,
which represents objects round and in relief, and not merely in flat
tints. The placing of the screen with the face looming above it is as
peculiar as it is attractive, but it is an arrangement that is strictly
Japanese in character. Whistler began with painting detail, and only
gradually learned to see life in a broader and more mysterious way. It
is a portrait of Miss Christie Spartali, a real Rossetti type, daughter
of the Consul-General for Greece in London in 1863. Her father did not
like it; but Rossetti did, and sold it from his own studio to help
Whistler along. Later it came into the possession of F. R. Leyland, and
was used to decorate the "Peacock Room." It was first exhibited at the
Paris Salon of 1865. It is really a combination of Rossetti and
Outomaro, with a slight flavour of Whistler's individuality.
[Illustration: _National Gallery, Washington_
THE PRINCESS OF THE PORCELAIN LAND.]
"On the Balcony" (exhibited first in 1866) of the Freer collection is a
peculiar combination of models masquerading in kimonos and a background
of English river scenery. He essayed the same task as Chavannes in
his mural decorations, i. e., to determine the local tints of each face
or arm by the surrounding colours. The problem was made still more
difficult by showing each face in a different illumination. One face is
silhouetted in profile against the river, another shaded by a fan and
the form of a standing figure, the others are seen in front light. I do
not believe he has ever attempted a more ambitious problem, and he
solved it in a most subtle and convincing fashion. It is a delightful
harmony in colour, and exceedingly well-balanced; it reminds one of the
Japanese, but the colour and vibrating atmosphere is Occidental. Pity
that he found it necessary to introduce Japanese costumes. I perfectly
realize that one of the principal charms of this picture is the
incongruity of the ensemble. Yet who ever saw in a London town such a
balcony with Japanese awnings, and English girls dressed up like
geishas, whiling away the early hours of the night. The figures belong
neither to Japan nor Great Britain. They are simply there for colour's
sake, but, after all, such associations of thought, no matter whether in
paint or poetry, never constitute the greatest art. The composition is
more restful and simpler than in his earlier works. When Whistler began
to realize this shortcoming of his earlier style, he turned away from
"orchestral explosions of colour" and "volleys of paint," and began that
wonderful process of elimination which helped him to become one of the
greatest painters of the nineteenth century.
[Illustration: _National Gallery, Washington_
ON THE BALCONY: VARIATIONS IN FLESH-COLOUR AND GREEN.]
In his later work Whistler returned once more to vivid colouring. It was
solely in pastels and water colours, never in oils. And the butterfly,
the symbol of Whistler's individuality, fluttered gaily from picture to
picture, from print to print, and letter to letter; now disappearing in
greyish mists, then peeping forth from a dark olive background, and
again asserting his existence at times as a mere shadow, as a dark or
coral red silhouette. Changing his colour and size on every canvas; he
is now shaded blue, brown, rose, red, violet or peacock blue and then,
suddenly assuming unusually large proportions, he spreads his wings in
full flight to be lost once more as a grey, almost imperceptible spot,
in some twilight atmosphere. At one moment he appears on a vase, a rug,
or a curtain. He floats on the sea, rest on doorposts, wings his way
over flowers and rocks, shifts sportively from the lower left to the
right corner, thereupon rises to almost the middle of the canvas,
flutters around the figures, even touches their forms delicately, as a
dainty creature may do, and continues his endless variations and
gyrations; ever ready to assert the _final approval_ of the master.