“While Whistler has not equalled Rembrandt in some of the great things, yet his average is very much higher. The latter etched scores of plates that do his memory no honor; the former, on the contrary, has never etched one that will not be remembered with pleasure. To etch a fine portrait is the surest proof of the master; the human face is the grandest subject that any artist ever had. I have always thought that Rembrandt’s ‘Jan Lutma’ was the grand old man of all etched portraiture, though it is hard to see in what possible respect it surpasses ‘The Engraver,’ ‘Becquet,’ ‘Drouet,’ and other portraits by Whistler.
“Rembrandt’s ‘Three Trees,’ in landscape, is a greater plate than Whistler’s ‘Zaandam,’ though the latter is well-nigh perfection. I know no Rembrandt interior that approaches Whistler’s ‘Kitchen,’ and I know no exteriors, unless possibly a few by Meryon, that approach his ‘Palaces,’ ‘The Doorway,’ ‘Two Doorways,’ the ‘Embroidered Curtain,’ and a score or two of others that are well known to all lovers of black and white.
“This story was started on Whistler ten or twelve years ago, and has been on its travels ever since: Some one asked him which of his etchings he thought the best. His answer was, ‘All of them.’ And he told the truth. Of plates that he thought much of, when I saw him thirteen years ago, the little ‘Marie Loches,’ which is another name for the Mayor’s residence, was hung over his desk, and I distinctly remember that the fine ‘Pierrot,’ in the Amsterdam set, was also a prime favorite of his. Later I have heard it said that the portrait of ‘Annie’ he regarded as his finest figure piece.”
In February, 1883, he exhibited in London, in the rooms of the Fine Arts Society, fifty-one etchings and dry-points.
It was, according to the placards,—and in reality,—an “Arrangement in Yellow and White,” for the room was white, with yellow mouldings; the frames of the prints white, the chairs white, the ottomans yellow; the draperies were yellow, with white butterflies; there were yellow flowers in yellow Japanese vases on the mantels; and even the attendants were clothed in white and yellow. As a French artist remarked, “It was a dream of yellow.”
This, however, is how it struck some of the angry critics, who were impaled in the catalogue:
“While Mr. Whistler’s staring study in yellow and white was open to the public we did not notice it,—for notice would have been advertisement, and we did not choose to advertise him.
“Of the arrangement in yellow and white, we note that it was simply an insult to the visitors,—almost intolerable to any one possessing an eye for color, which Mr. Whistler, fortunately for him, does not,—and absolutely sickening (in the strictest sense of the word) to those at all sensitive in such matters. ‘I feel sick and giddy in this hateful room,’ remarked a lady to us after she had been there but a few minutes. Even the common cottage chairs, painted a coarse yellow, did not solace the visitors; and the ornaments on the mantel-piece, something like old bottle-necks, only excited a faint smile in the sickened company.”[14]
The sea-sick lady was probably an invention of the writer.
Another, apparently somewhat less susceptible to the “sickening” effects of yellow, simply says: