LILLIE IN OUR ALLEY
BROWN AND GOLD
OIL
In 1905 the most important and successful show in the career of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers was given; the Memorial Exhibition of the works of James McNeill Whistler. For complete success it lacked only the co-operation of Whistler's executrix, which the Council originally understood was promised, but which was ultimately withheld. Still, it was the most complete exhibition of his works ever given, superior from every point of view to the small show at the Scottish Academy the previous year, in many respects to the Boston show of the same year, and to the Paris Memorial Exhibition, 1905, which was disappointing. As can be seen from the elaborate catalogue, more especially the beautifully illustrated édition de luxe published by Mr. Heinemann, the exhibition at the New Gallery contained nearly all the principal oil-paintings, the largest collection of etchings ever shown together, all but one or two of the lithographs, and many of the pastels, water-colours, and drawings.
Footnotes
[12] Sir Henry Cole, in the early sixties, had five international shows at South Kensington.
CHAPTER XLIV: THE ACADÉMIE CARMEN.
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY-EIGHT TO NINETEEN HUNDRED AND ONE.
In the autumn of 1898 a circular issued in Paris created a sensation in the studios. Whistler was going to open a school, the Académie Whistler. The announcement was made by his model, Madame Carmen Rossi. Whistler at once wrote from Whitehall Court, where he was staying (October 1, 1898), to the papers "to correct an erroneous statement, or rather to modify an exaggeration, that an otherwise bona fide prospectus is circulating in Paris. An atelier is to be opened in the Passage Stanislas, and, in company with my friend, the distinguished sculptor, Mr. MacMonnies, I have promised to attend its classes. The patronne has issued a document in which this new Arcadia is described as the Académie Whistler and further qualified as the Anglo-American School. I would like it to be understood that, having hitherto abstained from all plot of instruction, this is no sudden assertion in the Ville Lumière of my own. Nor could I be in any way responsible for the proposed mysterious irruption in Paris of whatever Anglo-American portends. 'American,' I take it, is synonymous with modesty, and 'Anglo,' in art, I am unable to grasp at all, otherwise than as suggestive of complete innocence and the blank of Burlington House. I purpose only, then, to visit, as harmlessly as may be, in turn with Mr. MacMonnies, the new academy which has my best wishes, and, if no other good come of it, at least to rigorously carry out my promise of never appearing anywhere else."
Whistler had nothing to do with the financial management, everything with the system of teaching, and he said that he proposed to offer the students his knowledge of a lifetime. It may be, as we have heard, that he had been asked, with MacMonnies, to criticise the work of Ary Renan's or Luc-Olivier Merson's students, and that this gave him the idea of visiting a school under his own direction.
The Passage Stanislas is a small street running off the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs; No. 6, a house of two storeys and a courtyard or garden at the back which was afterwards covered with glass. Over the front door the sign Académie Whistler did appear, but only for a short time. The glazed courtyard became a studio, and there was another above to which a fine old staircase led. The house had been built, or adapted, as a studio, and, except that the walls were distempered, no change was made. The rooms were fitted up with school furniture; for this, we believe, Whistler advanced the money. Within a few days a vast number of pupils had put their names down, deserting the other ateliers of Paris. Some left the English schools, and still others came from Germany and America. Whistler was delighted, telling us that students were coming in squads, that the Passage was crowded, and that owners of carriages struggled with rapins and prize-winners to get in.
Miss Inez Bate (Mrs. Clifford Addams), who was among the earliest to put down her name, who remained in the school till the end and who became Whistler's apprentice, has not only told us the story of the Académie Carmen, but has given us her record of it and of Whistler's methods of teaching, written at his request and partially corrected by him. It is the record of his "knowledge of a lifetime," for he taught in the school the truths he had been years formulating, and is of the greatest importance, as valuable a document as the treatise of Cennino Cennini. In the future Mrs. Addams' statement, revised by Whistler, will live.
He insisted on seriousness. The Académie Carmen was not to be like other schools; instead of singing, there was to be no talking; smoking was not allowed; the walls were not to be decorated with charcoal; studio cackle was forbidden; if people wanted these things, they could go back from whence they came. He was to be received as a master visiting his pupils, not as a good fellow in his shirt-sleeves. For the first weeks things did not go very well. Carmen was not used to her post, the students were not used to such a master, and Whistler was not used to them. A massier was appointed, and the men and women who had been working together were separated and two classes formed. Within a short time Mrs. Addams was chosen massière, a position she held until the school closed. She writes:
"The Académie began its somewhat disturbed career in the fall of 1898. A letter was received from Mr. Whistler announcing that he would shortly appear, and, on the day appointed, the Académie Carmen had the honour of receiving him for the first time. He proceeded to look at the various studies, most carefully noting under whose teaching and in what school each student's former studies had been pursued.
"Most kindly something was said to each, and to one student who offered apology for his drawing, Mr. Whistler said simply, 'It is unnecessary—I really come to learn—feeling you are all much cleverer than I.'
"Mr. Whistler, before he left, expressed to the Patronne his wish that there should be separate ateliers for the ladies and gentlemen and that the present habit of both working together should be immediately discontinued.
"His second visit was spent in consideration of the more advanced students. One, whose study suffered from the introduction of an unbeautiful object in the background, because it happened to be there, was told that, 'One's study, even the most unpretentious, is always one's picture, and must be, in form and arrangement, a perfect harmony from the beginning.' With this unheard-of advice, Mr. Whistler turned to the students, whose work he had been inspecting and intimated that they might begin to paint, and so really learn to draw, telling them that the true understanding of drawing the figure comes by having learned to appreciate the subtle modellings by the use of the infinite gradation that paint makes possible.
"On his third visit he turned to one student and picked up her palette, pointing out that being the instrument on which the painter plays his harmony, it must be beautiful always, as the tenderly-cared-for violin of the great musician.
"He suggested that it would be a pleasure to show them his way of painting, and if this student could, without too much difficulty, clean her palette, he would endeavour to show them 'the easiest way of getting into difficulties.'
"And it was then that Mr. Whistler's palette was given. His whole system lies in the complete mastery of the palette—on the palette the work must be done before transferring one note on to the canvas.
"He recommended the small oval palettes as being easy to hold. White was placed at the top edge in the centre, in generous quantity, and to the left came in succession yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, cobalt, and mineral blue; while to right, vermilion, Venetian red, Indian red, and black. Sometimes the burnt sienna would be placed between the Venetian and Indian red, but generally the former placing of colours was insisted upon.
"A mass of colour, giving the fairest tone of the flesh, would then be mixed and laid in the centre of the palette near the top, and a broad band of black curving downward from this mass of light flesh-note to the bottom, gave the greatest depth possible in any shadow, and so, between the prepared light and the black, the colour was spread, and mingled with any of the various pure colours necessary to obtain the desired changes of note, until there appeared on the palette a tone-picture of the figure that was to be painted, and at the same time a preparation for the background was made on the left in equally careful manner.
"Many brushes were used, each one containing a full quantity of every dominant note, so that when the palette presented as near a reproduction of the model and background as the worker could obtain, the colour could be put down with a generous flowing brush.
"Mr. Whistler said, 'I do not interfere with your individuality. I place in your hands a sure means of expressing it, if you can learn to understand, and if you have your own sight still.' Each student prepared his or her palette, in some the mass of light would exceed the dark, in others the reverse would be the case. Mr. Whistler made no comments on these conditions of the students' palettes: 'I do not teach art; I teach the scientific application of paint and brushes.' His one insistence was that no painting on the canvas should be begun until the student felt he could go no further on the palette; the various and harmonious notes were to represent, as nearly as he could see, the model and background that he was to paint.
"Mr. Whistler would often refrain from looking at the students' canvas, but would carefully examine the palette, saying that there he could see the progress being made, and that it was really much more important for it to present a beautiful appearance, than for the canvas to be fine and the palette inharmonious. He said, 'If you cannot manage your palette, how are you going to manage your canvas?'
"These statements sounded like heresy to the majority of the students, and they refused to believe the reason and purpose of such teaching, and as they had never before received even a hint to consider the palette of primary importance, they insisted in believing that this was but a peculiarity of Mr. Whistler's manner of working, and that, to adopt it, would be with fatal results!
"The careful attempts to follow the subtle modellings of flesh placed in a quiet, simple light, and therefore extremely grey and intricate in its change of form, brought about necessarily, in the commencement of each student's endeavour, a rather low-toned result. One student said to Mr. Whistler that she did not wish to paint in such low tones, but wanted to keep her colour pure and brilliant; he answered, 'then keep it in the tubes, it is your only chance at first.'
"They were taught to look upon the model as a sculptor would, using the paint as a modeller does his clay; to create on the canvas a statue, using the brush as a sculptor his chisel, following carefully each change of note, which means 'form'; it being preferable that the figure should be presented in a simple manner, without an attempt to obtain a thousand changes of colour that are there in reality, and make it, first of all, really and truly exist in its proper atmosphere, than that it should present a brightly coloured image, pleasing to the eye, but without solidity and non-existent on any real plane. This, it will be seen, was the reason of Mr. Whistler's repeated and insistent commands to give the background the most complete attention, believing that by it alone the figure had a reason to exist.
"Mr. Whistler would often paint for the students.
"Once he modelled a figure, standing in the full, clear light of the atelier, against a dull, rose-coloured wall. After spending almost an hour upon the palette, he put down with swift, sure touches, the notes of which his brushes were already generously filled, so subtle that those standing close to the canvas saw apparently no difference in each successive note as it was put down, but those standing at the proper distance away noticed the general turn of the body appear, and the faint subtle modellings take their place, and finally, when the last delicate touch of light was laid on, the figure was seen to exist in its proper atmosphere and at its proper distance within the canvas, modelled, as Mr. Whistler said, 'in painter's clay,' and ready to be taken up the next day and carried yet further in delicacy, and the next day further still, and so on until the end.
"And he insisted that it was as important to train the eye as the hand, that long accustoming oneself to seeing crude notes in Nature, spots of red, blue, and yellow in flesh where they are not, had harmed the eye, and the training to readjust the real, quiet, subtle note of Nature required long and patient study. 'To find the true note is the difficulty; it is comparatively easy to employ it when found.'
"He once said that had he been given at the commencement of his artistic career what he was then offering, his work would have been different. But he found in his youth no absolute definite facts, and he 'fell in a pit and floundered,' and from this he desired to save whom he could. 'All is so simple,' he would say, 'it is based on proved scientific facts; follow this teaching and you must learn to paint; not necessarily learn art, but, at least, absolutely learn to paint what you see.'
"He also demanded the student to abandon all former methods of teaching, unless in harmony with his own, and to approach the science as taught by himself in a simple and trustful manner.
"The students, used to having any little sketch praised, and finding such efforts remained unnoticed by Mr. Whistler, while an intelligent and careful, though to their eyes stupid, attempt to model in simple form and colour would receive approbation, grew irritated, and the majority left for a more congenial atmosphere.
"It was pointed out that a child, in the simple innocence of infancy, painting the red coat of the toy soldier red indeed, is in reality nearer the great truth than the most accomplished trickster with his clever brushwork and brilliant manipulation of many colours.
"'Distrust everything you have done without understanding it. It is not sufficient to achieve a fine piece of painting. You must know how you did it, that the next time you can do it again, and never have to suffer from that disastrous state of the clever artist, whose friends say to him, what a charming piece of painting, do not touch it again, and, although he knows it is incomplete, yet he dare not but comply, because he knows he might never get the same clever effect again.
"'Remember which of the colours you most employed, how you managed the turning of the shadow into the light, and if you do not remember scrape out your work and do it all over again, for one fact is worth a thousand misty imaginings. You must be able to do every part equally well, for the greatness of a work of art lies in the perfect harmony of the whole, not in the fine painting of one or more details.'
"It was many months before a student produced a canvas which showed a grasp of the science he had so patiently been explaining. Mr. Whistler delighted in this, and had the canvas placed on an easel and in a frame that he might more clearly point out to the other students the reason of its merit; it showed primarily an understanding of the two great principles; first, it represented a figure inside the frame and surrounded by the atmosphere of the studio, and secondly, it was created of one piece of flesh, simply but firmly painted and free from mark of brush. As the weeks went on, and the progress in this student's work continued, Mr. Whistler finally handed over to her [Mrs. Addams] the surveillance of the new-comers and the task of explaining to them the first principles of his manner.
"The Académie had the distinction of causing the rumour that something was being taught there, something definite and absolute.
"A large number of students who had been in the Académie for a short time and left, returned, dissatisfied with other schools, that they might once more satisfy themselves that nothing was to be learned there after all.
"Mr. Whistler allowed this to continue for some time, but finally, the fatigue of such constant changes caused him to issue an order that the Académie Carmen should be tried but once.
"The students in the men's life-class were constantly changing. On Christmas Day, Mr. Whistler invited them to visit him in his atelier and showed them many of his own canvases in various stages of completeness; explaining how certain results had been obtained, and how certain notes had been blended, and assuring them that he used the science he was teaching them, only that each student would arrange it according to his own needs as time went on, begging them not to hesitate to ask him any question that they wished, or to point out anything they failed to understand. There was an increased enthusiasm for a few weeks, but gradually the old spirit of misunderstanding and mistrust returned, and the men's class again contained but few students.
"Another disappointment to them was that Mr. Whistler explained when they showed him pictures they had painted with a hope to exploit as pupils of the Master in the yearly Salon, that this was impossible, that their complete understanding of the Great Principles and the fitting execution of their application could not be a matter of a few months' study, and he told them he was like a chemist who put drugs into bottles, and he certainly should not send those bottles out in his name unless he was quite satisfied with, and sure of, the contents.
"The last week of the first year arrived, and Mr. Whistler spent the whole of each morning at the Académie. The supervision of one student's work was so satisfactory that he communicated with her, after the closing of the Académie, to announce that he desired to enter into an apprenticeship with her, for a term of five years, as he considered it would take fully that time to teach her the whole of his Science and make of her a finished craftsman; with her artistic development he never for a moment pretended to interfere—'that,' he said, 'is or is not superb—it was determined at birth, but I can teach you how to paint.'
"So, on the 20th of July (1899), the Deed of Apprenticeship [with Mrs. Addams] was signed and legally witnessed, and she 'bound herself to her Master to learn the Art and Craft of a painter, faithfully to serve after the manner of an Apprentice for the full term of five years, his secrets keep and his lawful commands obey, she shall do no damage to his goods nor suffer it to be done by others, nor waste his goods, nor lend them unlawfully, nor do any act whereby he might sustain loss, nor sell to other painters nor exhibit during her apprenticeship nor absent herself from her said Master's service unlawfully, but in all things as a faithful Apprentice shall behave herself towards her said Master and others during the said term.... And the said Master, on his side, undertakes to teach and instruct her, or cause her to be taught and instructed. But if she commit any breach of these covenants he may immediately discharge her.'
"Into the hands of his Apprentice—also now the massière—Mr. Whistler gave the opening of the school the second year, sending all instructions to her from Pourville, where he was staying.
"Each new candidate for admission should submit an example of his or her work to the massière, and so prevent the introduction into the Académie of, first, those who were at present incompetent to place a figure in fair drawing upon the canvas; and secondly, those whose instruction in an adverse manner of painting had gone so far that their work would cause dissension and argument in the Académie. Unfortunately, this order was not well received by some, though the majority were willing to accede to any desire on the part of Mr. Whistler.
"A number absolutely refused to suffer any rule, and preferred to distrust what they could not understand, and the talk among the students of the Quartier was now in disparagement of the Académie.
"Compositions were never done in the school. It was so much more important to learn to paint and draw, for, as Mr. Whistler said, 'if ever you saw anything really perfectly beautiful, suppose you could not draw and paint!'—'The faculty for compositions is part of the artist, he has it, or he has it not—he cannot acquire it by study—he will only learn to adjust the composition of others, and, at the same time, he uses his faculty in every figure he draws, every line he makes, while in the large sense, composition may be dormant from childhood until maturity, and there it will be found in all its fresh vigour, waiting for the craftsman to use the mysterious quality in his adjustment of his perfect drawings to fit their spaces.'
"The third and last year (1900) of the Académie Carmen was marked at its commencement by the failure to open a men's life-class. Mr. Whistler had suffered so greatly during the preceding years from their inability to comprehend his principles and also from the short time the students remained in the school, that at the latter part of the season he often refused to criticise in the men's class at all. He would call sometimes on Sunday mornings and take out and place upon easels the various studies that had been done by the men the previous week, and often he would declare that nothing interested him among them and that he should not criticise that week, that he could not face the fatigue of the 'blankness' of the atelier.
"The Académie was opened in October 1900 by a woman's life-class which was well attended. The school had been moved to an old building in the Boulevard Montparnasse, but shortly after Mr. Whistler was taken very ill and he was forced to leave England on a long voyage. He wrote a letter to the students that never reached them, then, from Corsica, another, with his best wishes for the New Century, and his explanation of the doctor's abrupt orders. The Académie was kept open by the Apprentice until the end of March (1901), but the faith of the students seemed unable to bear further trials, and after great discontent at Mr. Whistler's continued absence and a gradual dwindling away of the students until there were but one or two left, the Apprentice wrote of this to Mr. Whistler."
Whistler wrote from Ajaccio a formal letter of dismissal to the few students left, kissing the tips of their rosy fingers, bidding them Godspeed and stating the case that history might be made. The reading of the letter by the massière in the atelier closed the school, and an experiment to which Whistler brought enthusiasm, only to meet from the average student the distrust the average artist had shown him all his life. One of the last things he did before the close was to make an apprentice also of Mr. Clifford Addams, the one man who remained faithful. And in his case, too, a Deed of Apprenticeship was drawn up and signed.
The story of the Académie is carried on in the following letter from Mr. Frederick MacMonnies, concerning his connection with it:
"... I had always heard so much about his being impossible, but the more I saw of him the more I realised that anyone who could quarrel with him must be written down an ass.
"An instance of his rare straightforwardness and frankness in friendship occurred in the Carmen School. He used to come up to my studio just before breakfast, and we would go off to Lavenue's or the Café du Cardinal.
"One morning he said he had a great affair on hand. Carmen was going to open the school and he had agreed to teach, a thing he had always said was shocking, useless, and encouragement of incapables. He suggested I help him out with teaching the sculptor pupils and the drawing, so I gladly agreed.
"All the schools in Paris were deserted immediately, and the funny little studios of Carmen's place were packed with all kinds of boys and girls, mostly Americans, who had tried all styles of teaching.
"Mr. Whistler, having a full sense of a picturesque grande entrée, did not appear until the school was in full swing about a week after the opening, and until the pupils had passed the palpitating stage and were in a dazed state of expectancy and half collapsed into nervous prostration. The various samples of such awaiting him represented the methods of almost every teacher in Paris.
"He arrived, gloves and cane in hand, and enjoyed every minute of his stay, daintily and gaily touching very weighty matters. A few days after his arrival I went to the school and found the entire crew painting as black as a hat—delicate, rose-coloured pearly models translated into mulattoes, a most astonishing transformation. As time went on the blackness increased. Finally, one day, I suggested to one of the young women who was particularly dreary, to tone her study up. She informed me she saw it so. I took her palette and keyed the figure into something like the delicate and brilliant colouring, much to her disgust. When I had finished, she informed me, 'Mr. Whistler told me to paint it that way.' I told her she had misunderstood, that he had never meant her to paint untrue. Several criticisms among the men of the same sort of thing, and I left.
"Of course, all this was carried to Whistler, and a few days later after breakfast, over his coffee, he waved his cigarette towards me and said, 'Now, my dear MacMonnies, I like you—and I am going to talk to you the way your mother does (he used to play whist in Paris with my mother, and they made a most amusing combination). Now, you see, I have always believed there has been something radically wrong with all this teaching that has been going on in Paris all these years in Julian's and the rest. I decided years ago the principle was false. They give the young things men's food when they require pap. My idea is to give them three or four colours—let them learn to model and paint the form and line first until they are strong enough to use others. If they become so, well and good; if not, let them sink out of sight.' I suggested the doubt that their eyes might in this way be trained to see wrong. No, he did not agree with that. Anyway, I apologised, and said I was a presuming and meddlesome ass, and if I had known he was running his school on a system, I would have remained silent. If you could have seen the charming manner, the frank kindness and friendly spirit with which he undertook to remonstrate, you would understand how much I admired his generous spirit.
"Few men under the circumstances (I being very much his junior) would not have made a great row and got upon their high horses, and we would have quit enemies.
"Later, I found that the sculptor pupils did not arrive in droves to be taught by me, and the drawing criticisms unnecessary, as the school had become a tonal modelling school and my criticisms superfluous. I proposed to Mr. Whistler that I was de trop, and that it could only be properly done by him. He agreed and I left.
"M. Rodin (or his friends) wished to take my place, but Mr. Whistler, I heard, said he could not under any circumstances have anyone replace MacMonnies, as it might occasion comment unfavourable to me. Now I consider that one of the rarest of friendly actions, as I knew he would not have objected to Rodin otherwise.
"A canny, croaking friend of mine, who hated Whistler and never lost an opportunity of misquoting and belittling him, dropped in at my house a few nights after my resignation from the school, quite full up with croaks of delight that we had fallen out, as he supposed, and that the row he had long predicted had finally come. I laughed it off, and after dinner a familiar knock, and who should be ushered in but Mr. Whistler, asking my mother to play another game of whist.
"A rather amusing thing occurred in my studio.
"A rich and spread-eagle young American got into a tussle of wits with Whistler—neither had met before (Whistler, however, knew and liked his brother)—on the advantage of foreign study and life abroad.
