PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE
ARRANGEMENT IN GREY AND BLACK. NO. II
OIL
In the Corporation Art Gallery, Glasgow
"It would not be quite correct to say that Mr. Whistler designed the decorations of my house, because it is one of the old Adam houses in Adelphi Terrace, and it contained the original Adam ceiling in the drawing-room and a number of the old Adam mantelpieces, which Mr. Whistler much admired, as he did also some of the cornices, doors and other things. What he did do was to design a colour-scheme for the house, and he mixed the colours for distempering the walls in each case, leaving only the painters to apply them. In this way he got the exact shade he wanted, which made all the difference, as I think the difficulty in getting any painting satisfactorily done is that painters simply have their stock shades which they show you to choose from, and none of them seem to be the kind of shades that Mr. Whistler managed to achieve by the mixing of his ingredients. He distempered the whole of the staircase light pink; the dining-room a different and deeper shade; the library he made one of those yellows he had in his drawing-room at the Vale, a sort of primrose which seemed as if the sun was shining, however dark the day, and he painted the woodwork with it green, but not like the ordinary painters' green at all. He followed the same scheme in the other rooms. His idea was to make the house gay and delicate in colour."
When he left No. 2 Lindsey Row he suggested the colour arrangement throughout the house for the new tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Morse, got his man Cossens to do the distempering, and, Mrs. Morse writes us, "was so afraid that we should do it wrongly that he personally superintended the work and mixed the colour himself, though in consequence of this a whole wash for the dining-room was spoilt, as he forgot to stir it up at the right moment. There was great discussion about gold size."
To decoration Whistler applied his scientific method of painting, and on his walls, as in his pictures, black was often the basis. Colour for him was as much decoration as pattern was for William Morris, and in the use of flat colour for wall decoration Whistler has triumphed. His theory of interior decoration, though people do not realise it, has been universally adopted, even his use of distemper, in which he was only carrying on the beautiful tradition of whitewashing walls. Not only can this simple scheme be made more appropriate as a background than Morris' hangings and stencillings, but it has the virtue of utility and cheapness, which Morris for ever preached but never practised. In the painting of pictures, the idea of the Pre-Raphaelites was decoration—that is, convention. Their decoration was either wilfully or ignorantly founded on the realism of the Middle Ages. The great decorators of Italy were the realists of their day, their realism, except in the case of the greatest, Piero della Francesca, is now regarded as convention, and it is the Pre-Raphaelites who stirred up these dead bones. In France, Puvis de Chavannes developed Italian methods, adapting them to modern subjects and modern wants, retaining the convention of flatness and simplicity. Whistler believed that a portrait or a Nocturne should be as decorative as a conventional design; that, by the arrangement of his subjects, and by their colour, they should be made decorative, and not by conventional setting and conventional lines. He also believed that walls should be in flat tones and not covered with pattern. Pictures then placed upon them were shown properly and did not struggle with the pattern. Lady Archibald Campbell writes us a few lines proving that he could make people understand his aims when they were willing to learn from him:
"The fundamental principles of decorative art with which Whistler impressed me, related to the necessity of applying scientific methods to the treatment of all decorative work; that to produce harmonious effects in line and colour grouping, the whole plan or scheme should have to be thoroughly thought out so as to be finished before it was practically begun. I think he proved his saying to be true, that the fundamental principles of decorative art, as in all art, are based on laws as exact as those of the known sciences. He concluded that what the knowledge of a fundamental base has done for music, a similarly demonstrative method must do for painting. The musical vocabulary which he used to distinguish his creations always struck me as singularly appropriate, though he had no knowledge of music."
Before the Ruskin case came into court, the idea of opening an atelier for students occurred to Whistler, and it was because the painting-room at No. 2 Lindsey Row was too small that he asked Godwin to build the house, ever since known as the White House, in Tite Street. Up to this time he had never had a studio in Chelsea. His pictures had been painted in rooms without a top-light, partly, no doubt, that he might paint his sitters under natural conditions. Even in his later studios of the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs in Paris, and Fitzroy Street in London, shades and screens were drawn so that the light might come in as from an ordinary window. He was trying to put the figure into the atmosphere that surrounded it, not to cut it out of this atmosphere. But he needed more space for the atelier , which promised success. Among artists, there were always a few who believed in Whistler. Duranty only expressed the prevailing feeling when, in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1878), he referred to Whistler's influence on British painters represented in the Universal Exhibition.
The White House, low, three-storeyed, simple in ornament, is modest compared to many houses in Tite Street. It has been much changed, but the general plan survives. When it was built, it shared the fate, of everything associated with Whistler. The white brick of the walls, the green slate of the roof, the stone facings, the blue door and woodwork were as "eccentric" and "fantastic" as Whistler himself to art-critical journalists. To architectural papers they were the cause of debate and calling of names. To the Metropolitan Board of Works the simplicity of design was suspiciously plain, and mouldings in specified places were insisted upon in return for the licence to build. Discussion followed discussion, because the studio was the most important feature of the interior and placed at the top of the house, because windows and doors were made where they were wanted "and not with Baker Street regularity," because Godwin and Whistler liked the lovely effect of the green tiles with the white walls. Harry Quilter, who bought the house in 1879 and altered it, probably ruined the colour-scheme which Whistler had arranged, and the interior decoration, if it was ever carried out, does not now exist.
Whistler's tenancy of the Lindsey Row house came to an end on June 25 (1878), but he could not leave it in time for the new tenants. He did not get out of the studio until October. It was surprising that he moved at all. The moment was one of debts and difficulties. He was alone. His mother was ill at Hastings, he had just broken his engagement with Leyland's sister-in-law,[7] and he had quarrelled with Leyland. The criticism of the last few years told severely upon the sale of his pictures—upon himself. Howell, who had "started cheques and orders flying about" and attended to business details, kept a diary during part of 1877 and all of 1878. To look through it is to share Whistler's indignation that so great an artist should be reduced to such shifts. In Kensington and St. John's Wood palaces, Academicians could not turn pictures out fast enough for the competing crowd;
Whistler was often compelled to borrow a few shillings. There are legends of his taking a hansom and driving to find somebody to lend him half a crown to pay for it, and before he had found anybody and could get rid of the cab the fare had mounted to half a guinea. Howell's diary shows that he had to raise money before he could lend it to Whistler. Sometimes larger sums than he could manage were arranged by Anderson Rose, Whistler's patron and solicitor. As "ill and worried," Howell describes Whistler on one of the visits to Mr. Rose, and there was every reason he should be. A Mr. Blott figures in other transactions. Whistler's letters to him have been sold and published, and it would be useless to ignore their relations. Money for the White House had to be obtained. To Mr. Blott he gave his Carlyle as security for a hundred and fifty pounds, agreeing to pay interest, offering other pictures as security if a sum of four hundred could be advanced. Cheques were protested, writs were threatened. The pictures he could not sell went wandering about as hostages. The Mother for awhile was with Mrs. Noseda, the Strand printseller. We have heard that she would have sold it for a hundred pounds. Mr. Rawlinson, who saw it either there or at Mr. Graves', has told us that nobody could have bought it under such circumstances, after having seen it in Whistler's bedroom, where it had hung and been shown by him with reverence. When Whistler heard that Mrs. Noseda was offering the picture for this price, he is said to have gone at once to remonstrate, and by his vehemence to have made her ill.
One man who helped him through these troubled times was Henry Graves, head of the firm in Pall Mall. Graves, introduced to Whistler by Howell, agreed to engrave the portrait of Carlyle in mezzotint, and Howell bought the copyright of the engraving from Whistler for eighty pounds and six proofs. W. Josey was commissioned to make the plate. Three hundred signed proofs of a first state were to be printed. The plate would not stand so large an edition; it was steel-faced and, as the steel-facing of mezzotint was not possible, turned out a failure. The attempt to remove the steel ruined the ground, and Josey had to be called in to go over it again. In the first state, the floor was perfectly smooth, but, the steel-facing taken off, a spot appeared in the plate which never could be got out and remained there through the edition. After every seventy proofs printed, Josey had to work on the plate and bring it back, as well as he could, to its original condition. Whistler did not like the first proofs and offered to show the printers how to do them. Mr. A. Graves went with him to Holdgate's, the printer, in London Street. Whistler brought his own ink, put on an apron, inked the plate as he would an etched one, while the whole shop looked on. When the plate, wiped and ready, was put through the press, it came out a shadow, the ink being far too weak. Whistler did not try a second time. Mr. Graves preserved the proof, writing on it that Whistler pulled it, and sold it for three guineas, to whom he does not remember. Eventually Whistler was satisfied, for Howell, on December 2, 1878, gave Whistler what he calls his first proof, and the diary says: "Whistler and the Doctor were delighted." It is also recorded in the diary that one of Whistler's six proofs was sold to Lord Beaconsfield.
