“Hence, wherever in a painting we have unvaried color extended even over a small space, there is falsehood. Nothing can be natural which is monotonous; nothing true which only tells one story.”
To Ruskin nature was all in all; to Whistler color was of first consideration. The one looked at color to find natural effects; the other looked at nature to find color-effects.
Whistler chose intuitively those scenes and those hours of the day when he would be least hampered by rigid requirements of line and form.
He frequently painted the sea under strong light; but under any light water presents itself in broken lines and large masses.
He was a master of line in the high sense that with a few lines he could render not only the character but the characteristics of whatever was before him. He was a master of form,—even as Ruskin uses the term,—since he could, when the conditions required it, express the most subtle contours in terms of light and shade and color; but he cared less for the bald realities of sunlight than for the shadows of dusk and the mysteries of night.
He has himself said:
“The sun blares, the wind blows from the east, the sky is bereft of cloud, and without all is of iron. The windows of the Crystal Palace are seen from all points of London. The holiday-maker rejoices in the glorious day, and the painter turns aside to shut his eyes.
“How little this is understood, and how dutifully the casual in nature is accepted as sublime, may be gathered from the unlimited admiration daily produced by a very foolish sunset.
“The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognize the traveller on the top. The desire to see for the sake of seeing is, with the mass, alone the one to be gratified, hence the delight in detail.
“And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairy-land is before us,—then the wayfarer hastens home; the working-man and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure cease to understand, as they have ceased to see; and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her master,—her son in that he loves her, her master in that he knows her.”[43]