The italics and exclamation marks are Whistler’s own, and his denial of British complicity is complete.
Aside from Whistler’s personality, his art finds its only congenial place in the midst of American art.
That his pictures will not hang in any conceivable exhibition of British art without the incongruity being painfully perceptible goes without saying, and none knows this better than English painters themselves.
Of all the various manifestations of art with which Whistler’s has come in sharp contrast, English painting has been the slowest and most stubborn in yielding to influences from the far East; whereas of all painters of the nineteenth century Whistler was the very first to recognize the wondrous qualities of Chinese and Japanese art and absorb what those countries had to teach concerning line and color; and in so far as the painters of England, and more conspicuously those of Scotland, have learned aught of the subtleties and refinements of the East, they have learned it through Whistler, and not direct.
In other words, Whistler has been absolutely immune to English influences; there is not the faintest trace in any of his works, etchings, lithographs, or paintings. In temperament, mood, fancy, and imagination, in what he saw and the manner that he painted it, he was as far removed from any “English School” as Hokusai himself.
On the other hand, England for some time has not been immune to his influence, and things after—a long way after—Whistler appear at every exhibition. What is known as the “Glasgow School”—that body of able and progressive painters—long ago frankly accepted him as master.
Of English painters dead and living he had a poor—possibly too poor—opinion. He frequently said, “England never produced but one painter, and that was Hogarth.” In mellower moments he would say not unkind things of certain qualities in other men; towards the living painters who appreciated his art he was oftentimes generous in the bestowal of praise. But it was impossible for Whistler to say a thing was good if he did not think so; and he would exercise all his ingenuity to get out of expressing an opinion when he knew his real opinion would hurt the feelings of a friend. Towards strangers and enemies he was often almost brutal in condemning what was bad,—as when a rich man took him over his new house, dwelling with pride and enthusiasm on this extraordinary feature and that, at each of which Whistler would exclaim, “Amazing, amazing!” until at the end of their tour of the rooms and halls, he at last said, “Amazing,—and there’s no excuse for it!”
Of his attitude towards others a friendly writer said:[4]
“He was not a devotee of Turner, but he yielded to no man in appreciation of certain of the works of that painter. He was not lavish of praise where his contemporaries were concerned. Though he could say pleasant things about them in a rather vague way,—calling some young painter ‘a good fellow,’ and so on,—words of explicit admiration he did not promiscuously bestow. The truth is, there was an immense amount of stuff which he saw in the exhibitions which he frankly detested. Yet conversation with him did not leave the impression that he was a man grudging of praise. It was rather that a picture had to be exceptionally good to excite his emotions. One point is significant. It was not the flashy and popular painter that he invited to share in the gatherings for which his Paris studio was noted: it was the painter like Puvis de Chavannes, the man who had greatness in him.”