CHAPTER XI · AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISTS: WHISTLER, HARRISON, HASSAM

“THROUGH HIS BRAIN, AS THROUGH THE LAST ALEMBIC, IS DISTILLED THE REFINED ESSENCE OF THAT THOUGHT WHICH BEGAN WITH THE GODS, AND WHICH THEY LEFT HIM TO CARRY OUT”

WHISTLER’S TEN O’CLOCK

MR. WHISTLER’S personality was one of the most striking in the art world of the last forty years, and his death was an irreparable loss. That he will rank as one of the greatest masters of the nineteenth century there can be no doubt. As an Impressionist with a strong individuality his work requires attention in this volume.

The Whistler family came originally from England, chiefly from the neighbourhoods of Whitchurch and Goring-on-Thames. A notable ancestor was Daniel Whistler, President of the Royal College of Physicians of England in the reign of Charles II. Several references to this “quaint gentleman of rare humour” are to be found in the pages of ‘Pepys’ Diary,’ and the family trait reappeared (with emphasis) in the character of the famous artist. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834, his father being Major George Washington Whistler, for some time consulting engineer to the St. Petersburg and Moscow Railway. The son was destined for a military career, and received a considerable amount of tuition at the Government College at West Point. Work as a cadet, and also on the coast survey, does not seem to have interested him. In the fifties he migrated to Paris and became a student in the atelier of Gleyre, two of his fellow pupils being Sir Edward Poynter and George du Maurier. Whistler cannot have had much sympathy with the art in vogue at that time, a degenerated style based upon a sentimental classicalism. He found his best friends amongst young Frenchmen with extremely different ideas, men such as Fantin-Latour, Bracquemond, Degas, Manet, Duret, Claude Monet, and many others. Whistler first acquired fame as an etcher, and his first set of plates, known as the “little French set,” amply justifies the welcome with which it was received. From that early date until his death he has been acknowledged pre-eminent in the etcher’s delicate and graceful art.

At the Salon de Refusés (to which frequent reference has already been made) Whistler exhibited his first important painting, the Little White Girl, Symphony in White No. 2. It created his reputation as a painter, and remains one of the most charming of his canvases. An early contribution to the Royal Academy was entitled At the Piano, and clearly showed that the artist was then dominated by the subtle influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This influence was quickly discarded, for Rossetti’s talent was inferior to that of the gifted American.

It has often been said that Whistler was never welcomed at the Royal Academy. This point remains debatable; the fact remains that the artist was constantly in evidence during the early part of his career. In 1859 he exhibited two etchings from nature (the title given in the catalogue to one frame); in 1860 the celebrated At the Piano (which was bought by an Academician) and five other works, namely, Monsieur Astruc, Rédacteur du Journal l’Artiste (Drypoint); Thames—Black Lion Wharf; Portrait (Drypoint); W. Jones, Lime Burner, Thames Street (Etching); and The Thames, from the Tunnel Pier. In 1861 he was represented by one canvas, La Mère Gérard, together with Thames from New Crane Wharf (Etching); Monsieur Oxenfeld, Littérateur, Paris (Drypoint); The Thames, near Limehouse (Etching). In 1862 he sent two paintings, The Twenty-Fifth of December, 1860, on the Thames, Alone with the Tide; and Rotherhithe (Etching). The next year, 1863, was prolific. The catalogue contains the following titles: The Last of Old Westminster; Weary (Drypoint); Old Westminster Bridge; Hungerford Bridge (Etching); The Forge (Drypoint); Monsieur Becgis (Etching); The Pool (Drypoint). Two works were on view in 1864: Wapping and Die Lange Lizen—of the Six Marks. In 1865 he exhibited The Golden Screen; Old Battersea Bridge; The Little White Girl (with a quotation in the catalogue of fourteen lines from Swinburne); and The Scarf. Whistler was not represented in 1866, but in 1867 exhibited the Symphony in White No. 3; Battersea; and Sea and Rain. After a break of two years came The Balcony in the Academy of 1870. The next year’s catalogue does not contain his name, but in 1872 the Academy accepted that exquisite example of his art, now in the Luxembourg, Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother. For six years Whistler was an absentee, being represented for the last time on the walls of Burlington House, in 1879, by Old Putney Bridge (Etching).

PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE · J. A. McN. WHISTLER

PRINCESS OF THE PORCELAIN COUNTRY · J. A. McN. WHISTLER

The majority of Whistler’s masterpieces were exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in the days when Sir Coutts Lindsay was at the head of the direction. The walls of the rooms in Bond Street were repeatedly adorned by those charming creations known as Nocturnes and Symphonies, by the remarkable Valparaiso, by many of the portraits, notably Lady Archibald Campbell, Carlyle, and the delightful Miss Alexander. Twenty years ago Whistler’s life in London and Paris was exceptionally active. In him Society discovered a wit of Gallic alertness, and he speedily became one of the most prominent characters of the day. Readers will remember the oft-told tale of how Whistler sacrificed (with a true Whistlerian light-heartedness) much costly Cordovan leather, in order that he might create a masterpiece of decoration in the celebrated Leyland mansion. Another historic story is the cause célèbre of Whistler v. Ruskin, based upon the criticism of a Grosvenor Gallery nocturne as “a pot of paint flung in the public face,” with the resultant farthing damages. The canvas which called forth this elegant banter was that entitled Nocturne in Black and Gold; the Fire Wheel, the theme being a display of fireworks in the gardens at Cremorne. From a literary point of view, as a writer of biting sarcasm the artist scarcely had a peer. One admires that lively jeu d’esprit “Ten o’clock,” and the strange mixture of correspondence entitled “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies” will not be out of date until all the shining lights of the present generation have been forgotten.

After two years of probationship as an ordinary member, in 1886 Whistler became President of the Royal Society of British Artists, an old-established and hitherto staid and conservative institution. His term of office was brilliant and exciting; he himself exhibited such wonderful pictures as the Sarasate, and his reputation attracted the most talented of the younger artists of the day. The correspondence which ensued when Whistler vacated the presidential chair must be sought for in “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.”

In Whistler’s work there is a curious yet indefinable influence of Japanese painting. In company with most of the Impressionists, he was influenced by those Impressionists of another race. This influence is to be observed in all modern painting since 1870, when artists first commenced to collect examples of the Japanese methods.

In his later years Whistler preferred the atmosphere of Paris to that of London, although he continued to visit occasionally the country he described as “humourless and dull.” The artist was thoroughly cosmopolitan, and was equally at home in New York, Paris, or London. His influence upon the art of to-day has been unmistakable, and one has little doubt as to its permanency. Whistler helped to purge art of the vice of subject, and the belief that the mission of the artist is to copy nature.

ALEXANDER HARRISON

Mr. Alexander Harrison is one of those numerous American artists who have settled in France, a natural result of French training and French sympathies. Inspired by Manet, influenced by Besnard, he has painted some of the most successful Impressionist work of the last fifteen years. One cannot agree always with Dr. Muther in his learned and not altogether satisfactory tomes, but his appreciation of Mr. Harrison is so delicate and just that it is worth reproducing. “In Arcady,” he writes, “was one of the finest studies of light which have been painted since Manet. The manner in which the sunlight fell upon the high grass and slender trees, its rays gliding over branch and shrub, touching the green blades like shining gold, and glancing over the nude bodies of fair women—here over a hand, here over a shoulder, and here again over the bosom—was painted with such virtuosity, felt with such poetry, and so free from all the heaviness of earth, that one hardly had the sense of looking at a picture at all.” The luminous painting of Besnard had here reached its final expression, and the summit of classic finish was surmounted. His third picture was called The Wave. To seize such phenomena of Nature in their completeness—things so fickle and so hard to arrest in their mutability—had been the chief study of French painters since Manet. When Harrison exhibited his Wave, sea-pieces by Duez, Roll, and Victor Binet were also in existence; but Harrison’s Wave was the best of them all.

IN ARCADY · ALEXANDER HARRISON

THE WAVE · ALEXANDER HARRISON

Harrison’s vast studio in Paris breathes of the sea. The painter is an ardent yachtsman, and traces of his recreation are numerous. Here are to be found dozens of canvases, rolled up, piled in bundles, hung haphazard against the walls, each one telling some different story of the waters. These studies, probably worked upon in the neighbourhoods of Pould’hu or Begmiel, are often actually salted and sanded by contact with the elements which dash against the wild but lovely Breton shores. No modern man paints seascapes like Harrison. He produces effects which are evidently the results of patient vigil and watching, as well as a vigorous power of brushwork. They are transcripts of the ocean, which can only be seen as the sun rises out of the east over the waters, pale lilac tints, softly fading into citron, or gaining added strength in vermilion or deep orange reflected from the passing clouds, whilst sweeping ripples (one can almost hear their rhythmic cadence) are gently lost across the expanse of ethereal, glistening sand.

SUNLIGHT ON THE LAKE · CHILDE HASSAM

In other pictures we see the tide at full flood; nature is in a fairer mood, and the universe glows with an exquisite green. The waves, of a glassy transparency, are for the moment held in check by a supreme power. Such passing phases of Nature Mr. Harrison seizes with unerring touch. Another branch of his work, already referred to in speaking of the picture In Arcady, are the paintings of the nude amidst the actual surrounding of the fields. Part of their success may be ascribed to the fact that they have been painted in each case in the open air. From the photographs, which Mr. Harrison has allowed us to reproduce, both sides of his beautiful talent may be judged. Like most Impressionists, his art breathes of a love and joy with Nature as seen by a temperament refined, distinguished, one may add—aristocratic.

In the days when Florida was a primæval wilderness Mr. Harrison as a very young man entered the United States Coast Survey. Whistler, it may be remembered, commenced his career under the auspices of the same department. Florida was just the place for an adventurous youth, and Harrison was interested in his work. His enthusiasm, coupled with his ability, resulted in being intrusted with most of the difficult and sometimes dangerous “reconnaissance” engineering scout work that called for lonely jaunts and camping out amongst the swamps and lagoons.

After four years on the Florida coast the party moved on to Puget Sound. The young men connected with the survey had been dabbling for some time in the use of water-colours, and Harrison found that the artist in him was winning ascendency over the surveyor. An argument with the head of the survey settled the matter. Mr. Harrison went to San Francisco, and then travelled to Paris, and studied under Gérôme. He was in his twenty-sixth year, and conscious that his career was midway between success and failure. He exhibited at the Salon a picture Châteaux en Espagne, a boy stretched on his back in the sand of a warm, dry beach, wrapt in the spell of a day-dream. “It was rather symbolic,” said the artist once as he gazed at the photograph, “of my own state of mind at that time.”

During the next ten years he was engaged in painting nudes in the open air. His chief source of inspiration was his friend Bastien-Lepage, with whom he travelled to Brittany. Harrison’s first success was In Arcady, now in the Luxembourg. A recent journalistic interview elicited many interesting facts about Mr. Harrison’s method of work. The writer concludes: “Mr. Harrison’s usual haunt in Brittany is Begmiel. Here there is a sandy peninsula jutting into the sea, whence you can watch the sun go down on the one horizon, and the moon come up from the other. He does not carry his paint-box about with him taking notes. Memory and imagination, knowledge and power of visualisation, take psychic photographs. It is not to be gathered from this that Mr. Harrison is unerring. He has scraped out as many yards of painted canvas as any man. But where his strength undeniably exists is in this subjective, rather than objective, genius for instantaneous notation. When he comes to put the picture on the canvas—now mark the importance of early influences—he becomes the young surveyor again engaged in reconnaissance. He takes his embryonic map (a small canvas) and puts down his known points. He knows just what spot of colour was here, what broken line there. The more he puts down the more he sees, and presently the little map is finished. The first map finished a larger size is made, and, if all goes well, perhaps one larger still, and we have a great picture like any one of those exhibited by the artist at the Salon of the Société Nationale.”

It is hardly necessary to add that this artist is an officer of the Legion of Honour, and has received numerous medals and other awards. Of the Franco-American school of painting he is one of the recognised heads, and this has been acknowledged by his election to the chief art societies of Paris, New York, Berlin, and Munich, whilst he is represented in the permanent collections of the Luxembourg, the Royal Gallery, Dresden, the Museum at Quimper, and the American galleries of Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco.

CHILDREN · CHILDE HASSAM

POMONA · CHILDE HASSAM

A COUNTRY BEER-HOUSE, BAVARIA · MAX LIEBERMANN

Childe Hassam is a young American artist who has been strongly influenced by Impressionism. Originally from Boston, he worked for several years in Paris, and when he returned to the States had already some reputation. In New York he has “rendered the street life in fresh and fleeting sketches; snow, smoke, and flaring gaslight pouring through the shop-windows, quivering out into the night, and reflected in an intense blaze upon the faces of men and women.” A typical example of his work in this genre is Seventh Avenue, New York. Childe Hassam is an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, a member of the Secession of Munich, the American Water Colour Society, and numerous clubs and societies throughout the States. He has received medals at many of the recent International Exhibitions, including that of Paris in 1889, whilst he is represented in several of the continental and transatlantic galleries. Being still young and enthusiastic, much may be expected of Mr. Hassam in the future.