“The Princess of the Land of Porcelain,” the “Lange Leizen,” the “Gold Screen,” the “Balcony”—all early pictures—are all one and the same in motive; they are his first attempts in a large way to produce color harmonies, to subordinate everything to the color composition.
Of Whistler and American art in those days an unnamed correspondent has written from Paris:[5]
“It would puzzle the analysis of a competent critic to find what Whistler owed to Gleyre; and the young American openly professed to have profited by the counter example of Gustave Courbet, who was the realist of that day. From the first triumph of Courbet in 1849, Gleyre had shrunk back into his shell and no longer exhibited at the annual salons.
“From the start Whistler was an independent; and when, after six years of work in the studios, he offered a picture for the judgment of the official Salon, the jury promptly refused it. Whistler was not discouraged, and hung the painting in the outlaws’ Salon des Refusés. It created a stir that was almost enthusiasm, and the name of his ‘Fille Blanche’—White Maiden—was still remembered when four years later a few American painters demanded a section for their work at the Universal Exposition of 1867. I have looked up a criticism of the time, and imagine it will be found more interesting now than when it was written.
“‘The United States of America are surely a great country and the North Americans a great people, but what little artists they are! The big daubs which they exhibit, under pretence of “Blue Mountains,” “Niagara Falls,” “Genesee Plain,” or “Rain in the Tropics,” show as much childish arrogance as boyish ignorance. People say that these loud placards are sold for crazy prices in Philadelphia or Boston. I am willing to believe it, but I cannot rejoice at it.’
“This is laid on with no light brush, and some of us can recall the American painters of that remote age who were so mishandled. But the remaining paragraph of the lines given to American art may surprise those who look on Whistler as only a contemporary.
“‘M. Whistler seems to me the only American artist really worthy of attention; he is our old acquaintance of the Salon des Refusés of 1863, where his “Fille Blanche” had a suces d’engouement (a success of infatuation!). He is truly an American, as understood by the motto, “time is money.” M. Whistler so well knows the value of time that he scarcely stops at the small points of execution; the impression seized as it flies and fixed as soon as possible in swift strokes, with a galloping brush—such is the artist and such, too, is the man.’
“Velasquez was already in the air, but Japanese art, to which Whistler afterwards allowed himself to be thought indebted, was not yet spoken of. Thus the young American artist was the precursor of movements which years afterwards came to a head, and which for the most part he has outlived. In view of this, the closing verdict of the official critic of 1867 is worth noting, the more so as it shows the reward already attributed to the American’s industry in another branch of art. ‘While waiting for M. Whistler to become a painter in the sense which old Europe still attaches to the word, he is already an etcher (aquafortiste), all fire and color, and very worthy of attention, even if he had only this claim to it.’”