Chapter X (5)

He did write what Whistler quoted about Rembrandt, but the whole passage is a lament over the lack of appreciation of color, and is as follows:

“For instance: our reprobation of bright color is, I think, for the
most part, mere affectation, and must soon be done away with.
Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety will indeed always express
themselves through art in brown and gray, as in Rembrandt,
Caravaggio, and Salvator; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or
impious, nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so
in any wise. Our greatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight,
like the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. The coloring of
Scott and Byron is full and pure; that of Keats and Tennyson rich
even to excess. Our practical failures in coloring are merely the
necessary consequences of our prolonged want of practice during the
period of Renaissance affectation and ignorance; and the only
durable difference between old and modern coloring is the
acceptance of certain hues by the modern, which please him by
expressing that melancholy peculiar to his more reflective or
sentimental character and the greater variety of them necessary to
express his greater science.”[28]

Again, on the subject of color, he says:

“We find the greatest artists mainly divided into two
groups,--those who paint principally with respect to local color,
headed by Paul Veronese, Titian, and Turner, and those who paint
principally with reference to light and shade irrespective of
color, headed by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Raphael. The
noblest members of each of these classes introduce the element
proper to the other class, in a subordinate way. Paul Veronese
introduces a subordinate light and shade, and Leonardo introduces a
subordinate local color. The main difference is, that with
Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Raphael vast masses of the picture are
lost in comparatively colorless (dark, gray, or brown)
shadow,--these painters _beginning_ with the _lights_ and going
_down_ to blackness; but with Veronese, Titian, and Turner the
whole picture is like the rose,--glowing with color in the shadows
and rising into paler and more delicate hues, or masses of
whiteness, in the lights,--they having _begun_ with the _shadows_
and gone up _to_ whiteness.”

Ruskin said so much about art, and said it so dogmatically, that no one utterance gives an adequate conception of what he thought about any one man. Furthermore, while his language is crystal itself, his thoughts are often contradictory and confusing in the extreme.

For instance, no man with any sense of color whatsoever would group Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Raphael together as men who painted “irrespective of color,”--for no great Italian from the days of Giotto to those of Michael Angelo painted regardless of color; on the contrary, color is the one conspicuous, brilliant, and beautiful feature of their work, and the color-sense, as it existed in those days in all its exquisite refinement, is, generally speaking, absolutely wanting in ours.

In all but color Rembrandt forgot more than most of the Italians ever knew; but in the use of color--not imitatively, not after the manner of nature, but decoratively and arbitrarily--the Italians forgot more than Rembrandt ever knew; and, so far as color is concerned, there is absolutely nothing in common between Rembrandt and Leonardo or Raphael, while there is much in common between the two latter.

It was not color, but _light_, that Ruskin appreciated, as is shown by a hundred passages, but by none more _clearly_ than that quoted wherein he says of the three painters last named,--and the italics are his,--“these painters _beginning_ with _lights_ and going _down_ to blackness; but with Veronese, Titian, and Turner the whole picture is like the rose,--glowing with color in the shadows and rising into paler and more delicate hues, or masses of whiteness, in the lights,--they having _begun_ with the _shadows_ and gone up _to_ whiteness.”

* * * * *

When he held his exhibition in London, in 1892, of “Nocturnes, Marines, and Chevalet Pieces,”--a “small collection kindly _lent_ their owners,”--he once more printed in his dainty brown-paper-covered catalogue, beneath each picture, the early comments of press, critics, and people, and called it all “The Voice of a People.”

And what a collection of bizarre opinions it is, to be sure, from the serious _Times_ to the lightsome _Merrie England_, which said:

“He paints in soot colors and mud colors, but, far from enjoying the primary hues, has little or no perception of secondary or tertiary color.”

Which goes to show that the budding science of chromatics is not without effect on vocabularies.

Here we have the “kitchen stuff” criticism of Turner in 1842 paraphrased word for word in the mud and soot criticism of Whistler precisely fifty years later.

Is the jargon of criticism at once limited and exhausted? Are we to linger forever about the cook-stove in the depreciation of art? With the introduction of the steel range of mammoth proportions can we not find new terms of opprobrium? Besides, there are the gas and gasoline stoves of explosive habit, which ought to be suggestive of novelty in vituperation. But, alas, the critic is prone to repeat himself, and the language of the fathers is visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate.

* * * * *

And press, critics, and artists are convicted, once more, of incompetency. But what does it matter, save as a warning that will not be heeded? Are we any wiser in our generation? Were Whistler to appear to-day, as he did forty-odd years ago, would he be received with the praise his works command now? Hardly.

Many of his followers were quite as absurd in their misplaced admiration as the maligned public in its denunciation, and no one knew it better than he. He came upon two of them once as they were waxing eloquent before a sketch that had somehow escaped his studio,--possibly overlooked and left behind in some of his movings. He listened a moment to their raptures, fitted his monocle to his eye, took a look at this “masterpiece,” and said:

“God bless me, I wonder where that came from. Not worth the canvas it’s painted on.”

And he turned away.

We who have been taught to see, not wholly but in part, may laugh at our betters who, when he first appeared, could see nothing at all; but our virtue is acquired.

* * * * *

His attitude towards critics is summed up in the short but pointed article written in December, 1878, shortly after the Ruskin suit, and called “Art and Art Critics.”

“Shall the painter, then (I foresee the question), decide upon
painting? Shall _he_ be the critic and sole authority? Aggressive
as is this supposition, I fear that, in the length of time, his
assertion alone has established what even the gentlemen of the
quill accept as the canons of art and recognize as the masterpieces
of work.”

All of which is undeniably true. The painter must in the end judge of painting, and the sculptor judge of sculpture. But there are two distinct sides to a work of art,--to every work, for that matter: there is the relation between the worker and his work, and the relation between the completed work and the public,--the work being the intermediary between artist and people, his means of communication, his mode and manner of speech.

There is, therefore, the process of creation and the process of appreciation, of utterance and of understanding.

The painting of a picture is one thing, its appreciation by the public is quite another.

A man need not be a dramatist to watch the effect of a drama upon the audience; a man need not own a vineyard to know good wine.

The critic stands, or, rather, should stand, between the public and the work he criticises, whether it be poem, painting, statue, or drama; the mistake he commonly makes is in forcing himself between the worker and his work, and in trying to teach him something only another and better worker in the _same_ art is competent to do.

Critics make most of their blunders in judging works according to preconceived notions as to how they should be done,--in condemning, for instance, a picture because not painted after prevailing modes and methods, because it is a departure, whereas with these considerations the lay-critic has nothing to do; they fall entirely within the province of the painter-critic, the one man who is competent, in the long run, to pass upon the methods employed.

Every work is an appeal to the public,--its completion and exhibition make it such; therefore, every work challenges the critical faculties, great or small, of those who see it. It is inevitable that some more interested should spring up to interpret, rightly or wrongly, the work to the public; the artist seldom takes the trouble,--in fact, has neither the time nor the temperament; his message is complete in the picture, others must understand it as best they can.

The playwright cannot address the audience save through the play, the poet speaks only through his poetry, the painter through his pictures, the sculptor through the forms of his creation. Seldom is an artist gifted with more than one tongue, and that tongue is his art. How, then, can artists interpret the work of artists? How can the painter, who is dumb save with his brush, or the sculptor, who is mute save with his clay and chisel, tell the world anything about the work of others?

It is the business of those who can speak and write to tell the people, not how the work was created, unless they were present, but how it impressed them as a finished thing. That is the province of legitimate criticism.

Every man who has done his best to understand, though at the risk of betraying his ignorance, has the right to say how he likes what he sees or hears or tastes. The opinions of some are worth more than those of others; and these opinions, with the reasons therefor, we are delighted to hear. That is about all there is to sound criticism; and in that sense comment and those whose profession is to comment are inevitable,--until the æsthetic millenium, when critics cease from troubling and the artists are at rest.

Ruskin, unfortunately, attempted the double duty of telling painters how to paint and the public what to like. With all his industry and considerable talent for drawing, he was not competent to tell painters how to paint,--though much that he said is accepted as sound,--and his judgments of the relative merits of painters and pictures were biassed by his own convictions regarding the way the work should be done.

His limitations were due to his strong preferences and violent prejudices. His devotion to Turner--a great painter--was one limitation; lack of appreciation of Rembrandt was another; failure to estimate Velasquez at his real worth was another; and a lot of enthusiasms for men who are now forgotten are so many additional evidences of lack of judicial temper in Ruskin. But all these things are as nothings in comparison with the rich store of things said in English so strong, so simple, and yet so beautiful that it fairly intoxicates and rouses something akin to a religious enthusiasm.

* * * * *

A word concerning the “Voice of a People,” as Whistler called his little collection of criticisms. What is it?

In literature the “Voice of a People” makes itself heard at the bookseller’s counter and over the desk of the circulating library,--and that, too, regardless of critics who praise this book and condemn that. Sometimes, before the Critic has spoken, the “Voice” is heard, and the presses groan with the burden of their task; or, more often, after the Critic has had his say, the “Voice,” disregarding labored precepts, calls loudly for what it is told it should not have; and so in literature the “Voice” makes itself heard loud and clear and natural, and there is no mistaking it.

Likewise in the drama the insistent “Voice” demands trash or otherwise, quite regardless of the protest of the Critic. The run of a play is not determined by the criticisms. The opinion of the Critic is often foreseen and defied; but neither writer, manager, nor actor can foretell the verdict of the “Voice,”--favorable often when least expected; adverse often when least deserved.

But in art the “Voice”--stentorian in literature and the drama--sinks to a whisper so diffident that it cannot be heard amidst the trumpetings of the Critics.

The Critics--those whose business it was to write and talk about art--ridiculed Whistler, not the “Voice.” Left wholly to itself, it is quite likely the “Voice” would have found much that it liked in the beautiful combinations of tones and colors, for there is nothing inherently repulsive in Whistler’s work, as in much other that Critics command the “Voice” to praise; on the contrary, his paintings are exceedingly restful to the eye, and exceedingly attractive as schemes of color if nothing else. The “Voice,” left to itself, would say, “I do not understand them, but I like them,--just as I like music, without knowing much about it.”

* * * * *

But the “Voice”--independent enough in literature, the drama, and even in music--dares not lisp in art until the Critic speaks. Then the “Voice” praises what he praises, condemns what he condemns, until the secret purchases and growing demand for the outcast confounds both Critic and echoing “Voice.” Then the “Voice” turns--as it has in the case of Whistler--and rends the Critics, unless those agile gentlemen change sides and praise what they formerly condemned.

Too bad that Whistler attributed the “Voice” of the Critic to that long-suffering animal--the Public, which, if often wrong, is always honest, and, in all but art--vociferous.

* * * * *

Concerning his habit of persistently impaling the critics, a writer says:[29]

“We wish that the catalogue did not, for the tenth time, contain
quotations from all the dull things which bewildered criticism has
said about him. Mr. Whistler is a wit, and should recollect that
the same old joke must not be told too often to the same old
audience.”

But where is the joke? In the criticisms or in their repetition? If the criticisms were serious, then repetition is doubly serious.

Nor is it “the same old audience,” but each year, each hour, a new audience. Of all the English-speaking people not one in a million have ever heard the joke; and if joke there be, it is surely a gracious act to make it known.

The far-seeing publisher deftly detaches the favorable comment from uncongenial context and prints it boldly on the fly-leaf of the volume. Why should not author or painter print his page of depreciations that, as Whistler says, “history may be cleanly written”? And if preserved and printed once, why not for all time?

The record of a people is not complete unless their likes and dislikes be known. What would we not give for the adverse criticisms of Shakespeare? And there must have been many besides poor Greene’s. What would we not give for some of the off-hand comments of his fellow-actors and his fellow-managers?

The world conspires to deceive the world. The literature of adulation is carefully conserved until mortals, denuded of their frailties, become gods.

* * * * *

In the course of his career Whistler met with many bizarre appreciations, but none more astonishing than this:[30]

“To understand Mr. Whistler you must understand his body. I do not
mean that Mr. Whistler has suffered from bad health,--his health
has always been excellent; all great artists have excellent
health, but his constitution is more nervous than robust. He is
even a strong man, but he is lacking in weight. Were he six inches
taller and his bulk proportionally increased, his art would be
different.”

The classification of the prize-ring into feather-, light-, middle-, and heavy-weights makes its appearance in art; genius, like jockeys, must weigh-in and-out. By rights, therefore, Paganini should have played the bass-viol and Napoleon should have been a drummer-boy. The painter must measure his canvas by his belt, and bant the masterpiece into shape. The gymnasium is the true school of art, and the dumb-bell is mightier than the brush.

“For if Whistler had been six inches taller and his bulk
proportionally increased, ... instead of having painted a dozen
portraits,--every one, even the ‘Mother’ and ‘Miss Alexander,’
which I personally take to be the two best, a little febrile in its
extreme beauty, whilst some, masterpieces though they be, are
clearly touched with weakness and marked with hysteria,--Mr.
Whistler would have painted a hundred portraits as strong, as
vigorous, as decisive, and as easily accomplished as any by
Velasquez or Hals.”

This is the sort of comment that follows but never precedes acquaintance. After knowing a painter, it is easy to discover all his physical characteristics and idiosyncrasies in his work,--so easy, in fact, that many critics prefer to pass on books, plays, and pictures on their merits without knowing anything about the authors, the actors, or painters; for in the end a work must stand or fall by itself.

From an examination of the “Hermes,” can this critic give us the stature of Praxiteles? From the “Nike” in the Louvre can he describe the unknown master? What does the “Sistine Madonna” tell him of the weight of Raphael, or the “Lesson in Anatomy” of the “bulk” of Rembrandt?

* * * * *

A man’s physical condition may be--frequently is--reflected in his work. If he is an invalid, what he does is apt to show it,--though Herbert Spencer is a case to the contrary; but his physique is another matter. Genius is not a matter of inches. The weight of the brain is not controlled by the size of the body; still more independent is the organization and development of the brain.

If a man have strength and health--and these the critic concedes to Whistler--his work may be the work of a giant.

One of the greatest and strongest of Germany’s living artists is almost a dwarf; the most virile painter in America to-day is short and slight.

* * * * *

The same critic, referring to the letters in the “Gentle Art,” says, “If Mr. Whistler had the bull-like health of Michael Angelo, Rubens, Hals, the letters would never have been written.” But, as a matter of fact, Angelo was “a man of more than usually nervous temperament.” As any one at all familiar with his career, his many controversies, his voluminous letters, well knows, “his temperament exposed him to sudden outbursts of scorn and anger which brought him now and then into violent collision with his neighbors.” His habit of ridiculing and annoying his fellow-pupils invited the blow from Pietro Torrigiano which gave him his broken nose. He was a weakly child and suffered two illnesses in manhood, but by carefully refraining from all excesses he regained and preserved his health. “His countenance always showed a good and wholesome color. Of stature he is as follows: height middling, broad in the shoulders; the rest of the body somewhat slender in proportion.”

The foregoing scarcely bears out the sweeping generalization that “the greatest painters, I mean the very greatest,--Michael Angelo, Velasquez, and Rubens,--were gifted by nature with as full a measure of health as of genius. Their physical constitutions resembled more those of bulls than of men.”

As for Velasquez, who can speak authoritatively for him?

* * * * *

While the physical characteristics of geniuses are habitually exaggerated, and the weak, the nervous, the delicate are made well and strong and “like bulls” in the enthusiasm of appreciation or the exigencies of theory, it would not be difficult to point out in history, art, and literature innumerable instances of men whose achievements afford no indications whatsoever of their bodily make up,--in fact, it is common experience that neither poet nor painter ever corresponds with preconceived notions, and to meet the one or the other is to court disenchantment.

If Whistler had been six inches taller he would not have been Angelo, or Rembrandt, or Velasquez, but--in all probability--a soldier.

_VII_

_Supreme as a Colorist--Color and Music--His Susceptibility to
Color--Ruskin and Color--Art and Nature._

Supreme as a colorist, Whistler achieved fame as an etcher long before the world acknowledged his greatness as a painter. Even now it is the fashion to exalt his etchings to the depreciation of his paintings,--to say that he was a great artist in the one medium but unsuccessful in the other.

The following is a fair illustration of this sort of comment:

“Cool-headed conservatism should clarify the halo which encircles
Whistler’s portraits. The periodic ‘symphonies,’ ‘harmonies,’ and
‘arrangements,’ in gray and green, green and rose, purple and gold,
or brown and black, have, or had, novelty to recommend them,--more
novelty, however, than psychology. Apart from one or two, they are
little beyond essays in subdued _Japonisme_ with subtle dashes of
Velasquez. The portrait of his mother alone shows adequate depth,
for the overlauded Carlyle is merely a male replica of the single
canvas wherein the artist seemed to lose--and to find--himself. It
is not in portraiture, but in etching and lithography, that
Whistler has disclosed the validity of his talent.”[31]

To which may be added the following comments since his death from leading American papers:

“Whistler in earlier life was a real etcher, easily the first of
the nineteenth century. The number of his plates of the best
quality is comparatively small. He soon lost his power or the
incentive to execute it. His hand degenerated, his work became
trivial and insincere. As a painter none of his pictures will ever
explain to posterity the reputation, or the apparent reputation,
that he enjoyed during his lifetime.”

“It is, however, as an etcher rather than as a painter that
Whistler will be remembered.”

“Thus, setting aside the portraits of his mother, of Thomas
Carlyle, Lady Campbell, and Miss Alexander, and the startling
‘Nocturne in Blue and Silver,’ and the ‘Arrangement in Black,’ it
might be possible to count upon the fingers of one hand the finest
examples of his brush.”

Many others of similar import might be gathered, but the foregoing suffice. In reading them it should not be forgotten that the etchings, which are now praised without reserve, passed through the same stages of depreciation through which the paintings are passing; so that, guided by the parallel, it is reasonable to expect the complete acceptance of the latter as masterpieces in the near future.

Broadly speaking, the order of acceptance has been:

First. Etchings and lithographs.

Second. Portraits.

Third. Color harmonies,--such as many of his figure-pieces, marines, nocturnes, and pure color compositions generally, none of which is fully accepted, some of which are scarcely known, and

all of which are misunderstood, in spite of his many explicit words of explanation.

Such has been the order of general acceptance of his work; but the order of real merit is almost precisely reversed.

Whistler stands supreme,--

First as a colorist.

Secondly as a painter of portraits.

Thirdly as an etcher and lithographer.

As an etcher comparisons are drawn between him and Rembrandt.

As a painter of portraits comparisons are drawn between him and Velasquez.

As a colorist he is beyond comparison save with the masters of the far East.

In etching and lithography and the painting of portraits he, at most, simply did as well or better what others have done before; but in the composition of harmonies of color to please the eye, as harmonies of sound please the ear, he accomplished results which are unique.

What he did with the needle is not so wholly and absolutely unlike all that had been done before as to render comparisons impossible; whereas with the brush in his domain of color Whistler stands alone. His art was his own; he painted like no other man dead or living.

His etchings were so fine, so subtle, that the world had difficulty in comprehending them; but it did learn to like them, and that, too, at a comparatively early date. But even now his pictures are fully understood by no one; and yet they have had a profounder influence upon the art of to-day than those of any other master.

He opened the door of the East to the painters of the West and showed them how they might paint after the manner of the best there is in the Oriental world, and not only retain, but accentuate their own individuality.

The secret of Whistler’s art, as of all great art, is that it was the absolutely true and unaffected expression of his convictions and of his impressions of the life and world about him; and his impressions and convictions in the domain of color, like those of Beethoven in the world of sound, were worth recording.

He is to color what Beethoven is to sound, and his distinguishing merit is that of all the men of his century or of many preceding centuries he was the only one to treat color as a composer of music treats sound,--as material for the arrangement of harmonies to please the eye as music pleases the ear.

* * * * *

When Burne-Jones, in the Ruskin suit, was asked if he saw any art quality in “The Falling Rocket,” he apologetically said, “I must speak the truth, you know,” and then testified: “It has fine color and atmosphere,” but of detail and composition “absolutely none.”

As if the shower of fire of a falling rocket against the blackness of night could have sharp detail and composition; as if anything were possible beyond “fine color and atmosphere;” and color and atmosphere are all Whistler intended. “My whole scheme,” he himself testified, “was only to bring about a certain harmony of color,” and, according to the only decently qualified witness for the other side, he succeeded.

Even Frith, the painter of “Derby Day” and the “Rake’s Progress,” said, “There is a pretty color which pleases the eye, but there is nothing more.”

Why should there be anything more, if to please the eye were the painter’s sole intention? Is it not as legitimate to please the eye with compositions of color, otherwise meaningless, as it is to please the ear with compositions of sound?

Profoundly speaking, color has no other object than to please the eye. The story should be told, the moral pointed, in black and white. The use of color imitatively, or to accentuate the characterization, is as base as the use of sound imitatively.

Color is to the eye precisely what sound is to the ear, and the highest use to which either can be put is the production of pure, not to say abstract, harmonies for the satisfaction of its respective sense.

* * * * *

As long ago as 1868 Swinburne, in a pamphlet on the Royal Academy exhibition of that year, said:

“No task is harder than this translation from color into speech,
when the speech must be so hoarse and feeble, when the color is so
subtle and sublime. Music and verse might strike some string
accordant in sound to such painting, but a version such as this is
a psalm of Tate’s to a psalm of David’s. In all of the main
strings touched are certain varying chords of blue and white, not
without interludes of the bright and tender tones of floral purple
or red. They all have immediate beauty, they all give the delight
of natural things; they seem to have grown as a flower grows, not
in any forcing house of ingenious and laborious cunning. This is,
in my eyes, a special quality of Mr. Whistler’s genius; a freshness
and fulness of the loveliest life of things, with a high, clear
power upon them which seems to educe a picture as the sun does a
blossom or a fruit.”

In language too plain for the slightest misunderstanding he has himself told the world precisely what he meant his pictures to be, but the world will not take him at his word.

Nearly thirty years ago, when the people wondered at his calling his works “symphonies,” “arrangements,” “harmonies,” and “nocturnes,” he wrote:

“The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a
picture apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.

“My picture of a ‘Harmony in Gray and Gold’ is an illustration of
my meaning,--a snow-scene with a single black figure and a lighted
tavern. I care nothing for the past, present, or future of the
black figure, placed there because the black was wanted at that
spot. All that I know is that my combination of gray and gold is
the basis of the picture. Now, this is precisely what my friends
cannot grasp.

“They say, ‘Why not call it “Trotty Veck,” and sell it for a round
harmony of golden guineas?’ naively acknowledging that without
baptism there is no ... market!’”[32]

And farther on he said:

“As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of
sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of
sound or color.

“The great musicians knew this. Beethoven and the rest wrote
music,--simply music; symphony in this key, concerto or sonata in
that.

“On F or G they constructed celestial harmonies,--as
harmonies,--combinations evolved from the chorus of F or G and
their minor correlatives.

“This is pure music as distinguished from airs,--commonplace and
vulgar in themselves, but interesting from their associations,--as,
for instance, ‘Yankee Doodle’, or ‘Partant pour la Syrie.’

“Art should be independent of all clap-trap, should stand alone,
and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or er, without confounding
this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love,
patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with
it; and that is why I insist on calling my works ‘arrangements’ and
‘harmonies.’”[33]

And concerning the portrait of his mother, which nearly every one admires for the subject while few pause to consider the color, he wrote:

“Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as
an ‘Arrangement in Gray and Black.’ Now, that is what it is. To me
it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought
the public to care about the identity of the portrait?”[34]

Within these few lines are contained Whistler’s whole philosophy of art, his convictions and his intentions; the words are so plain a child may read and comprehend their meaning, and yet people will not understand him.

Whistler’s art was purely sensuous, as the finest music is sensuous. He had no interest whatsoever in the many problems of life and death, in the story of any person or the traditions of any place.

He had less interest in the associations connected with Old Battersea Bridge than the boatman lazily floating by; but at certain hours and under certain conditions, at twilight or at dusk, or in the fog, it made a long, tremulous line which pleased him, and he painted it.

The fact that the Thames bounds English history was of no consequence to him; but the muddy river between lines of buildings and wharves and shipping, and covered by boats and crossed by bridges, furnished him endless compositions in line and color.

The glory and the romance of Venice made no impression on his art; but in out-of-the-way places, where others saw nothing, he found scenes which inspired his etchings.

As an etcher and a lithographer Whistler played with the mystery of line, as in painting he played with the mystery of color.

There is an art of pure line as there is an art of pure form and of pure color. It is just as possible to make a lot of meaningless lines which please the eye in their curves and endless variety as it is to please the eye with combinations of colors.

Decorative patterns and designs, aside from color, are simply line harmonies.

A child loves to make straight and round and curved lines upon slate or paper.

The eye follows lines with a delight akin to that taken in form and color.

When the Savoy Hotel was in process of construction, and the great steel beams thrust themselves upward towards the sky, and there was a lattice-work of girders and a veritable song of line, Whistler, seeing it one day from a neighboring window, exclaimed:

“Hurry; where are my things? I must catch that now, for it will never again be so beautiful.”

* * * * *

High buildings, mechanical processes, modern costumes had no terrors for him, simply because he had no sentiment concerning them; if they furnished him beauties of line or color he cared not whether they were new or old.

Whistler’s art was as devoid of sentiment as that of a Japanese.

To our Western notions the everlasting convention that serves for a face 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!”

* * * * *