The mechanical draughtsman and the architect may use on their plans and designs all the known colors, but no one would think of calling either a colorist.
In painting still-life a man may exhaust the palette and yet be no colorist. In painting portraits one man may require his sitters to dress in bright colors, another in sober blacks, grays, or browns, with the result that one set of portraits fairly dazzle the beholder, while the other scarce attracts attention; and yet the former may not be the work of a colorist while the latter may.
The determining factor is the attitude of the painter towards color. If he uses color imitatively, or as incidental to drawing, or as a means to some end other than the production of color harmonies, he is not a colorist; but if his delight is in color, if he uses color for the sake of color, for the sake of charming the eye, as the ear is charmed by music, then he is a colorist.
No hard and fast line of demarcation can be drawn, since every painter is something of a colorist; but between the two extremes of the painter on one hand who uses color imitatively or as incidental to drawing and the colorist who produces and delights in pure color schemes and harmonies there is a wide interval.
Whistler, in his love of color, approached the latter extreme; but it was only when he practised decoration that he could indulge his fancy without limitations. When he brought the Leyland dining-room into harmony with his “Princess of the Land of Porcelain” by the use of blue and gold, line and form—though somewhat apparent—were virtually negligible quantities; and when he arranged the reception-room of the house in Rue du Bac, and his own studio, the only considerations were the color-effects.
In his “White Girl” of 1863 Whistler began in a large way his symphonies in color; and while in pictures like the “Thames in Ice,” “The Music Room,” and “At the Piano” he painted along more conventional lines, these departures were infrequent and in themselves exhibited his predilection for color. It was simply impossible for him to paint any picture without making the color harmony a prime object.
Not long after the “White Girl,” which was “Symphony in White, No. I.,” followed the other experiments in white, known as Symphonies Nos. II. and III.
Then came—the chronological order is not important—the Japanese group, “The Princess of the Land of Porcelain,” “The Gold Screen,” “The Balcony,” the “Lange Leizen,” and others, in which the figures and accessories, though still prominent, were made subordinate to the brilliant color schemes. The compositions were still obvious, but the color incomparably more so.
Then the “Nocturnes,” in which detail and composition were refined away, and little remained but color-effects so exquisite that they seemed, and still seem, beyond the power of brush, and more like some thin glazes and enamels than paintings on canvas.
As music in color the “Nocturnes” and certain of the “Harmonies” and “Symphonies,” wherein detail is as nothing and the color everything, are Whistler’s most exquisite—the word is used advisedly—achievements. Others will equal his portraits before they equal his “Nocturnes.”