STUDY
LITHOTINT.
From a print lent by T. R. Way, Esq.
One evening in 1883, after a private view, Whistler and Duret were talking over the pictures they had seen, and in discussing the portrait of the President of some society, Whistler declared that red robes of office were not in character with modern heads, and that a man should be painted in the costume of his time, and he asked Duret to pose to him that he might show what could be done with evening dress, the despair of painters. The experiment was not so original as Duret seemed to think. Leyland was painted in this way ten years before, when Whistler proved the truth of Baudelaire's assertion that the great colourist can get colour from a black coat, a white shirt, against a dark background. Sir Henry Cole also posed in evening dress. Whistler did not rely entirely upon so simple a scheme in his portrait of Duret, who has a pink domino over his arm, a red fan in his hand. His portrait is called Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Black.
M. Duret describes Whistler at work. He marked slightly with chalk the place for the figure on the canvas, and began at once to put it in, in colour; at the end of the first sitting the scheme was there. This was the method that delighted Whistler. The difficulty with him was not to begin a portrait, but to finish it. The painting was brought almost to completion, rubbed out, begun again, and repainted ten times. Duret saw that it was a question not only of drawing, but of colour, of tone, and understood Whistler's theory that to bring the whole into harmony and preserve it the whole must be repainted as a whole, if there was any repainting to be done. There are finer portraits, but not many that show so well Whistler's meaning when he said that colour is "the arrangement of colour." The rose of the domino, the fan, and the flesh is so managed that the cold grey of the background seems to be flushed with rose. Duret, when he showed the picture, took a sheet of paper, cut a hole in it, and placed it against the background, to prove that the grey, when surrounded by white, is pure and cold without a touch of rose, and that Whistler got his effect by his knowledge of the relation of colour and his mastery of tone.
The Lady Meux—Black and White went to the Salon of 1882, catalogued as Portrait de M. Harry—Men, to the confusion of commentators. The Harmony in Flesh Colour and Pink was shown at the Grosvenor with Nocturne in Blue and Silver, Scherzo in Blue—The Blue Girl, Nocturne in Black and Gold—Southampton Water, Harmony in Black and Red, Note in Black and Opal—Jersey, Blue and Brown—San Brelade's Bay. The Times was unable to decide whether Whistler was making fun of them or whether something was wrong with his eyes. The Pall Mall regretted that "if the Lady Meux was full of fine and subtle qualities of drawing, the Scherzo in Blue [Miss Waller] was the sketch of a scarecrow in a blue dress without form and void. It is very difficult to believe that Mr. Whistler is not openly laughing at us when he holds up before us such a piece as this. His counterpart in Paris, the eccentric M. Manet, has at least more sincerity than to exhibit his work in such an imperfect condition."
But Whistler now had defenders. An "Art Student" wrote the next day to the Pall Mall to point out that "at the private, and therefore, presumably, the Press, view, The Blue Girl was seen in an unfinished state, having been sent there merely to take up its space on the wall. It was removed immediately, and has been since finished. Had the critic seen it since he would hardly have called it without form and void. The want of artistic sincerity is certainly the last charge that can be brought against a man who has followed his artistic intention with such admirable and unswerving singleness of purpose."
From this time onward Whistler no longer fought his battles alone.
Eighteen eighty-two was the year of The Paddon Papers. Mr. Cole noted in his diary: "September 24. To Jimmy's. He lent me proof of his Paddon and Howell correspondence. Amusing, but too personal for general interest." We agree with Mr. Cole. There were complications of no importance with Howell, in which Paddon, a diamond merchant, figured, and complications over a Chinese cabinet which Mr. Morse bought from Whistler when he moved from No. 2 Lindsey Row. For long Mr. Morse had only the lower part, while Howell kept the top. Whistler, who thought nothing concerning him trivial, published this correspondence in a pamphlet, called The Paddon Papers: The Owl and the Cabinet, interesting now only because it is rare and because it was the end of all relations between himself and Howell.
In the early winter of 1883 Whistler gave the second exhibition of his Venetian etchings at the Fine Art Society's. The prints, fifty-one in number, included several London subjects. He decorated the gallery in white and yellow. The wall was white with yellow hangings, the floor was covered with pale yellow matting and the couches with pale yellow serge. The cane-bottomed chairs were painted yellow. There were yellow flowers in yellow pots, a white and yellow livery for the attendant, and white and yellow Butterflies for his friends. At the private view Whistler wore yellow socks just showing above his shoes, and the assistants wore yellow neckties. He prepared the catalogue; the brown paper cover, form, and size now established. He printed after each number a quotation from the critics of the past, and on the title-page, "Out of their own mouths shall ye judge them." A friend who looked over the proofs for him writes us:
"We came to 'there is merit in them, and I do not wish to understand it.' [A quotation from the article in the Nineteenth Century which Sir Frederick Wedmore must wish could be forgotten.] Jimmy yelled with joy, and thanked the printer for his intelligent misreading of understate. 'I think we will let that stand as it is,' he said. I was amused at the private view to see him discussing the question with Wedmore, who, naturally, did not think it quite fair."
Before the show opened it was, Whistler told us, "Well, you know, a source of constant anxiety to everybody and of fun to me. On the ladder, when I was hanging the prints, I could hear whispers: no one would be able to see the etchings! And then I would laugh, 'Dear me, of course not! that's all right. In an exhibition of etchings the etchings are the last things people come to see!' And then there was the private view, and I had my box of wonderful little Butterflies, and I distributed them only among the select few, so that, naturally, everybody was eager to be decorated. And when the crowd was greatest Royalty appeared, quite unprecedented at a private view, and the crowd was hustled into another room while the Prince and Princess of Wales went round the gallery, looking at everything, the Prince chuckling over the catalogue. 'I say, Mr. Whistler, what is this?' he asked when he came to the Nocturne—Palaces. 'I am afraid you are very malicious, Mr. Whistler,' the Princess said."
Those who received the little Butterflies thought them charming. Mrs. Marzetti writes us:
"I have a few treasures which I guard most jealously; one is the golden Butterfly that he made us wear at the private view of his exhibition in Bond Street, in the original little card box in which he sent them (three I think) to mother, with a message written on the lid, and signed with his Butterfly."
The public laughed. They thought the Butterflies added to the screaming farce, the foppery of the whole thing. The attendant in yellow and white livery was called the poached egg. The catalogue was worse. Poor Wedmore and the others could hardly like to have their blunders and blindness immortalised. Most of them made the best of it by refusing to see in him anything but the jester. His humour was compared to Mark Twain's, and he to Barnum, and the show was "excruciatingly agreeable." Some honestly thought his work rubbish, and found his last little joke dull without being cheap. Their ridicule has become ridiculous. As for Whistler's etchings, the price of the series of Twelve, as of the Twenty-Six issued a year or so later in which many of these prints were published, was fifty guineas; on May 27, 1908, the single print Nocturne—Palaces sold in Paris for one hundred and sixty-eight guineas, and we have been offered two hundred pounds for our Traghetto. The etchings were also shown in decorated rooms in Boston and Philadelphia.
For the exhibitions of 1883 he had no new work, but sent two earlier Nocturnes to the Grosvenor and to the Salon the Mother, and was awarded a third-class medal, the only recompense he ever received at the Salon. In the winter of 1883-84 he worked a great deal out of doors, spending many weeks at St. Ives, Cornwall. He took no interest in landscape; "there were too many trees in the country," he said. But he loved the sea, from the days of The Blue Wave at Biarritz and The Shores of Brittany until one of the last summers when he painted at Domburg, in Holland. The Cornish sketches were sent to his show of Notes, Harmonies, Nocturnes, at Dowdeswell's Gallery in May 1884, the first exhibition in which he included many water-colours. The medium had been difficult to him; now he was its master. He used it to record subjects as characteristic of London as the subject of his pastels were of Venice. There were also studies and sketches in Holland, for he was always running about again. The interest of the catalogue was in the preface, L'Envoie he called it, and was so laughed at not only for the place he gave it, but for the spelling, that he searched the dictionaries, and then declared, we cannot say with what authority, that envoie means some sort of snake. "Ha ha! that's it! Venom!" he said. The Envoie, without his explanation, is interesting, for it consists of the Propositions No. 2, which have become famous: that a picture is finished when all traces of the means that produced it have disappeared; that industry in art is a necessity, not a virtue; that the work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the brow; that the masterpiece should appear as the flower of the painter, perfect in its bud as in its bloom. He decorated the gallery: delicate rose on the walls, white dado, white chairs, and pale azaleas in rose-flushed jars. The Butterfly, tinted in rose, was on the card of invitation. The Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey was as little appreciated as the Yellow and White in 1883; to the critics it was a new affectation.
There were signs of appreciation when, in 1884, Whistler sent the Carlyle to the Loan Exhibition of Scottish National Portraits at Edinburgh, where it created an impression. There had been attempts to sell the picture. M. Duret tried to interest an Irish collector, who, however, did not dare to buy it. It was offered to Mr. Scharfe, director of the British National Portrait Gallery, who not only refused to consider the offer, but laughed at the idea that "such work should pass for painting." The first endeavour to secure it for a national collection came from George R. Halkett, who urged its purchase for the Scottish National Gallery in the Scotsman (October 6, 1884). He was supported by Mr. William Hole in a letter published the following day.
Unfortunately, the subscription paper disclaimed approval of Whistler's art and theories on the part of subscribers. Whistler, indignant, telegraphed to Edinburgh: "The price of the Carlyle has advanced to one thousand guineas. Dinna ye hear the bagpipes?" The price he had asked was four hundred, and this ended the negotiations.
Why about this time Whistler should have become involved in a Church Congress in the Lake Country, unless he was coming from or going to Scotland, we never have been able to explain. He told us about it years later, and he seemed no less amazed than we. J. was just about to start for the Lakes, and Whistler was reminded of his excursion there. We give the note made at the time:
"Sunday, September 16 (1900). Whistler dined, and Agnes Repplier—not a successful combination. The dinner dragged until E. J. Sullivan happened to come in, and Whistler woke up, and, all of a sudden, we hardly know how, he was plunged into the midst of the Lake Country and a Church Congress, travelling third class with the clergy and their families, eating jam and strange meals with quantities of tea, and visiting the Rev. Mr. Green in his prison, shut up by his bishop for burning candles, and altogether the hero and important person he would never be on coming out. An amazing story, but what Whistler was doing in the Lakes with the clergy he did not appear to know; the story was enough."
The only result of the expedition was the etching done in Cumberland, and his impression of the unpicturesqueness of the Lakes: the mountains "were all little round hills with little round trees out of a Noah's Ark." What he thought of great mountain forms we do not know for, save on the trip to Valparaiso and going to Italy, he never saw them. Yet the lines of the coast in the Crépuscule show that he could render mountains. But, as he said, the mountains of Cumberland are only little round hills. At the end of his life he saw the mountains of Corsica, Gibraltar, and Tangier, but there is no record.
CHAPTER XXV: AMONG FRIENDS.
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN.
It was in the summer of 1884 that J. met Whistler. Up to this time we have had to rely upon what Whistler and those who knew him have told us. Henceforward we write from our own knowledge.
This is J.'s story of the meeting: "I first saw Whistler July 13, 1884. I had been asked by Mr. Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine, to make the illustrations for a series of articles on Old Chelsea by Dr. B. E. Martin, and Mr. Drake, the art editor, suggested that if I could get Whistler to etch, draw, or paint something in Chelsea for the Century, the Century would be very glad to have it. His water-colours and pastels were being shown at Dowdeswell's—Notes, Harmonies, Nocturnes—and there his address was given me: No. 13 Tite Street.
"The house did not strike me, I only remember the man and his work. I knocked, the door was slightly opened, and I handed in my letter from Mr. Gilder. I was left in the street. Then the door was opened wide, and Whistler asked me in. He was all in white, his waistcoat had long sleeves, and every minute it seemed as if he must begin to juggle with glasses. For to be honest, my first impression was of a bar-keeper strayed from a Philadelphia saloon into a Chelsea studio. Never had I seen such thick, black, curling hair. But in the midst was the white lock, and keen, brilliant eyes flashed at me from under the thick, bushy eyebrows.
"At the end of the hall into which he took me was a shadowy passage, then some steps, a light room beyond, and on an easel the portrait of a little man with a violin, the Sarasate, that had never been seen outside the studio. Whistler stopped me in the passage and asked me what I thought of the picture. I cannot recall his words. I was too overwhelmed by the dignity of the portrait to remember what he said.
"Later on he brought out The Falling Rocket. 'Well now, what do you think of that? What is it?'
"I said fireworks, and I supposed one of the Cremorne pictures.
"'Oh, you do, do you? Isn't it amazing? Bring tots, idiots, imbeciles, blind men, children, anything but the Islander, and they know; even you, who stole the name of my Little Venice.'
"This referred to an etching of mine which had been published under the title of Little Venice. Why Whistler did not resent this always or let it interfere with our friendship later, I do not know, for Mr. Keppel has told me he felt bitterly about it at the time.
"Whistler also showed me some of his pastels. And he talked, and I forget completely what he said until, finally, I suggested why I had come, for I did not think there was any greater honour than to see one's work in the pages of the Century. There was some excuse delightfully made. Then he called to someone who appeared from a corner. And Whistler said to him, 'Here's a chance for you. But you will do these things.' And that was my introduction to Mr. Mortimer Menpes.
"This was not what I had bargained for, and I said promptly, 'Mr. Whistler, I came here to ask you to let us have some drawings of Chelsea. If you cannot, why, I'll do them myself.'
"'Stay and lunch,' Whistler said, and there was lunch, a wonderful curry, in a bright dining-room—a yellow and blue room. Later on he took me down to the Embankment, and, though it seemed so little like him, showed me the Carlyle statue and Turner's house. He pointed out his own houses in Lindsey Row, and told me of a photographer who had reproduced all his pictures and photographed old Chelsea. I remember, too, asking Whistler about the Thames plates, and his telling me they were all done on the spot. And then he drove me in a cab to Piccadilly, and asked me to come and see him again.
"The next Sunday I went with Mr. Stephen Parrish to Haden's, in Hertford Street. We were taken to the top storey, where Haden was working on the mezzotint of the Breaking up of the Agamemnon. I asked him—I must have almost paralysed him—what he thought of Whistler, and he told me that if ever he had to sell either his collection of Whistlers or of Rembrandts, the Rembrandts should go first. He told that story often—and later they both went.—Downstairs, in a sort of conservatory at the back of the dining-room, was a printing press. Lady Haden joined us at lunch. So also did Mr. Hopkinson Smith, resurrecting vast numbers of American 'chestnuts.' I can recall that both Parrish and I found him in the way, and I can also recall his getting us into such a state that, as we came down a street leading into Piccadilly, Parrish vented his irritation on one of the public goats which in those days acted both as scavengers and police for London. As the goat put down his head to defend himself, Parrish put up his umbrella, and the goat fled into the open door of a club. What happened after that we did not wait to see.
"I saw Whistler only once again that summer. He was in Charing Cross Station, in front of the bookstall. He wore a black frock-coat, white trousers, patent leather shoes, top hat, and he was carrying, the only time I ever saw it, the long cane. I did not want to speak to him, and I liked his looks less than when I first met him.
"Early in the autumn of 1884 we went to Italy, and it was several years after our return before I got really to know him, and to understand that his appearance was to him merely a part of the 'joke of life.'"
