Lady Archibald Campbell was nothing to him except a possibility; she was to him as a theme, as a motive to a musician. At the outset he had all sorts of trouble with the picture; and it was not until one day Lady Campbell happened to come in with her fur cape over her shoulders that he made a new start and painted the picture. It is a great portrait, one of his very best, a haunting likeness of a woman; not such a photographic likeness as friends and relatives demand, but just the likeness that posterity demands: a woman, a type, with all the charm, all the refinement, all the real, the true, the elusive qualities of a woman,—in short, those qualities of mind and body which reappear in descendants of the third and fourth generation and demonstrate the faithfulness of the portrait.
There is no portrait by Rembrandt or Velasquez which at all resembles Whistler’s portrait of his mother.
It is not at all like anything by Rembrandt; there is a hint of the blacks and grays of Velasquez, but that is a superficial observation made by every passing tourist.
In scheme, composition, intention, and execution the picture is essentially different from anything the great Spanish painter ever did. One ought to recognize the fundamental difference between the two artists on looking at the little “Infanta” in the Louvre,—there is no need to go farther. Velasquez had a firm strong grasp of life about him which Whistler lacked. The one was a man among men, the other a poet among poets, a musician among musicians, a dreamer among dreamers; the one painted men, women, and children because they interested him, the other painted them because he was interested in beautiful things; the one viewed the world by day with his feet planted firmly on the ground, the other viewed it by dusk and by night with his head in the mist and clouds.
There was the same difference between Velasquez and Whistler that there is between two poets, one of whom—like, say, Byron—deals with life with a sure hand, the other—like Keats—deals with beauty as the finest thing in life.
In poetry even the casual reader does not confound men of opposite temperaments, though both use the medium of verse to express their thoughts; but in painting, people habitually confuse men who have absolutely nothing in common except the medium they use. And yet for every poet there is somewhere a painter of like moods and temperament. Men do not differ, though some use poetry, some music, some sculpture, some painting to express their fancies and convictions.
Were one so disposed, it would not be difficult to point out the Browning, the Tennyson, the Whitman, the Bach, the Beethoven, the Wagner of painting, for the human soul is the same in every art.
Beyond the fact, therefore, that Velasquez and Whistler both expressed themselves by means of painting, they were not at all alike, and their work must reflect their fundamental differences.
Whistler, in susceptibility to color and fleeting line, in love for abstract, almost ethereal beauty, was akin to the choice spirits of the far East. He found more that appealed to him and affected him in the blue-and-white porcelain of China than in any painting from Madrid. Velasquez might give him many valuable hints as to the use of color, as to the practice of his art, but no suggestions whatsoever as to ends and aims. These motives he found in the East, in those wonderful lands where men, leaving nature far behind, almost touched heaven in their philosophies, and did seize some of heaven’s infinite blues and silvery grays in their arts.
It is idle to compare Whistler’s portraits with those of any other man, for the qualities that make those of others great are not found accentuated in his, and the qualities that make his great are not found refined in those of others.