“It should not be forgotten in America that Mr. Whistler is an American of Americans. It may therefore be appropriately asked, What has America done for him? It has treated him with—if possible—even more ignorance than England; this, of course, coming from the desire of the Anglomaniac to out-English the English.”
And there are others whose testimony will be forthcoming some day to show how wholly and absolutely American he was to the very core and centre of his being, and in his attitude towards all countries and peoples of Europe.
It is true he said many harsh, bitter, and cutting things concerning the press and people of this country, that he frequently exhibited in the English sections of art exhibitions in preference to those of his own country; but for all these things there were many good reasons, and we have but ourselves to blame.
He was so much of an American that a single word of ridicule from this side cut deeper than pages of abuse from the other. To the scoffings of England he turned a careless ear, and replied with flippant, but pointed, tongue; while the utter lack of support and appreciation from his own country was ever referred to with a bitterness that betrayed his real feelings. He could not understand how the American people could desert a countryman battling alone against all England. As he frequently said:
“It did not matter whether I was in the right or in the wrong,—I was one against the mob. Why did America take the side of the mob,—and—and get whipped?”
America was blind to his merits until long after he achieved fame in every country of Europe; and it is undeniably true that the press here truculently echoed the slurs of the critics on the other side throughout that long period of controversy. It is a lamentable fact that up to the day of his death he was misunderstood, or accepted as an eccentric in many quarters of the land that now claims him as her bright particular star in the firmament of art. Notwithstanding all these things, he remained so conspicuously an American that every Englishman and every Frenchman with whom he came in contact recognized him as a foreigner; neither would have thought of mistaking him for a fellow-countryman; he was as un-English and un-French as an Italian, or a Spaniard, or—better—as an American.
The “White Girl” was rejected at the Salon in 1863; the “Portrait of my Mother” was accepted by the Royal Academy and obscurely hung in 1871, only after a bitter discussion, in which the one member of the committee who favored it, Sir William Boxall, a friend of Whistler’s family, threatened to resign unless it was accepted.
This same great portrait—it is said on good authority—was offered in New York for twelve hundred dollars and found no buyer.
When exhibited in London, language failed to express the full measure of the scorn and contempt the English press—from the ponderous Times down to the most insignificant fly-sheet—had for this wonderful picture; but no sooner had the French government purchased it for the Luxembourg than all was changed, and with delightful effrontery the Illustrated London News said:
“Modern British (!) art will now be represented in the National Gallery of the Luxembourg by one of the finest paintings due to the brush of an English (!) artist,—namely, Mr. Whistler’s portrait of his mother.”