ROSE AND GOLD LITTLE LADY SOPHIE OF SOHO
OIL
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art
He intended to paint an Eve, an Odalisque, a Bathsheba, and a Danaë, the designs to be enlarged on canvas by his apprentices, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Addams, but this was never done. Suggestions were in the pastels of figures, for which he found the perfect model in London. When not in the studio, he kept sketching her from memory, and he was in despair when she married and went to some remote colony, but before she went he gave her some beautiful silver. These pastels are many and perfect. They are drawings on brown paper—studies or impressions of the model in infinite poses. In some she stands with her filmy draperies floating about her or falling in long, straight folds to her feet; in others she lies upon a couch, indolent and lovely; she dances across the paper, she bends over a great bowl, she sits with her slim legs crossed and a cup of tea in her hand, she holds a fan or a flower; but whatever she may be doing or however she may rest, she is but another expression of the beauty that haunted Whistler, the beauty that was the inspiration of the Harmonies in White and the Six Projects. Many poses are suggested in lithographs, etchings, and water-colours; none show greater tenderness than when she returned with her child. He put his own tenderness into the encircling hands of the mother holding the baby on her knee, he found the most rhythmic lines when, standing, she balanced herself to clasp the child the more closely to her. Nothing could be slighter than the means by which the effect is produced, the figures drawn in black upon the brown paper, the colour—blue, or rose, or violet—suggested in the gauzy draperies or the cap or handkerchief knotted about the curls. But they have the exquisiteness of Tanagra figures and are as complete.
All this work was done with feverish concern about mediums and materials and methods He usually sat now as he worked, and he wore spectacles, sometimes two pairs, one over the other. He was never so thoughtful in the preparation of his colours and his canvas. At last the knowledge was coming to him, he said again and again. And he was never more successful in obtaining the unity and harmony he had always sought, in hiding the labour by which it was obtained, and in giving to his painting the beauty of surface he prized so highly. Because in painting he tried to carry on the same subject, the same tradition, superficial critics accused him of repeating himself, or mistook his later for earlier works, like the critic of the Times who, in writing of his pictures at the International Society's Exhibition of 1898, referred to "old works ... among which The Little Blue Bonnet is the least known," a remark Whistler printed in the édition de luxe of the catalogue, with the explanation that the painting had come "fresh from the easel to its first exhibition," and that therefore "the 'plain man' is, once more, profoundly right, and we see again the advantage of memory over mere artistic instinct in the critic." The small portraits and marines of the nineties are as fine as anything he ever did. The fact that for all these pictures he used frames of the same size and the same design helped—unintentionally on his part—to confuse critics accustomed to the flamboyant vulgarity, utter inappropriateness, and complete indifference to scale in the frames of most painters. But then there are not half a dozen painters in a generation who have the faintest idea of decoration. Whistler, Puvis de Chavannes, and John La Farge are almost the only decorators whose names may be mentioned among moderns. Though some of Whistler's portraits are more elaborate, not one is more powerful or more masterly as a study of character, and therefore more individual, than The Master Smith of Lyme Regis. When it is contrasted with The Little Rose, the embodiment of simple, sweet, healthy childhood, and The Little Lady Sophie of Soho and Lillie in our Alley, the sickly atmosphere of the slums reflected in their strange beauty, and these again with the exuberant colour and life of Carmen, there can be no question of the variety in Whistler's later work, though a certain manner, that might have grown into mannerism, became more marked. There was a similarity in the general design. Most were heads and half-lengths, and, except in the finest, nose, eyes, and mouth were alike in character, and hands were badly drawn and clumsily put in. The colour was beautiful and he exulted in it, but at the very last he must have known as well as anybody that his power of work was leaving him.
Whistler spent the summer of 1898 chiefly in London, going first to Mr. Heinemann's at Whitehall Court, then to Garlant's Hotel. The delightful evenings of the year before began again for us, and there was a fresh interest for him in the war between the United States and Spain. "It was a wonderful and beautiful war," he thought, "the Spaniards were gentlemen," and his pockets were filled with newspaper clippings to prove it. If we pointed out a blunder on the part of our soldiers, if we gave chance a share in our victories, he was furious:
"Why say if any but Spaniards had been at the top of San Juan, we never would have got there? Why question the if? The facts are all that count. No fight could be more beautifully managed. I am telling you! I, a West Point man, know. What if Cervera did get whipped? What if he was pulled up from the sea looking like a wad of cotton that had been soaked in an ink-bottle? What of it? Didn't the whole United States Navy, headed by the admirals, receive him as the Commander of the Spanish Fleet should be received?"
He was going out more and seeing more people. But his interest in society was less, and evidently he preferred the quiet of the evenings with us. Chance encounters in our flat were often an entertainment. One we recall most vividly was with Frederick Sandys, whom he had not met for thirty years. Sandys was with us in the late afternoon when Whistler knocked his exaggerated postman's knock that could not be mistaken, followed by the resounding peal of the bell. They gave each other a chilly recognition and sat down. Sandys was agitated, but there was no escape. Whistler looked like Boldini's portrait, but soon they began to talk, and they talked till the early hours of the morning as if they were back at Rossetti's, Sandys in the white waistcoat with gold buttons, but bent with age, Whistler straight and erect, but wrinkled and grey.
He returned to Paris late in the autumn, settling there for the winter. Except for his attacks of illness, there was but one interruption to his work. Mr. Heinemann was married at Porto d'Anzio in February 1899, and Whistler went to Italy as best man. This was his only visit to Rome. He was disappointed. To us he described the city as "a bit of an old ruin alongside of a railway station where I saw Mrs. Potter Palmer." And he added:
"Rome was awful—a hard sky all the time, a glaring sun and a strong wind. After I left the railway station, there were big buildings more like Whiteley's than anything I expected in the Eternal City. St. Peter's was fine, with its great yellow walls, the interior too big, perhaps, but you had only got to go inside to know where Wren got his ideas—how he, well, you know, robbed Peter's to build Paul's! And I liked the Vatican, the Swiss Guards, great big fellows, lolling about, as in Dumas; they made you think of D'Artagnan, Aramis, and the others. And Michael Angelo? A tremendous fellow, yes; the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, interesting as pictures, but with all the legs and arms of the figures sprawling everywhere, I could not see the decoration. There can be no decoration without repose; a tremendous fellow, but not so much in the David and other things I was shown in Rome and Florence as in that one unfinished picture at the National Gallery. There is often elegance in the loggie of Raphael, but the big frescoes of the stanze did not interest me."
Velasquez's portrait of Innocent X. in the Doria Palace he, apparently, did not see.
During the journey to Porto d'Anzio, Princess ——, one of the wedding guests, who heard vaguely that Whistler was an artist, inquired of him:
"Monsieur fait de la peinture, n'est-ce pas?"
"Oui, Princesse."
"On me l'avait dit. Moi aussi, j'en fais, Monsieur."
"Charmant, Princesse, nous sommes des collègues."
On the way back from Rome Whistler stopped at Florence, and of his stay there Mr. J. Kerr-Lawson wrote us the account:
"The McNeill has been here and just gone—we had him lightly on our hands all day yesterday.
"We didn't 'do' Florence, for there was a fierce glaring sun and a horrible Tramontana raging, so we spent the best of the morning trying to write a letter in the rococo manner to the Syndic of Murano quite unsuccessfully. [This was after the awards in the Venice International Exhibition.]
"After luncheon I took him down to the Uffizi. We seemed to be the only people rash enough to brave the awful wind, for we saw no one in the Gallery but a frozen Guardia. He—poor fellow—was brushed aside by a magnificent and truly awe-inspiring gesture as we approached that battered and begrimed portrait in which Velasquez still looks out upon the world which he has mastered with an expression of superbly arrogant scorn in the Portrait Gallery.
"It was a dramatic moment—the flat-brimmed chapeau de haut forme came off with a grand sweep and was deposited on a stool, and then the Master, standing back about six feet from the picture and drawing himself up to much more than his own full natural height, with his left hand upon his breast and the right thrust out magisterially, exclaimed, 'Quelle allure!' Then you should have seen him. After the solemn act of homage, when he had resumed his hat, we relaxed considerably over the lesser immortals of this crazy and incongruous Valhalla—what an ill-assorted company! How did they all get together? Liotard, the Swiss, jostles Michael Angelo, Giuseppe MacPherson rubs shoulders with Titian, Herkomer hangs beside Ingres, and Poynter is a pendant to Sir Joshua. There are the greatest and the least, the noblest and the meanest brought together by the capricious folly of succeeding directors and harmonised by that touch of vanity that makes the whole world kin.
"One wonders whom they will ask next. Certainly not Whistler. They knew quite well he was here, but not the slightest notice was taken of him. En revanche, every now and then some vulgar mediocrity passes this way, and then the foolish Florentines are lavish with their laurels."
Whistler had not been long dead when J. received an inspired letter from Florence asking him if he could obtain Whistler's portrait for the Uffizi. His answer was that had they appreciated Whistler they might have asked him while he was alive, but as they had not had the sense or the courage to do so, they had better apply to his executrix. As yet there is no portrait of Whistler in the Uffizi.
After absences from his studio Whistler discovered again that pictures and prints were disappearing. It worried him, and he tried to trace and recover them. We have little doubt that, at times, Whistler lost prints through his carelessness. We know that once his method of drying his etchings between sheets of blotting paper thrown on the floor was disastrous. One morning an artist came to see us bringing a number of beautiful proofs of the second Venice Set, in sheets of blotting paper as he had bought them from an old rag and paper man in Red Lion Passage, who thought they could be no good because the margins were cut down and so sold them for a shilling apiece. The artist admitted that he did not care for them, and we offered him half-a-crown. "Oh," he said, "as you are willing to give that, now I shall find out what they are really worth." He got sixty pounds for them, but several of the prints separately have since sold for much more. Accidents like this would account for some of the things Whistler thought were stolen. A few works that had disappeared were recovered during his lifetime. But shortly after his death there was a sale at the Hôtel Drouot in which missing paintings, drawings, plates, prints, and even letters were dispersed. Only those who were near him can realise how much this troubled and annoyed him during his last years. At the same time he began to suffer from another of the evils of success. Pictures, somewhat resembling his and attributed to him appeared at auctions, and others were sent to him for identification or signature by persons who had purchased them. If he knew beforehand that one of these fakes was coming up in the auction-room, he would send and try to stop the sale, or, if submitted to him, he would not give it back. Neither expedient met with marked success. At present there is a factory of Whistlers in full operation, while oils and water-colours and drawings ascribed to him without the slightest reason have been openly sold at auction, despite the protests made against such swindles.
Whistler could not stay long from London, and the early summer of 1899 saw him back at Garlant's and visiting Mr. Heinemann at Weybridge. He was in town for the sequel to the Eden affair. He heard that, on July 15, there was to be a sale of Sir William Eden's pictures at Christie's. He went to it and came to us afterwards.
"Really, it has been beautiful. I know you will enjoy it. It occurred to me in the morning—the Baronet's sale to-day—h'm—the Butterfly should see how things are going! And I went home, and I changed my morning dress, my dandy straw hat, and then, very correct and elegant, I sauntered down King Street into Christie's. At the top of the stairway someone spoke to me. 'Well, you know, my dear friend,' I said, 'I do not know who you are, but you shall have the honour of taking me in.' And on his arm I walked into the big room. The auctioneer was crying, 'Going! Going! Thirty shillings! Going!' 'Ha ha!' I laughed—not loudly, not boisterously, it was very delicately, very neatly done. But the room was electrified. Some of the henchmen were there; they grow rigid, afraid to move afraid to glance my way out of the corners of their eyes. 'Twenty shillings! Going!' the auctioneer would cry. 'Ha ha!' I would laugh, and things went for nothing and the henchman trembled. Louis Fagan came across the room to speak to me—Fagan, representing the British Museum, as it were, was quite the most distinguished man there. And now, having seen how things were, I took Fagan's arm. 'You,' I said, 'may have the honour of taking me out.'"
He dined with us the next evening and found Mr. Harry Wilson, whose brother-in-law, Mr. Sydney Morse, was the friend upon whose arm Whistler had entered the auction-room. Mr. Wilson was full of the story, and confirmed the "electric shock" when Whistler appeared.
He ran over to Holland once during the summer. Part of the time he was at Pourville, near Dieppe, where he had taken a house for Miss Birnie Philip and her mother. The sea was on the right side at Dieppe, of which he never tired; at Madame Lefèvre's restaurant he could get as good a breakfast as in Paris; and many small marines, oils, and water-colours were done before bad weather drove him away.
Though it is not always easy to identify the place or the time to which his small marines belong, for they cover a number of years, probably more were made at Dieppe than anywhere else. When he did not care to work from the shore there were boatmen who would take him out beyond the breakers, where he could get the effect he wished at the height above the water that suited him. He used to be seen calmly painting away in a dancing row-boat, the boatman holding it as steadily as he could. There is as much of the bigness of the ocean in these little paintings, which show usually only the grey or blue or green, but ever recurring, swell of the wave, or a quiet sea with two or three sails on the horizon, as in any big marines that ever were painted. He explained his method to his apprentice, Mrs. Addams. When the wave broke and the surf made a beautiful line of white, he painted this at once, then all that completed the beauty of the breaking wave, then the boat passing, and then, having got the movement and the beauty that goes almost as soon as it comes, he put in the shore or the horizon.
In Paris, during the winter of 1899-1900, he took two small rooms at the Hôtel Chatham, where the last three years he had often stayed, afraid to risk the dampness of the Rue du Bac. But they were inner rooms with no light and scarcely any ventilation, though most swell and more expensive, unless, perhaps, the lady who used to come to massage him was included. He had fewer friends in Paris than in London, and he was often lonely. He would go to see Drouet and say, "Tu sais, je suis ennuyé." And Drouet, to amuse him, would get up little dinners, at which all who were left of the old group of students met again. One was given in honour of Becquet, whom Whistler had etched almost half a century before. A wreath of laurels was prepared. During dinner Drouet said he had met many great men, but, pour la morale, none greater than Becquet, who was moved to tears, and the laurel wreath was offered to him by Whistler, and Becquet fairly broke down; he "would hang it on the walls of his studio, always to have it before him," he said.
Once Drouet took Whistler to the fair at Neuilly, made him ride in a merry-go-round. Whistler lost his hat, dropped his eye-glass. "What would London journalists say if they could see me now?" he asked. They generally dined at Beaujé's, in the Passage des Panoramas, to which Drouet and other artists, literary men, and barristers went. Whistler renewed his intimacy with Oulevey, whom he had barely seen since the early Paris days. Madame Oulevey's memories are, above all, of Whistler's dining with them in the Passage des Favorites at the other end of the Rue Vaugirard, when he wore his pumps and, a storm coming up and not a cab to be found in their quarter, and they had to keep him for hours. His pumps left an impression on Drouet, too, who was sure it was because Whistler wore them by day and could not walk in them that he was so often seen driving through the streets in a cab. And he seemed so tired then, Drouet said, half the time lying back, fast asleep. Fantin, the most intimate of his early associates, he met but once and then by chance.
In February news came of the death of his brother, Doctor Whistler. Alexander Harrison writes us:
"I chanced to call upon him half an hour after he had received the news and, with a quivering voice and tears in his eyes, he told me that he considered me a friend and told me his sad loss and asked me to dine with him."
The two brothers had been devoted since boyhood, and Whistler felt the Doctor's death acutely. It made him the more ready to rejoin his friends in London, and two months later found him staying with Mr. Heinemann, who had moved from Whitehall Court to Norfolk Street.
There E. dined to meet him the evening after his arrival. Mr. Arthur Symons gives, in his Studies in Seven Arts, his impression of the dinner, and of Whistler:
"I never saw anyone so feverishly alive as this little old man, with his bright withered cheeks, over which a skin was drawn tightly, his darting eyes, under their prickly bushes of eyebrow, his fantastically creased black and white curls of hair, his bitter and subtle mouth, and, above all, his exquisite hands, never at rest."
