Recollections and impressions of James A. McNeill Whistler

by Arthur Jerome Eddy

At the World’s Exposition of 1893, in Chicago, Whistler’s paintings hung, where they rightfully belonged, in the American section. Though far and away superior to anything in the entire section, and conspicuous above everything near for their exquisite beauty, still it cannot be gainsaid that of all the sections of that exhibition the American was the only one which would contain Whistler’s work without the contrast being so marked as to be absolutely destructive. That they could not hang with entire fitness among the English pictures even the English would admit; that their sober harmonies were distinctively at variance with the brilliant and superficial qualities of the French pictures was apparent to even the unpractised eye. “The Yellow Buskin” and “The Fur Jacket,” to mention no others, could hang in only one place, and that was where they were put,—in the main hall of the American section, flanked and confronted by American work.

Not that the pictures about them equalled in merit,—that is not the question; but they were sufficiently akin to constitute an harmonious environment.

Art is simply a mode of expression, and the highest, truest, noblest art is the reflection of the best there is in a people. It follows, therefore, that the art of any race or people must exhibit the racial characteristics. A painting, for instance, belongs first to the man who painted it and bears on its face so many marks of his individuality that not only he but others recognize it as his. Secondly, the painting belongs to the race or people with which the artist is identified, for the very traits which distinguish him as an American, or an Englishman, or a Frenchman from all other nationalities inevitably make themselves felt in the work, and distinguish it not only specifically from all other canvases, but generically from the work of other peoples, schools, epochs, eras, etc.

A man may change his allegiance and live in foreign lands, but he cannot change his blood. If a Chinaman, he will remain a Chinaman, no matter where he lives; if an American, he will remain an American, though, like many of our mess-of-potage citizens, he may remain a bastard American in the endeavor to become an adopted Englishman.

The finer the art the more universal its qualities. And yet there is no poem and no picture that is absolutely without the marks of its master; and the marks of the master mean the marks of his race,—in fact, the racial indications are inversely in number to those of the individual; the deeper a man buries his personality in his work the stronger the indications of his race. Shakespeare so lost himself that his personal characteristics nowhere appear in his great plays, and a conception of the poet’s personality could not be formed from a reading of the lines—so universal was his genius; yet his poetry is essentially and everlastingly English,—far more conspicuously English than the poetry of lesser men who sing about England and things English. It is more English than Chaucer, more English than Spencer, more English than Browning, Tennyson, or Swinburne; it breathes more fully and more truly the spirit of the English people in their greatest days than any poetry ever uttered by the English tongue.

The greater the man, the more completely does he express his people. It takes a great race to produce a great man; and once produced, he is everlastingly linked with his tribe.

But greatness implies the suppression of the petty, including all petty resemblances; therefore, a man by the universal qualities of his genius may seem to belong to the world, whereas in truth he is but the expression of the best there is in his countrymen.

Rembrandt suppressed all provincialisms and seemed to etch and paint for mankind rather than for a limited public in Holland; and yet to the last he was simply the greatest of Dutch artists. And because he was so essentially and truly Dutch he is one of the world’s great artists; in the chorus of the world’s proud voices there is no mistaking his accent.

Velasquez is at the same time the least Spanish of painters and the most Spanish of artists. Suppressing all eccentricities of time and place, he rose to universal heights, and the world claims him as its own; and yet his fame depends upon the fact that he was from first to last a Spaniard,—a Spaniard in precisely the sense that Cervantes was the expression of inarticulate forces behind him. Deriving more or less help from his contemporaries, and from this quarter and that, from the visit of Rubens and from his own journey to Italy, he, after all, was the achievement of the Spanish people in painting. He was not an Italian, he was not a Frenchman, he was not a Dutchman,—he was a Spaniard of the Spaniards, as Shakespeare was an Englishman of the English.

Having wandered far afield in the endeavor to point out the intimate connection between, first, a man and his work,—which connection every one admits,—and, secondly, between the race and the work,—a connection which is not so readily perceived,—let us return to Whistler, whose work furnishes proof positive of what has been said.