MOSS-LIKE GRADATIONS
Grey is the colour of modern life. There is some truth in the statement.
Modern civilization shuns the slashed doublet and purple cloak. Beauty
of colour, as a Titian and Veronese understood it, belongs to the past.
The brilliancy and splendour has faded out of it. The modern painter
uses a more limited scale of colour, and the tendency is toward grey.
Man's garb is monotone, and the life in large cities devoid of the rich
colour-bursts of mediæval life. The contrasts are all in lower, paler
and murkier tones, and grey, in most instances, furnishes the keynote
and general harmonizer. All the artists who have a fine feeling for the
arrangement of colours have realized that harmonies of red, green and
violet, which shone so resplendently from the warm brown tones of the
Old Masters, are the dreams of another age. Even the impressionists, by
the very character of their technical innovations, notably the abolition
of browns, the struggle for a higher pitch of light by the interaction
of purely applied colours and the exaggeration of the transparency of
shadows, are pursuing the grey phantom of modern art. Their ambition is
no longer a combination of bright colours, as in Veronese's "Marriage of
Cana," but a tonality of dull yellow or green, which pervades the whole
surface of the pictures. The flowing robes, flowers and gold ornaments,
once so radiant on the canvases of the Renaissance, have turned as pale
as ashes.
We take delight to-day in subtler gradations, in semi and quarter tones,
the losing of forms in mystic shadows, a restless, suggestive technique
of mobile touches, nervous sparkles, of delicate broken tints that show
a hundred differentiations. And this over-sensitiveness and fastidious
objection to strong contrast, this love for the externals of technique,
raising brushwork to a higher pedestal than the idea, has much to do
with the exclusiveness of modern painting and the keener appreciation
for monochrome.
In monochrome representation the eye has to deal only with one mode of
perception--that of form. The perception of colour depends upon the
differentiation of the effect upon the optical nerve fibres, that of
form on the numbers and relative position of the latter. The latter
mode of æsthetic perception is, in our times, more trained and
developed, as it is in constant usage. Reproductive processes, the
halftone and photography, have made monochrome a vehicle of expression
almost as popular as the spoken word.
To former ages only the various processes of engraving were known. With
the exception of etching and wood engraving, they were applied largely
to popularize the products of painters, and the independent etchers and
block-cutters generally adhered to a severe and classical style of art.
It was the nineteenth century with its principle of universal education,
newspapers, books and manifold publications, that brought about the
great change.
Texture constitutes to most collectors the principal charm of the
graphic arts. It is a rare and fantastic valuation, an appreciation of
preciosity, this occupying oneself with the fascination of the minor
arts. Art would be too austere if it were not for the makers of etchings
and lithographs, of pastels and water-colours.
Photography, the latest arrival in the ranks of the graphic arts, has
the widest range of expression, and its technique is interesting as far
as it can express mechanically and with comparative ease gradations
of tone that without visible touches, marks, strokes or lines melt
imperceptibly into each other. But this smoothness of texture will also
be its most formidable drawback. There is no chance for manual
expression without destroying the charm of photographic texture.
Chemistry is the only legitimate means to accomplish it.
[Illustration: NOCTURNE (LITHOGRAPH).]
Copper and steel engravings lack that freedom of expression, and are
restricted largely to reproductive purposes. Carried out by
cross-hatching, they are limited by the black of the ink and the white
of the paper, and the precise character of the line work. Modern
reproductive wood engraving, notably of the American school, is the only
medium which has conquered the subtleties of tone.
The scale in monochrome painting in colour is so limited that few
artists apply it. India ink and sepia, however, are much in favour, and
if handled by an artist, fulfil the requirements of painting. The only
short-comings are a certain transparency in the middle tints and an
artificial look in the texture.
Charcoal and chalk have a great similarity, and also lend themselves to
elaborate composition, although the more delicate and lighter greys are
frequently muddy. Pen and ink can merely give an impression of line,
and next to etching it is the best medium for sketching, only a less
pliable one, which is largely due to the unelasticity of the steel pen;
all subtler gradations are left out, as the brightest tints are lost in
the white and the darkest in the black.
In lead pencil sketches the lowest tones are grey as compared with
black, and consequently can not produce any decided depth. Crayon
lithography is capable of producing beautiful soft greys. As the
gradations from one tint to another are not continuous, the texture,
consisting of innumerable minute dots, does not permit clear
uninterrupted line work and even flow of tone. It does not lend itself
particularly well to faithful copying from nature. The very character of
its granulated line and surface suggests a sketchy and fragmentary
treatment. Whistler, who, with Fantin-Latour, shares the honour of the
happy revival of artistic lithography, readily realized this. He laid
special stress upon the texture; its detached shapes creep over the
paper like grey moss over a stone. They are all carried out in grey
monotonous middle tints but marvellously delicate and subtle in values.
Superficial but delicious in quality, his lithographic _croquis_ impress
us like the laborious trifles and harmonious _bagatelles_ of a Herrick.
Theodore Duret tells us that Whistler made his first series of six
lithographs during the years 1877-78 (republished in 1887 by Boussod
Valadon in Paris). They were drawn directly on stone, contrary to his
later method, when he used transfer paper almost exclusively. They were
rather large in size, and resembled his painted nocturnes in general
treatment. This is particularly the case with his "View on the Thames,"
the most beautiful print of the series. I do not believe that these
representations were of particular importance, as they contradict his
own theory. What can be and has been perfectly expressed in one medium,
can not reach equal perfection in another medium. It was really nothing
but a translation of a painted nocturne into black and white. The
essential charm of a Whistler nocturne consists of colour. Black and
white can convey only a vague idea of vibrancy.
When Whistler took up lithographing for the second time in 1885-86, he
had become thoroughly familiar with his medium. He no longer worked on
the stone, and abandoned all elaborate finished compositions. His motifs
are sketchy little figure studies, street scenes, portraits and
occasionally a nude or semi-nude like his "Dancing Girl" in fluttering
drapery. The printing he entrusted to a lithograph printer in London,
Thomas Way by name, who was somewhat of an artist himself and
consequently better equipped than the ordinary pressman to do justice to
Whistler's vague fancies. Frequently Whistler took a hand in the
printing, or at least made corrections. Printer Way told Mr. Wedmore,
with reference to the sometimes disputed matter of the transfer paper,
"that even when the artist drew on that in the first instance, and saw
in proofs things that were lacking or things that were exaggerated, he
would make his correction upon the stone itself, and so, of certain of
his lithographs--his later ones especially--he produced different
'states,' though it was not easy to expressly define them, and though
these differences were, of course, but the exceptions, and whereas very
often, though of course not always in etchings--Whistler's or other
peoples'--the earlier state is finer than the later; in these
lithographs, generally speaking, the later state is finer than the
earlier."
Whistler's lithographs can easily be classified according to the
subjects they represent. During the years Whistler lived in Paris he
depicted views and scenes of the city like the "Pantheon," "The Grand
Gallery of the Louvre," "The Luxembourg Gardens" and interesting
types like "La belle New Yorkaise" and "La belle Dame Paresseuse." One
print, "Les Confidences dans le Jardin," depicts two gossiping women in
the garden of his house in the rue du Bac.
His London subjects are equally numerous. In 1895, when he painted "The
Master Smith" and the "Little Rose of Lyme Regis," while at a watering
place in Dorsetshire he made several sketches of the picturesque streets
of the old town. Of particular charm are his "Early Morning" (a view of
the Thames from his Chelsea window) and "The Locksmith of the Dragon
Square." In 1886, during an illness of his wife, he lived in the Surrey
Hotel and executed a number of panoramic views of the Strand, the Thames
with its river traffic, the quays, St. Paul's Cathedral and bird-eye
views of London streets.
[Illustration: _Boston Museum of Fine Arts_
LITTLE ROSE OF LYME REGIS.]
All these designs are beautifully enveloped in a misty atmosphere. The
paper is used as a value as important as the grey lines of the crayon,
and the forms are softened as if broken by light and generally massed in
an unsymmetrical fashion.
Some of the portrait sketches are superb, in particular that of Stéphane
Mallarmé, who was Whistler's life-long friend and one of his staunchest
supporters. It was largely due to Mallarmé that the "Portrait of the
Artist's Mother" found a home in the Luxembourg. He also translated the
"Ten O'clock" into French. Whistler's sketch of the poet appeared on the
front of the Parisian edition of "Vers et Prose" (1893). It is
apparently hurriedly dashed off, but the result of many careful studies
and experiments. It is a mere fragment, negligent, disdainful; but how
knowingly made, and how characteristic of the poet's personality!
Despite its vagueness it is a likeness, and preferable, to me at least,
who was fortunate to know Mallarmé in the early eighties, to most
portraits made of him.
Whistler never surpassed this particular effort, although his portraits
of Joseph Pennell, Mrs. Pennell, Walter Sickert, W. E. Henley and his
wife, Miss Philip and Comte Montesquieu are excellent character studies.
Way published in 1896 a catalogue of 130 lithographs. Later additions
probably increase the number to 150. The London Fine Arts Society held
in 1895 a special sale of 75 lithographs. The "Grolier Club" of New York
in 1900 held an exhibition of 106 prints.
His nudes are charming little inventions in pose and gesture with
considerable knowledge of the human figure. In the Society exhibition of
1885 he exhibited a nude entitled "Caprice." A _R. A._ Horsley took
exception to it, and in a lecture before a Church Congress, after
indulging in most curious, pedantic and mediæval arguments, ended with
the following tirade:
"Is not clothedness a distinct type and feature of our Christian faith?
All art representations of nakedness are out of harmony with it."
[Illustration: STUDY OF NUDE FIGURE (CHALK DRAWING).]
Whistler, ever ready to take up the cudgel, avenged himself by writing
under the picture: "_Horsley_ soit qui mal y pense," and leaving it
there during the entire exhibition.
Strange, that Whistler never attempted to paint a large nude in oil. He,
no doubt, had a reason for this omission, although it is nowhere
recorded. Perhaps he agreed on the point with Ruskin that a realistic
nude had no place in modern life, not for any moral reason but merely
that the human body was too defective to allow the highest æsthetic
gratification. A figure in modern garb is a part of modern life, a nude
is an alien in space without any special significance. This should have
appealed to Whistler; perhaps he strove hard to realize it but never
succeeded in doing so. His lithographs and pastels of nudes seem largely
experimental. They never go beyond the sketch and vaguely remind one of
Tanagra figures. "The Model Resting," and "The Little Nude Reading," a
profile view of a young girl sitting in bed holding with both hands a
book, are two of the best known.
Whistler also made a few attempts in coloured lithography, as for
instance, "La Maison Jaune." But it is hardly coloured lithography, it
is merely a black and white design with a few touches of colour, as
expressed in "A Lannion" or the "Maison Rouge à Paimpol," the result of
an excursion to Brittany. Perhaps the most exquisite and delicate of his
efforts are these slight delicate renderings of female forms. When he
adds a little colour it is always done with rare preciosity, the
"un-finish" always being masterly. And there is such a thing as masterly
"un-finish" always being just at the right spot as there is merit in the
masterly inactivity of a Russian general opposing an invading army. The
very essence of Whistler's art is to be seen in these coloured drawings.
Of peculiar charm are Whistler's pastels. The majority, some fifty which
he exhibited in the London Fine Arts Society in 1880, depict Venetian
scenes. They were catalogued as "harmonies in blue and browns, in opal
and turquoise, etc." They show a rare elegance of design and a peculiar
suavity of colour. They are the last remnants of his early period of
vivid colouring, and are highly valued. They represent canals with
draped gondolas, views from the lagoons with ships at anchor, archways,
and white churches, the cemetery with green trees, lights gleaming on
the distant shore and reflections in the water. His figures in pastels
are mostly young girls, semi-nude or in quaintly coloured robes,
frequently in pink and red against vague backgrounds. Whistler's
virtuosity in these sketches and pictorial fragments is entirely
different from the so-called impressionist's work. It is primarily full
of imagination, of a high mental tone and dignity. Whistler has shown
how noble an aspect can be given to the expression of an extremist, for
he also was an extremist. He perfectly realized that aggressive
sketchiness can never be monumental, that sketches are merely gymnastic
exercises that lend health and strength to a painter's technique,
although they remain to the end merely exercises. At the same time, if
rightly handled, they express certain æsthetic aspects of life better
than more elaborate efforts. He knew what a sketch could and could not
convey, and the wonderful freshness and spontaneity which they exhibit
are witness alike to the clear crispness of his perception and to his
sympathetic handling.
[Illustration: _Owned by Th. R. Way_
PASTEL STUDY.]
The only medium in which Whistler expressed himself without adding a
decided note to individuality of execution, are his water colours. They
have an easy flow, but the areas of surface seem too large for the
slight treatment. The meaning of the motifs seems to be dissipated. They
represent mostly street scenes, country views, the seashore and marines,
charmingly translucent, but without suggesting a style, that developed
the medium according to its resources. But whatever Whistler did was
interesting. It is difficult to imagine a more delightful pastime than
to look over a collection of his pastels, lithographs and aquarelles.
They are carried out lightly, but with true touches of genius and joyous
mystifying excursions into the dreamland of pictorial fancy, quite in
the Whistlerian manner. No one, I think, quite so well fulfilled
Whistler's own theory that an artist should see nature through the
spiritual eye of an individual. Few painters were such frank
interpreters of their own intimate moods.
Aside of all these works on record Whistler has scattered through the
world countless scraps of drawings, themselves amply sufficient to make
an artist's reputation. What a precious document we should have if their
author were able to-day to give a list, as certain artists have done, a
kind of _Liber veritatis_ of all the studies he has made and
disseminated! But he has flung them far and wide, as the plum tree
scatters its blossoms in approaching spring.