And so he took them from one masterpiece to another, repeating before each one their raptures over “Nana” until they were silent. Then he said:
“I have shown you some pictures that are considered good by those whose opinions are precious, and you have not found in one a single characteristic that you admired in ‘Nana,’ and you yourselves would not admit her to this glorious company; therefore, again I say, ‘Nana’ is—trash.”
In the sense, therefore, that he presented a careless, trivial, or cynical side to the public and a serious side to his art, Whistler was a poser, and during his idle hours he had the habit of amusing himself at the expense of any one who crossed his path. And why not? Did not the world try so hard to amuse itself at his expense? Were his feelings spared? Was aught of ridicule or insult that human ingenuity could devise withheld?
But his opponents were so clumsy that, save as he himself preserved their crude repartees, only his epigrammatic utterances are remembered; and therefore he has all the blame for the controversies, while the truth is that, considering the flood of opprobrium poured out upon him in print and in speech, he said very little, took but occasional notice of his assailants. All he said fills but a portion of a small book,—the “Gentle Art,”—while his opponents have the balance; and if all adverse personal comments of a despicable nature were gathered together from both sides of the Atlantic, they would make up many closely-printed volumes.
For a man who could write so well, Whistler exercised great restraint in writing so little, but—that little!
And yet it is a pity, from one point of view, that he wrote at all; his art did not need it, and in the way of general estimation and recognition suffers not a little on account of it.
For twenty-odd years the public has been amused, startled, and irritated by the letters and utterances which make up “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,” and it will be many a long day before they are so far forgotten that Whistler’s art will be judged wholly upon its merits.
If the “Gentle Art” did not exist as it does in its harmony in brown, English literature would lack a volume which is in itself a bit of art and unique of its kind. There is nothing at all like it, and only Whistler could have done it. The book is a perfect expression of one side of his many-sided and extraordinary personality, and as such is therefore a work of art, and, at the same time, material which cannot be spared if the man is to be thoroughly understood; but it reveals the side which is least worth understanding, it accentuates traits which are inconsequential, and it gives the public an entirely erroneous impression, because the public find it easy to buy and read the book, but difficult to so much as see the pictures, and quite impossible to understand them when they do see them.
In Whistler’s life the writing of the few lines and the putting together of the matter contained in the “Gentle Art” occupied an almost infinitesimal fraction of his leisure hours, whereas for fifty years he painted, etched, and lithographed industriously; yet, so far as the public of England and America is concerned, his controversies overshadow his art; while to the French, who happily could not read the book, he is known only as an artist.
Criticism of art afforded Whistler a world of amusement, and the art critic was his especial aversion.