WEARY
STUDY IN CHALK
Formerly in the possession of B. B. MacGeorge, Esq.
The picture Mr. Jameson refers to was called Three Figures, Pink and Grey,[5] in the London Memorial Exhibition. It alone was carried out of the Six or Eight Schemes or Projects in which Whistler was trying to combine Japanese and classical motives, expressing a beauty of form and design that haunted him, and was perhaps best realised in some of the pastel studies. He never ceased to make these studies. There are pastels, chalk drawings, and etchings in which the separate figures of the Projects may be found, studies for the series; one was worked out as a fan, another like a cameo. The second version of the Three Figures, enlarged from a smaller design, Whistler explained to Mr. Alan S. Cole, was an arrangement he wanted to paint, and he then drew, with a sweep of the brush, the back of the stooping figure to show what he meant. W. M. Rossetti most likely referred to it when he wrote in his diary for July 28, 1867:
"Whistler is doing on a largish scale for Leyland the subject of women with flowers, and has made coloured sketches of four or five other subjects of the like class, very promising in point of conception of colour and arrangement."
The Projects were his first scheme of decoration for Leyland. The canvases are about the same size. They are painted with liquid colour, the canvas often showing through. The handling in all save the Venus, shown in the Paris Memorial Exhibition and worked on in his later years, is more direct than anything he ever did. They have the same relation to his pictures as the sketches of Rubens and Tiepolo to their decorations. The Venus is a single figure, the rest are groups arranged against a balustrade, round a vase of flowers, or on the sands by the sea. Their floating draperies give the scheme of
colour. The experience gained in making these designs was of immense use in the Nocturnes, for the technique is the same, and the same treatment is in the pile of drapery of the Miss Alexander. He did not give up until much later this method of painting. The complete series had never been seen publicly before the Paris Memorial Exhibition. They belong to Mr. Freer.
During all his life, till he was given a commission for a panel in the Boston Public Library, Whistler hoped to have the chance to execute a great decorative scheme. When the Central Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum was being decorated, Sir Henry Cole asked him to design one of the mosaic panels. For this, in the winter of 1873, he made a pastel, a richly robed figure carrying a Japanese umbrella. The scheme was in blue, purple, and gold, and a pastel study for it was shown at the London Memorial Exhibition as Design for a Mosaic. He spoke of it at the time as The Gold Girl. The design was to be enlarged and put on canvas by the brothers Greaves. Sir Henry Cole offered him a studio in the Museum when he was ready to begin his cartoon. "You know, Sir Henry Cole always liked me, and I told him he ought to provide me with a fine studio—it would be an honour to me—and to the Museum!" But models broke down, the fog settled over London, he wanted to get through his Academy picture, he was called to Paris. Whether the cartoon was finished, or whether it was found out of keeping with the machines of Royal Academicians in the Central Gallery, is not known. But the decoration was never done.
Hamerton's Etching and Etchers was published in 1868. Shortly before, he wrote to Whistler: "I wonder whether you would object to lend me a set of proofs for a few weeks. As the book is already advanced I should be glad of an early reply. My opinion of your work is, on the whole, so favourable that your reputation could only gain by your affording me the opportunity of speaking of your work at length."
Whistler took no notice of the request at the time, but printed it years afterwards as the Unanswered Letter in The Gentle Art. Hamerton, unused to being ignored by artists, expressed his astonishment in his book: "I have been told that, if application is made by letter to Mr. Whistler for a set of his etchings, he may, perhaps, if he chooses to answer the letter, do the applicant the favour to let him have a copy for about the price of a good horse."
His praise was never without qualification. He saw in Whistler a strikingly imperfect artist, self-concentrated, without range or poetical feeling, whose work was rarely affecting, and most of these remarks were reprinted by Whistler with the Unanswered Letter as Inconsequences. In the end Whistler let Hamerton have a plate, Billingsgate, in its third state, published in the Portfolio (January 1878), and, two years after, in the third edition of Etching and Etchers (1880).
Hamerton, patronising in his estimate of Whistler's work, exaggerated in his comments on Whistler's prices. Success never induced Whistler deliberately to increase the price of his etchings by making them rare, in the fashion of the young men of to-day. It was different with his dry-points, the number of impressions being limited. Mr. Percy Thomas says that Whistler would throw them on the floor at Lindsey Row and consider them. "I think for this we must say five guineas, and for this six, and for this I must say—ten!" But Mr. Thomas remembers only one attempt to create a price. He had been sent from Bond Street to Lindsey Row with prints for Whistler to sign, and the next day he returned for them. Whistler and Mrs. Whistler were sitting together, silent and sad, and Whistler hurried from the studio without a word. "But what is it? What has happened?" Mr. Thomas asked, and Mrs. Whistler explained that Whistler had thrown the prints into the fire, thinking it would be a good thing to make them rare, and had been miserable since. If he destroyed work he was sure to regret it. "J'ai tant pleuré après," as he wrote to Fantin. Another incident remembered by Mr. Thomas would have altered Hamerton's idea of Whistler's business methods. Edmund Thomas had gone to the studio and offered a sum for all the prints in it. Whistler accepted the offer, Mr. Thomas drew a cheque, and carried off the prints. A couple of hours later a messenger appeared with a bundle of proofs. Whistler had come upon them, and sent word that, according to the bargain, they belonged to Mr. Thomas.
Towards the end of the sixties, or beginning of the seventies, Mr. Murray Marks tried to start a Fine Art Company with Alexander Ionides, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Morris to deal in pictures, prints, blue and white, and decorative work. They were to sell Watts', Burne-Jones', and Rossetti's pictures, and Whistler's etchings, possibly his paintings. Ionides, who was to advance two or three thousand pounds, bought the sixteen plates by Whistler now known as the Thames Set, and the prints from them. The sum paid was three hundred pounds. A secretary was engaged for the company, but that was the end of it. The plates became the absolute property of Ionides. He had a hundred sets printed; he gave one set to each of his children; the others were taken over by Messrs. Ellis and Green, and published in 1871 as Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames, price twelve guineas. Later, the plates came into the possession of the Fine Art Society, who sold the prints unsigned as a set in a portfolio for fourteen guineas, or, singly, from half a guinea to two guineas and a half. Finally Mr. Keppel, of New York, bought the coppers, had the steel facing removed, for they had been steeled, Goulding printed a number from each, and some good prints were obtained. The plates were then destroyed.
Official recognition of Whistler, the etcher, continued. The British Museum bought his prints and only stopped when, some years ago, it was discovered that the work of living artists could not be purchased for the Print Room. The ignorance of this regulation was of value to the Museum, where there are now one hundred and nine etchings by Whistler. At the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, there are sixty-one prints, besides several issued in various publications and a second Thames Set in the Ionides Collection. For several years the late Sir Richard R. Holmes purchased prints for Windsor Castle Library, about one hundred and forty in all. He wrote us:
"It is difficult to say when, or how, I first began collecting Whistler's etchings. I had a few, and then I met several while I was looking after other things at Thibaudeau's, and, gradually, I found I had so many that I thought it best to make the collection as complete as I could, and got a number from Whistler himself."
