Recollections and impressions of James A. McNeill Whistler

by Arthur Jerome Eddy

When the Savoy Hotel was in process of construction, and the great steel beams thrust themselves upward towards the sky, and there was a lattice-work of girders and a veritable song of line, Whistler, seeing it one day from a neighboring window, exclaimed:

“Hurry; where are my things? I must catch that now, for it will never again be so beautiful.”

High buildings, mechanical processes, modern costumes had no terrors for him, simply because he had no sentiment concerning them; if they furnished him beauties of line or color he cared not whether they were new or old.

Whistler’s art was as devoid of sentiment as that of a Japanese.

To our Western notions the everlasting convention that serves for a face in Japanese art seems hopelessly monotonous. To them our painstaking characterization of the features and peculiarities of each person is no art at all, but grotesque caricature; it is the subordination of art which is of universal interest to the eccentricities of the individual which are of local interest.

In Whistler’s art one must not look for any solution of the problems of life, for any sign of the emotions which control human conduct,—for love and hate and fear, for hope and ambition, for the tortures of jealousy or the bitterness of despair,—these are all absent; his art is pure and serene. His works are to painting what the “Ode to a Grecian Urn” or “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is to poetry, and hence in human interest they fall far short of the tragedies, the epics, the romances of literature and art, and they must not be judged by standards he did not seek to emulate. He could no more have painted a “Crucifixion” or a “Last Judgment” than he could have carved the “Moses” or written “Hamlet.” In every sense, save that of abstract beauty of line and color, other painters have excelled Whistler, but as the master of pure line and color harmonies he is supreme.

Whistler’s etchings and photographs were simply compositions in line, delightful harmonies in black and white. It is too bad to preserve their names or identify them with any locality, for their exquisite art is better appreciated if no distracting consideration is aroused. But, oddly enough, he occasionally made concessions in the naming of these that he did not in the naming of his paintings.

Take, for instance, that charming lithograph, “Confidences in the Garden,”—two ladies walking in the corner of an old garden. The garden is in the rear of his Paris home on the Rue du Bac. The ladies are probably Mrs. Whistler and her sister. But what does it add to the print to call it “Confidences in the Garden”? Nothing at all. On the contrary, the title at once suggests a host of considerations which conflict with the abstract enjoyment of the composition.

That sort of a title is precisely what he condemns for his paintings. It is, however, one of the very few instances where his titles suggest anything more than the obvious subject. For the most part he was consistent in choosing names that do not distract.

Even the portraits he did not care to have known as “Portrait of Mr. A——,” or “Portrait of Lady C——,” thereby catering first to the vanity of a sitter, then to the idle curiosity of the multitude. His portraits were compositions in line and color, and, as such, were artistic creations. That they happened also to be portraits of certain individuals was a mere coincidence. The portrait feature, upon which people lay so much stress, was of the least consequence to him; and just because he did not permit the photographic element to move him, he secured results which are far beyond the art of the “portrait-painter.”