Chapter X (2)

“Upon the known facts of Whistler’s career I do not touch. I wish
only to underline his Americanism, and to offer you one or two
personal memories. He was ‘an American of the Americans,’ say the
American papers, and who shall venture to dispute their dictum? Not
I, certainly. Nor would anybody who knew Whistler personally. I
knew him for many years in London and in Paris. I have many letters
from him on art and other matters, some of which ought to be
printed, for his letters to friends were not less works of art than
those which he composed more carefully for print. I have books and
drawings which he gave me. I mention these things as evidence that
I may fairly say something about him, at least on the personal
side. And I knew on what terms he lived with the so-called art
world in England, and what his own view of the matter was.”

And an English writer said, some ten years ago:[3]

“It should not be forgotten in America that Mr. Whistler is an
American of Americans. It may therefore be appropriately asked,
What has America done for him? It has treated him with--if
possible--even more ignorance than England; this, of course, coming
from the desire of the Anglomaniac to out-English the English.”

And there are others whose testimony will be forthcoming some day to show how wholly and absolutely American he was to the very core and centre of his being, and in his attitude towards all countries and peoples of Europe.

It is true he said many harsh, bitter, and cutting things concerning the press and people of this country, that he frequently exhibited in the English sections of art exhibitions in preference to those of his own country; but for all these things there were many good reasons, and we have but ourselves to blame.

He was so much of an American that a single word of ridicule from this side cut deeper than pages of abuse from the other. To the scoffings of England he turned a careless ear, and replied with flippant, but pointed, tongue; while the utter lack of support and appreciation from his own country was ever referred to with a bitterness that betrayed his real feelings. He could not understand how the American people could desert a countryman battling alone against all England. As he frequently said:

“It did not matter whether I was in the right or in the wrong,--I was one against the mob. Why did America take the side of the mob,--and--and get whipped?”

* * * * *

America was blind to his merits until long after he achieved fame in every country of Europe; and it is undeniably true that the press here truculently echoed the slurs of the critics on the other side throughout that long period of controversy. It is a lamentable fact that up to the day of his death he was misunderstood, or accepted as an eccentric in many quarters of the land that now claims him as her bright particular star in the firmament of art. Notwithstanding all these things, he remained so conspicuously an American that every Englishman and every Frenchman with whom he came in contact recognized him as a foreigner; neither would have thought of mistaking him for a fellow-countryman; he was as un-English and un-French as an Italian, or a Spaniard, or--better--as an American.

* * * * *

The “White Girl” was rejected at the Salon in 1863; the “Portrait of my Mother” was accepted by the Royal Academy and obscurely hung in 1871, only after a bitter discussion, in which the one member of the committee who favored it, Sir William Boxall, a friend of Whistler’s family, threatened to resign unless it was accepted.

This same great portrait--it is said on good authority--was offered in New York for twelve hundred dollars and found no buyer.

When exhibited in London, language failed to express the full measure of the scorn and contempt the English press--from the ponderous _Times_ down to the most insignificant fly-sheet--had for this wonderful picture; but no sooner had the French government purchased it for the Luxembourg than all was changed, and with delightful effrontery the _Illustrated London News_ said:

“Modern _British_ (!) art will now be represented in the National Gallery of the Luxembourg by one of the finest paintings due to the brush of an _English_ (!) artist,--namely, Mr. Whistler’s portrait of his mother.”

The italics and exclamation marks are Whistler’s own, and his denial of British complicity is complete.

* * * * *

Aside from Whistler’s personality, his art finds its only congenial place in the midst of American art.

That his pictures will not hang in any conceivable exhibition of British art without the incongruity being painfully perceptible goes without saying, and none knows this better than English painters themselves.

Of all the various manifestations of art with which Whistler’s has come in sharp contrast, English painting has been the slowest and most stubborn in yielding to influences from the far East; whereas of all painters of the nineteenth century Whistler was the very first to recognize the wondrous qualities of Chinese and Japanese art and absorb what those countries had to teach concerning line and color; and in so far as the painters of England, and more conspicuously those of Scotland, have learned aught of the subtleties and refinements of the East, they have learned it _through Whistler_, and not direct.

In other words, Whistler has been absolutely immune to English influences; there is not the faintest trace in any of his works, etchings, lithographs, or paintings. In temperament, mood, fancy, and imagination, in what he saw and the manner that he painted it, he was as far removed from any “English School” as Hokusai himself.

On the other hand, England for some time has not been immune to his influence, and things after--a long way after--Whistler appear at every exhibition. What is known as the “Glasgow School”--that body of able and progressive painters--long ago frankly accepted him as master.

Of English painters dead and living he had a poor--possibly too poor--opinion. He frequently said, “England never produced but one painter, and that was Hogarth.” In mellower moments he would say not unkind things of certain qualities in other men; towards the living painters who appreciated his art he was oftentimes generous in the bestowal of praise. But it was impossible for Whistler to say a thing was good if he did not think so; and he would exercise all his ingenuity to get out of expressing an opinion when he knew his real opinion would hurt the feelings of a friend. Towards strangers and enemies he was often almost brutal in condemning what was bad,--as when a rich man took him over his new house, dwelling with pride and enthusiasm on this extraordinary feature and that, at each of which Whistler would exclaim, “Amazing, amazing!” until at the end of their tour of the rooms and halls, he at last said, “Amazing,--and there’s no excuse for it!”

* * * * *

Of his attitude towards others a friendly writer said:[4]

“He was not a devotee of Turner, but he yielded to no man in
appreciation of certain of the works of that painter. He was not
lavish of praise where his contemporaries were concerned. Though he
could say pleasant things about them in a rather vague
way,--calling some young painter ‘a good fellow,’ and so on,--words
of explicit admiration he did not promiscuously bestow. The truth
is, there was an immense amount of stuff which he saw in the
exhibitions which he frankly detested. Yet conversation with him
did not leave the impression that he was a man grudging of praise.
It was rather that a picture had to be exceptionally good to excite
his emotions. One point is significant. It was not the flashy and
popular painter that he invited to share in the gatherings for
which his Paris studio was noted: it was the painter like Puvis de
Chavannes, the man who had greatness in him.”

That he had nothing in common with English art, the English were quick to assert, until his fame made him a desirable acquisition, when on this side, and that within the last few years, a disposition to claim him--very much as the business-like empire seizes desirable territory here and there about the globe--has begun to show itself; and, unless America is alert, Whistler will yet appear in the National Gallery as--to quote again the words of the _Illustrated News_--“An English artist.”

* * * * *

As regards the French, they are disposed to claim Whistler on three grounds:

First. That he was a student there,--with a master who taught him nothing.

Second. That France acknowledged his genius by the purchase of the portrait of his mother,--twenty years after it was painted, and seven after it was exhibited in Paris.

Third. That he lived for a time in Paris.

Three reasons which would annex to France about every American artist of note, for most of them (1) studied in France, (2) are represented in the Luxembourg, and (3) have lived in Paris much longer than Whistler.

* * * * *

As for those first few years in Paris, even the French concede that Gleyre was entirely without influence upon Whistler’s subsequent career.

As regards the recognition of his genius, France was exceedingly slow. The portrait of his mother was exhibited in London in 1871, and purchased for the Luxembourg in 1891, though it had been awarded a medal at the Salon some seven years before.

France no more taught Whistler to paint than it taught him to etch. His masters were older and greater than the art of France. Before he was twenty-five he had absorbed all and rejected most that France had to teach. At twenty-eight he painted a picture which, scorned by the Salon, startled all who visited the “Salon des Refusés,” and then--still under thirty--he shook the dust of France from his feet, obliterated every vestige of her influence from his art, and started out to make his way alone and unaided in the domain of the beautiful.

* * * * *

In 1865 he again stirred the critics with that novel creation of color “The Princess of the Land of Porcelain.” Nothing of the kind had ever been seen in either French or any other art. It was the application of Western methods to Eastern motives; it was plainly a study primarily in color, secondarily in line, not at all in character. It was the first great step taken by the Western world towards abstract art.

“The Princess of the Land of Porcelain,” the “Lange Leizen,” the “Gold Screen,” the “Balcony”--all early pictures--are all one and the same in motive; they are his first attempts in a large way to produce color harmonies, to subordinate everything to the color composition.

Of Whistler and American art in those days an unnamed correspondent has written from Paris:[5]

“It would puzzle the analysis of a competent critic to find what
Whistler owed to Gleyre; and the young American openly professed to
have profited by the counter example of Gustave Courbet, who was
the realist of that day. From the first triumph of Courbet in 1849,
Gleyre had shrunk back into his shell and no longer exhibited at
the annual salons.

“From the start Whistler was an independent; and when, after six
years of work in the studios, he offered a picture for the judgment
of the official Salon, the jury promptly refused it. Whistler was
not discouraged, and hung the painting in the outlaws’ Salon des
Refusés. It created a stir that was almost enthusiasm, and the name
of his ‘Fille Blanche’--White Maiden--was still remembered when
four years later a few American painters demanded a section for
their work at the Universal Exposition of 1867. I have looked up a
criticism of the time, and imagine it will be found more
interesting now than when it was written.

“‘The United States of America are surely a great country and the
North Americans a great people, but what little artists they are!
The big daubs which they exhibit, under pretence of “Blue
Mountains,” “Niagara Falls,” “Genesee Plain,” or “Rain in the
Tropics,” show as much childish arrogance as boyish ignorance.
People say that these loud placards are sold for crazy prices in
Philadelphia or Boston. I am willing to believe it, but I cannot
rejoice at it.’

“This is laid on with no light brush, and some of us can recall the
American painters of that remote age who were so mishandled. But
the remaining paragraph of the lines given to American art may
surprise those who look on Whistler as only a contemporary.

“‘M. Whistler seems to me the only American artist really worthy of
attention; he is our old acquaintance of the Salon des Refusés of
1863, where his “Fille Blanche” had a _suces d’engouement_ (a
success of infatuation!). He is truly an American, as understood by
the motto, “time is money.” M. Whistler so well knows the value of
time that he scarcely stops at the small points of execution; the
impression seized as it flies and fixed as soon as possible in
swift strokes, with a galloping brush--such is the artist and such,
too, is the man.’

“Velasquez was already in the air, but Japanese art, to which
Whistler afterwards allowed himself to be thought indebted, was not
yet spoken of. Thus the young American artist was the precursor of
movements which years afterwards came to a head, and which for the
most part he has outlived. In view of this, the closing verdict of
the official critic of 1867 is worth noting, the more so as it
shows the reward already attributed to the American’s industry in
another branch of art. ‘While waiting for M. Whistler to become a
painter in the sense which old Europe still attaches to the word,
he is already an etcher (_aquafortiste_), all fire and color, and
very worthy of attention, even if he had only this claim to it.’”

Before France cared very much for Velasquez, before it so much as knew there was an island called Japan on the art map, Whistler was playing with the blacks and grays of the master of Madrid and with the blues and silvery whites of the porcelains of the Orient.

And it was he,--Whistler,--the American, who turned the face of France towards the East, and made her see things in line and color her most vagrant fancy had never before conceived.

Searching the shops of Amsterdam, he found the blue-and-white china which gave him inspiration to do those things beside which the finest art of France is crude and barbaric.

* * * * *

Not very long ago a French writer said, “There is not, as yet, an American school of painting, but there are already many American painters, and great ones, who will in time form a school.”

Let us hope not.

A friend--a painter--once called Whistler’s attention to several very good things by Alfred Stevens. Whistler looked at them a moment, then said, “School, school, school,” and turned away.

In that, or any other restrictive or regulative sense of the word, let us hope there will be no “American school;” but so long as there are American painters there will be American paintings; and the greater the work the more completely will it reflect the man, and the greater the man the more surely and subtly will it reflect his nationality.

The phrase “American painters” means something more than Americans who paint, and “American paintings” implies the transmission to the work of something of the painter’s individuality, which includes as an important element his racial and national characteristics.

In other words, American painters, regardless of where they are trained, where they work, and what they paint, must produce American paintings; they cannot wholly eliminate their individuality and nationality; they cannot become so completely French or English as to absolutely obliterate every trace of their American origin, and their works, though English, French, or Italian to the last degree, will still exhibit traces of American origin. So true is this, that the paintings of men who have lived longest abroad and tried hardest to paint after the manner of others find their most congenial surroundings amidst American art.

* * * * *

So long as we have American paintings we shall have an American “school” in the sense that all American paintings taken together, whether few or many, whether good or bad, will be distinguished and distinguishable from the paintings of every other country. In that sense America has, and always has had, a “school” of painting, though for a long time the school was little more than a kindergarten.

America has no centre like Paris, or Rome, or Florence, where a large body of men and women are gathered from the four quarters of the globe to study art. In that sense America has no “school;” but that sort of a “school” is about the worst thing that can happen to a country. These great centres for the diffusion of art are usually fatal to the development of native art; the presence of a horde of foreigners, each with his own peculiarities and characteristics, some with the effeminacy of the South, others with the brutal force and overpowering virilty of the North, stifles national initiative and produces sterile cosmopolites.

Paris, with its salons, exhibitions, competitions, medals, prizes, and innumerable incentives towards commercial, blatant, and vicious art, is the curse of French art, and pretty soon France will have no art that is really hers.

The atmosphere of Paris is one of strenuous striving after effect, of mighty endeavor to make an impression; it encourages facility, dash, bravura, eccentricities, and experiments of all kinds. From the depths of our hearts let us be thankful that America has no “school” of that kind, and earnestly hope that American artists residing temporarily within that atmosphere will be affected as little as was Whistler.

Paris is an æsthetic Babel.

The art of Greece was suffocated when the entire coast-line of the Mediterranean came to study the Acropolis.

* * * * *

Turning to the entire body of American painters, at home and abroad, we find that they constitute at the present day the one “school” that has already given to the world the greatest artist since the days of Rembrandt and Velasquez,--and greater than either in some respects, as we shall see,--and also the greatest of living portrait-painters, not to mention a half-dozen more who are recognized internationally as masters in their chosen fields; the one “school” that contains more of sobriety, more of sanity, more of youthful vigor and virility, more of indomitable energy and perseverance, more of promise and assurance of mighty achievement than all the schools of all the other nations taken together.

If the world is destined to see the modern equivalent of ancient Athens, it will be somewhere within the confines of North America.

The countries of the Old World have had their opportunities, and the tide of progress in its circuit of the globe is already lapping the shores of the Western continent.

In temperament the typical American lies about midway between the stolidity of the Englishman and the volatility of the Frenchman. He has much of the dogged perseverance of the former, with a large element of the facility and versatility of the latter; he is steadfast in the pursuit of his ideals, and at the same time quick to adopt new and improved methods for attaining his ends; he has an Englishman’s tenacity of conviction and much of a Frenchman’s brilliancy of expression. As compared with an Englishman the American appears more than half French; as compared with a Frenchman he seems essentially English. It is this combination of earnest convictions, profound belief in self and country, sobriety, perseverance, tenacity of purpose, stolid endurance, with inventiveness, originality, irresistible impulsiveness, dash and brilliancy in execution, that assures to the future of North America the noblest of human achievements.

For the present the strength and resources of the country are absorbed in the production of wealth; but soon the people will tire of this pursuit, and the accumulated wealth of nation, States, cities, and individuals will turn to the encouragement of things beautiful in not only art and literature, but in the long-neglected handicrafts,--the crafts that make instead of destroying men.

* * * * *

At the World’s Exposition of 1893, in Chicago, Whistler’s paintings hung, where they rightfully belonged, in the American section. Though far and away superior to anything in the entire section, and conspicuous above everything near for their exquisite beauty, still it cannot be gainsaid that of all the sections of that exhibition the American was the only one which would contain Whistler’s work without the contrast being so marked as to be absolutely destructive. That they could not hang with entire fitness among the English pictures even the English would admit; that their sober harmonies were distinctively at variance with the brilliant and superficial qualities of the French pictures was apparent to even the unpractised eye. “The Yellow Buskin” and “The Fur Jacket,” to mention no others, could hang in only one place, and that was where they were put,--in the main hall of the American section, flanked and confronted by American work.

Not that the pictures about them equalled in merit,--that is not the question; but they were sufficiently akin to constitute an harmonious environment.

* * * * *

Art is simply a mode of expression, and the highest, truest, noblest art is the reflection of the best there is in a people. It follows, therefore, that the art of any race or people must exhibit the racial characteristics. A painting, for instance, belongs first to the man who painted it and bears on its face so many marks of his individuality that not only he but others recognize it as his. Secondly, the painting belongs to the race or people with which the artist is identified, for the very traits which distinguish him as an American, or an Englishman, or a Frenchman from all other nationalities inevitably make themselves felt in the work, and distinguish it not only specifically from all other canvases, but generically from the work of other peoples, schools, epochs, eras, etc.

A man may change his allegiance and live in foreign lands, but he cannot change his blood. If a Chinaman, he will remain a Chinaman, no matter where he lives; if an American, he will remain an American, though, like many of our mess-of-potage citizens, he may remain a bastard American in the endeavor to become an adopted Englishman.

* * * * *

The finer the art the more universal its qualities. And yet there is no poem and no picture that is absolutely without the marks of its master; and the marks of the master mean the marks of his race,--in fact, the racial indications are inversely in number to those of the individual; the deeper a man buries his personality in his work the stronger the indications of his race. Shakespeare so lost himself that his personal characteristics nowhere appear in his great plays, and a conception of the poet’s personality could not be formed from a reading of the lines--so universal was his genius; yet his poetry is essentially and everlastingly English,--far more conspicuously English than the poetry of lesser men who sing about England and things English. It is more English than Chaucer, more English than Spencer, more English than Browning, Tennyson, or Swinburne; it breathes more fully and more truly the spirit of the English people in their greatest days than any poetry ever uttered by the English tongue.

* * * * *

The greater the man, the more completely does he express his people. It takes a great race to produce a great man; and once produced, he is everlastingly linked with his tribe.

But greatness implies the suppression of the petty, including all petty resemblances; therefore, a man by the universal qualities of his genius may seem to belong to the world, whereas in truth he is but the expression of the best there is in his countrymen.

Rembrandt suppressed all provincialisms and seemed to etch and paint for mankind rather than for a limited public in Holland; and yet to the last he was simply the greatest of Dutch artists. And because he was so essentially and truly Dutch he is one of the world’s great artists; in the chorus of the world’s proud voices there is no mistaking his accent.

Velasquez is at the same time the least Spanish of painters and the most Spanish of artists. Suppressing all eccentricities of time and place, he rose to universal heights, and the world claims him as its own; and yet his fame depends upon the fact that he was from first to last a Spaniard,--a Spaniard in precisely the sense that Cervantes was the expression of inarticulate forces behind him. Deriving more or less help from his contemporaries, and from this quarter and that, from the visit of Rubens and from his own journey to Italy, he, after all, was the achievement of the Spanish people in painting. He was not an Italian, he was not a Frenchman, he was not a Dutchman,--he was a Spaniard of the Spaniards, as Shakespeare was an Englishman of the English.

* * * * *

Having wandered far afield in the endeavor to point out the intimate connection between, first, a man and his work,--which connection every one admits,--and, secondly, between the race and the work,--a connection which is not so readily perceived,--let us return to Whistler, whose work furnishes proof positive of what has been said.

It is commonly taken for granted that if a man lives and studies and works abroad for many years he loses his individuality and becomes in some mysterious manner the offspring of the country where he works. It is assumed that American painters residing in Rome become more or less Italian; that those residing in Paris become more or less French; that those residing in London become more or less English; while those who move restlessly from place to place become more or less of characterless cosmopolites. All of which is true inversely to the real strength and genius of the artist. A weak man is swerved by this influence and that and--chameleon like--takes on the hues of his surroundings, but a strong man simply absorbs and assimilates without in the slightest degree losing his individuality. Unhappily, many American artists residing abroad possess so little stamina, so little of real character, so little of genius, that they are--like topers--dependent upon the daily stimulus afforded by the manifold art activities about them; they never get out of school, but remain helplessly dependent upon teachers and copy-books. The annual Salon, like a college commencement day, is their great incentive; their petty exhibitions are so many field-days necessary to sustain childish enthusiasm.

Happily, all do not yield to those influences, and no two yield in precisely the same degree,--the extent to which individuality is lost depending upon the weakness of the man. A poor, weak, wishy-washy American quickly falls into the habit of painting pictures after the manner of those about him, and his mannerisms out-Herod Herod; others, with more character, yield less to their environment; while the chosen few simply absorb whatever of good they find, and without yielding a jot of their individuality, without swerving to the right or to the left, go on producing after their own fashion things which belong to them and the race that produced them.

For more than forty years Whistler was the conspicuous example of the last-named class,--a class so small that it included besides himself--no others.

Great as certain of our American artists residing abroad undoubtedly are, good as many of these surely are, creditable on the whole as all are to American art, there is not one whose work does not betray the influences of his environment; there is not one who has not sacrificed something of his originality, something of his strength, something of his native force and character on strange altars, saving and excepting, always, Whistler.

* * * * *

The most that men have ventured to say is that he was influenced by Velasquez, though he himself has said he never visited Madrid,--a statement many insist cannot be true; others say he has been influenced by Japanese art,--but Velasquez and the art of Japan are far from French or English art of the nineteenth century; and the assertion that he was influenced by either is a confession that he lived unscathed amidst his surroundings.

Back of the art of Japan is the purer art of China; and to that source must we go if we seek the factors that influenced Whistler, for he loved the porcelain and pottery of China long before they were collected by the museums and amateurs of Europe.

“When no one cared for it,” he said, “I used to find in Amsterdam the most beautiful blue-and-white china. That was a good many years ago; it is all gone now.”

Old Delft did not inspire him with any enthusiasm. “Crude, crude, crude.”

This art of China, as reflected and elaborated in that of Japan, influenced him,--of that there can be no doubt,--and he recognized what was good in Japanese art before others gave it any attention.

The art of Velasquez had its due weight, for he loved the work of the Spanish master; and if he never visited Madrid, perhaps it was because he feared falling too much under its influence. But he went frequently to the Louvre, and invariably to the little “Infanta,” which he would look at long and earnestly, and to Titian’s “Man with the Glove,” which was a favorite, and to certain Rembrandts, and to Franz Hals, and a few, a very few others,--the gems of the collection,--ignoring completely the pictures which commonly attract, never once glancing up at the huge canvases by Rubens and his pupils; in fact, so far as he was concerned the walls might have been bare save for a half-dozen masterpieces; and these he really did love. There was no mistaking his attitude towards them. It was one of reverential affection. He appreciated a really good thing, whether he or some one else had done it, and he hated above everything sham and pretence and foolish display. To him a picture the size of one’s hand, if well and conscientiously done, was just as important as a full-length portrait.

The Italian masters influenced him, for he often spoke of them, of the wonderful effects they obtained with such simple materials and such straight-forward methods; their mastery of color influenced him, and he sought, so far as possible, to discover the pigments and the methods they used.

Those are the factors which helped to make Whistler,--the purest art; he was not influenced by what went on about him, or by what was said about him. So little did he care what others were doing or how they did it that his very brushes and pigments were different; and his methods were so peculiarly his own that no one painted at all like him, and his fellow-artists looked on in amazement.

* * * * *

The wave of impressionism which submerged all Paris in the very midst of his career left him unaffected,--for his art was an older and truer impressionism, an impressionism that did not depend upon the size of brushes or the consistency of pigments.

A visitor once said to him:

“Mr. Whistler, it seems to me you do not use some of those very expensive and brilliant colors which are in vogue nowadays.”

“No.” And he diligently worked away at his palette. “I can’t afford to,--they are so apt to spoil the picture.”

“But they are effective.”

“For how long? A year, or a score of years, perhaps; but who can tell what they will be a century or five centuries hence. The old masters used simple pigments which they ground themselves. I try to use what they used. After all, it is not so much what one uses as the way it is used.”

* * * * *

Much of the foregoing argument concerning the Americanism of Whistler and his art may seem to be contradicted by his own express utterances.

For did he not say in his “Ten o’Clock”?

“Listen! There never was an artistic period.”

“There never was an art-loving nation.”

And he pointed out how the man who, “differing from the rest,” who “stayed by the tents with the women and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd, ... who took no joy in the ways of his brethren, ... who perceived in nature about him curious curvings, as faces are seen in the fire, this dreamer apart, was the first artist.”

“And presently there came to this man another--and, in time, others--of like nature, chosen by the gods; and so they worked together; and soon they fashioned, from the moistened earth, forms resembling the gourd. And with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist, presently they went beyond the slovenly suggestion of nature, and the first vase was born, in beautiful proportion.”

And the toilers and the heroes were athirst, “and all drank alike from the artist’s goblets, fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of the craftsman’s pride, and understanding not his glory in his work; drinking at the cup, not from choice, not from a consciousness that it was beautiful, but because, forsooth, there was no other!”

“And the people questioned not, _and had nothing to say in the matter_.”

“So Greece was in its splendor, and art reigned supreme,--by force of fact, not by election,--and there was no meddling by the outsider.”

Again he says:

“The master stands in no relation to the moment at which he occurs a monument of isolation, hinting at sadness, having no part in the progress of his fellow-men.”

* * * * *

Those are the propositions which called out the reply--positive and intemperate--from Swinburne,[6] and so estranged the two, and which to this day have proved huge stumbling-blocks in the paths of those who try to understand Whistler.

For the world does believe that there have been “artistic periods,” that there have been “art-loving nations,” that in some mysterious manner the master does stand in “relation to the moment at which he occurs.”

And the world is right; though it does not necessarily follow that Whistler was wrong in the particular views he had in mind when he uttered his epigrammatic propositions.

* * * * *

In one sense it is undoubtedly true that the master does seem to stand apart, “a mounment of isolation,” that he does seem to happen without any causal connection with either parents or country, time or place,--for who could have foretold the greatness of Shakespeare from an acquaintance with those obscure individuals his father and mother, or from a knowledge of Stratford and its environs? Who could have predicted the triumphs of Napoleon from a study of his Corsican forbears, or the strange genius of Lincoln from his illiterate progenitors and humble surroundings, or the elemental force of Walt Whitman from his ancestry and American conditions?

No one; and yet there is the profound conviction that each of these men, like every great man,--prophet, king, statesman warrior, poet, or painter,--appeared, not miraculously, but as the inevitable result of irresistible forces; that the brilliant man is, after all, the son of his parents and the child of his times.

In the mystery of generation two stupidities fused in the alembic of maternity produce a genius.

* * * * *

The occasion does not create, but calls forth its master. Every war has its great general, every crisis its great leader, and in the world of art great artists respond to meet the requirements of the hour.

The bent of a nation determines the occupations of her sons,--towards war and conquest, towards peace and industry, towards things artistic or things commercial, all as the case may be.

It is not the birth of the poet that turns the nation from commerce to poetry; it is rather the imperceptible development of the nation itself in the direction of the ideal that calls into activity--not being--the poet.

Neither race nor nation can by its fiat create a poet; but it can by its encouragement stimulate his activity and rouse him to his best. It could not create a Keats; but it might have urged him on to even greater heights than he attained,--for who can doubt that his clear, pure crystalline song was stifled for lack of appreciation?

* * * * *

Now and then a genius, such as Carlyle, such as Whistler, such as Whitman, asserts himself in spite of all rebuffs, for each of these men pursued his chosen path regardless of all revilings; but, so susceptible is genius to encouragement and discouragement, that, for the most part, it droops before the withering blast of adverse criticism, and only those of hearts so strong and wills so stubborn that opposition inflames them to greater efforts make headway against the world.

It was no one genius that made the monuments and literature of Greece, the art of China and Japan, the paintings of Italy, the Gothic cathedrals of France and England; it was the demand for all these things and their appreciation by those who could not do them that called forth and encouraged the doers.

* * * * *

The first artist may neglect the chase and the field and remain by the tents idly tracing strange designs upon gourds; but unless those who till the soil and bring in the food see his decorated gourds and like them, and prefer them to the plain ones which abound, and are willing to give him food and shelter for his work, he will not remain by the tents very long, and his artistic career will be foreshortened by necessity.

But if the toilers and the hunters like the decorated gourds, and the demand for them increases, others of the tribe who have talent for designing and decoration will join the master and imitate his work, and every now and then a pupil will prove a genius and surpass the “first artist,” and art will grow and art-products will multiply, but only so long as the rest of the tribe are willing to work and toil and to exchange the necessaries of life for paintings and carvings and pottery; and the greater the demand, the keener the desire of the people for decorated things in preference to those that are plain and cheap, the larger will be the chance of uncovering now and then a genius, until, as with the Greeks, the effective demand for things beautiful, for poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, becomes so great that we have an artistic people and an art-epoch,--that is to say, a people that is only too glad to encourage and support a large number of artists of every kind, and an era when of a given population an unusually large percentage is devoted to the service of the beautiful.

* * * * *

The master does _seem_--as Whistler says--to come unbidden; but he will not remain long, and others will not follow in his footsteps, unless he arouses at least sufficient appreciation to give him life.

The future of art--of literature, of the drama, and of all the handicrafts--in America depends not upon the coming of a genius, but upon the growth of an effective and irresistible demand for good things; when that demand is sufficiently imperative, a Phidias, an Angelo, a Shakespeare will respond, for genius is latent everywhere.

The sudden degradation of the arts in Japan within the memory of man was not due to the disappearance of the talent and genius which for nearly a thousand years had been steadily--almost methodically--producing things beautiful, but it was due to the suppression of the feudal system, of those great lords who from the beginning had been the sure patrons of art and supporters of artists, and to the throwing open of ports to the commerce of the world and the introduction of the commercial spirit.

The genius for the creation of beautiful things remains,--for a people does not change in the twinkling of an eye,--but the talent is no longer in demand, or, in many cases, is diverted to the more profitable pursuits of the hour.

_IV_

_Early Days in Paris and Venice--Etchings, Lithographs, and
Water-Colors--“Propositions” and “Ten o’clock."_

After leaving the coast survey, Whistler went to England, and thence to Paris in 1855, and entered the studio of Charles Gabriel Gleyre, where he remained two years.

Beyond the fact that Whistler was for a time in his studio, Gleyre has not much claim on fame. There could not have been anything in common between the master and his pupil, for he was academic to the last degree. “Not even by a tour in the East did he allow himself to be led away from the classic manner; and as the head of a great leading studio he recognized it as the task of his life to hand the traditions of the school of Ingres,” whom Whistler used to call a “Bourgeois Greek,” “on to the present.” He “was a man of sound culture, who during a sojourn in Italy, which lasted five years, had examined Etruscan vases and Greek statues with unintermittent zeal, studied the Italian classics, and copied all Raphael. Having come back to Paris, he never drew a line without having first assured himself how Raphael would have proceeded.”

However, there must have been a certain combative streak in his character which did appeal to Whistler, for in 1849 he quarreled with the Salon over the success of Courbet, and thereafter sent his pictures to Swiss exhibitions.

* * * * *

Whistler’s first commission grew out of an acquaintance made at West Point. At one of the commencement festivities he met a charming young girl, a Miss Sally Williams, and her father, Captain Williams.

While a student in Paris, the pretty daughter and the bluff old captain called on him, and the captain said:

“Mr. Whistler, we are over here to see Paris, and I want you to show us the pictures.”

Nothing loath, Whistler took them to the Louvre, and after they had walked a mile or two the captain stopped before some pictures that pleased him and asked:

“Do you suppose you could copy these pictures?”

“Possibly.”

“Then, I wish you would copy this, and that, and that,” pointing out three paintings. “When they are finished, deliver them to my agent, and he will pay you your price.”

Whistler made the copies, and received the first money he ever earned with his brush.

One of these canvases, a copy of an Ingres, turned up in New York a year or two ago. It bore Whistler’s signature, but was so atrocious--imagine a combination of Ingres and Whistler--that even the dealer doubted its authenticity; but when a photograph was shown Whistler, he recognized the picture and told the story.

* * * * *

Of these early days many stories are told, but they are all more or less apocryphal. It is as natural for stories to cluster about Whistler as for barnacles to cling to a ship. He told so many good ones that, as with Lincoln, innumerable good, bad, and indifferent which he did not tell are attributed to him, and thousands are told about him which have slight foundations in fact.

It is well nigh impossible to sift the true from the false,--a thing Whistler himself did not attempt,--though it is possible to sift the wheat from the chaff, the inane, insipid, and pointless from the bright and crisp.

Any man can vouch for a story, but who can vouch for a good story? The story-teller? Heaven forbid! By all the rules of evidence the testimony of so interested a witness is inadmissible. The better the story, the more doubtful its authenticity,--its formal, its literal authenticity. The better the teller, the more daring his liberties with prosaic details. A good story-teller is a lapidary who receives his material in the rough and polishes it into a jewel by removing three-fourths of its substance; or, under pressure of necessity, he deftly manufactures paste. To be without stories is the story-teller’s crime; a wit without witticisms is no wit at all, hence the strain upon veracity.

Happily, the world conspires to help both wit and story-teller by supplying during their lives, and in great abundance after their deaths, stories and witticisms without end. Give a man the reputation of being a humorist, and all he has to do is to sit discreetly silent and watch his reputation grow. If he really deserves his reputation, he may add to his fame by fresh activities; but if he is something of a sham, as most wits are, he would better leave his sayings to the imaginations of others.

* * * * *

Whistler’s sense of humor was so keen, his wit so sharp, his facility in epigram and clever sayings so extraordinary, that what are genuinely his are better than anything others have said about him; therefore, it is a pity some one has not jotted down first hand some of the good things that constantly fell from his lips. Perhaps some one has, and his life and sayings will yet appear with all the marks of authority and authenticity.

But his sharp and exceedingly terse sayings often suffer greatly in the telling, frequently to the loss of all point and character. The following instance is in point:

A group of society women were once discussing the graces and accomplishments of Frederic Leighton.

“So handsome.”

“Plays divinely.”

“Perfectly charming.”

“Sings.”

“And is so great a sculptor.”

Whereupon Whistler, who was of the party, timidly advanced the query:

“Paints a little, too, does he not?”

That is one version of an old and well-worn Whistler anecdote, and other versions, which are at all characteristic, do not vary in more than two or three words.

See what the story becomes in the mouth of the incompetent.[7]

“One evening a dozen of us were sitting in Broughton’s
reception-room, waiting for our carriages to be announced, and
Whistler was sitting by himself on a lounge on the other side of
the room. We were discussing the versatile talents of Frederic
Leighton, one of the leading painters of England, and afterwards
president of the Royal Academy. One spoke of his astonishing
linguistic accomplishments: he could express himself in every
European tongue and in several Oriental ones. Another mentioned his
distinguished merit as an architect: he was building an addition to
his studio which was like a vision of Aladdin or Haroun Al Rashid.
Another called attention to his ability in sculpture: a group of an
athlete and a serpent was then exhibiting in the Academy, which
challenged the works of antique art. Another mentioned his talent
as an orator: no man in London could make a better after-dinner
speech. Another praised his personal beauty and grace and his
athletic prowess. At length there fell a silence, because all of us
had contributed his or her mite of eulogy,--all of us, that is,
with the exception of Whistler, reclining on his elbow at the other
side of the room.

“By a common impulse we all glanced over at him: what would he
say? He partly raised himself from his lolling attitude and reached
for his crush hat on the sofa. ‘Yes,’ he added, slowly and
judicially, as if benevolently confirming all the praise we had
poured forth; and then, as if by an after-thought, calling our
attention to a singular fact not generally known, ‘Yes, and he can
paint, too!’”

After all the verbosity, padding, and penny-a-lining, the point is missed by attributing to Whistler the positive averment that Leighton could paint.

Small wonder that the writer in the next paragraph confesses:

“My own crude first attempts to understand Whistler’s paintings
were dismal failures; and of course I imagined that the failure was
in the painting, and not in myself. I could see no beauty in them:
the drawing was indeterminate; the colors were not pretty; the
pictures all seemed unfinished.”

It is less difficult than one would suppose to recall things said by Whistler, for he would repeat a good thing and was always polishing.

For instance, in his controversy with the critics he originally said that “Ruskin’s high-sounding, empty things ... flow of language that would, could he hear it, give Titian the same shock of surprise that was Balaam’s when the first great critic proffered his opinion.”

A very literal correspondent wrote to the papers that the “ass was right,” and quoted the Bible in proof.

Nothing daunted, Whistler acknowledged the hit, saying, “But, I fancy, you will admit that this is the only ass on record who ever did see the Angel of the Lord, and that we are past the age of miracles.”

Years after, in referring to the matter, he improved his reply to, “But I fancy you will admit that this is the only ass on record that ever was right, and the age of miracles is past.”

* * * * *

His love of epigram was so great that nothing which was terse or pointed escaped his ears or fled his memory.

One day, while lunching with a friend who knew something about the habits and eccentricities of good wine, Whistler was telling about the peculiarities of Henry James, how James would drag a slender incident through several pages until it was exhausted, whereupon his friend casually remarked:

“The best of wine is spoiled by too small a spiggot.”

Immediately alert, Whistler said:

“What’s that? what’s that you said? Did you get that out of Shakespeare?”

“Not at all; it is simply a physical fact that if you let good wine dribble through a small spiggot you lose its fragrance and character.”

“God bless me, but I believe you are right; and it’s a good saying,--it’s James to a--drop.”

* * * * *

No doubt there are many still living who knew Whistler in those early Paris days, but if so, few have so far made known their reminiscences. One fellow-student describes one of the places they used to dine inexpensively as follows:[8]

“In Paris, in the fifties, there existed in the Rue de la
Michandiere what appeared to be an ordinary Paris creamery. In the
front shop were sold milk, butter, and eggs. Over the door was the
usual painted tin coffee-pot, indicating that _caffé au lait_, and
eggs, butter, and rolls could be obtained in the back room.

“The place was kept by Madame Busque, who had been a governess in a
private family in the south of France, and having saved a little
money, had come to Paris and opened a creamery. The very day she
opened her shop, Mr. Chase, Paris correspondent of the New York
_Times_, passing by, was attracted by the clean look of the place,
and stepped in for his early breakfast of coffee and rolls. The
little back room contained two round tables, and beyond was the
kitchen with the usual charcoal broiler and little furnaces. Chase
was so pleased that he came again, and getting acquainted with
Madame, who was well educated and very ladylike and anxious to
please, arranged for a dinner at 6.30 for a party of four.
Everything was good and so well served that soon she had a regular
custom of American residents,--literary men, artists, and students
of all kinds, art, scientific, literary, and medical,--and soon the
place became famous. American dishes were introduced,--mince and
pumpkin pies and buckwheat cakes. It was not easy to reproduce
these things in Paris. The pumpkin pie was a trouble. Madame was
told how to make it by a man who only knew how it looked and
tasted, and who neglected to mention the crust; and as Madame had
no knowledge of pies in general, she served the first pumpkin pie
as a soup in a tureen. Just at that time came in a bright young
woman, introduced by one of the _habitués_, who offered to come
next forenoon and show Madame Busque how to make a genuine Yankee
pumpkin pie, which she did; and the pies produced in that little
creamery were famous and were sent out to Americans all over Paris.
Fine carriages, including that of the American minister, to the
amazement of the neighborhood, would call for these pies to take
home.

“Among the _habitués_ was young Whistler, then an art student. He
was bright, original, and amusing, but gave at that time no promise
of any particular ability as an artist. His drawing was careless. I
remember one of his pictures,--a woman seated at the piano, a
little child playing on the floor. The piano was so out of drawing
that it looked as if it were falling over. As students are always
fond of guying each other, one said to Whistler, ‘Hurry and put a
fifth leg under that piano or it will fall and smash the baby.’