It was a comparison of Velasquez and Whistler, and a warm assurance
that his name would live with that of the great Spaniard, that led
Whistler to launch that little question, now a classic, "Why drag in
Velasquez?"
The great lesson that Whistler has taught the world is to observe; and this he got from the Japanese. Lafcadio Hearn has said that the average citizen of Japan detects tints and shades that are absolutely unseen by Western eyes. Livingston found tribes in Africa that had never seen pictures of any kind, and he had great difficulty in making them perceive that the figure of a man, drawn on a piece of paper a foot square, really was designed for a man.
"Man big—paper little—no good!" was the criticism of a chief. The chief wanted to hear the voice of the man before he would believe it was meant for a man. This savage chief was a great person, no doubt, in his own bailiwick, but he lacked imagination to bridge the gap between a real man and the repeated strokes of a pencil on a bit of paper.
The Japanese—any Japanese—would have been delighted by Whistler's "Nocturne." Ruskin wasn't. He had never seen the night, and therefore he declared that Whistler had "flung a pot of paint in the face of the public."
That men should dogmatize concerning things where the senses alone supply the evidence, is only another proof of man's limitations. We live in a peewee world which our senses create and declare that outside of what we see, smell, taste and hear there is nothing. It is twenty-five thousand miles around the earth—stellar space is not computable; and man can walk in a day about thirty miles. Above the ground he can jump about four feet. In a city his unaided ear can hear his friend call about two hundred feet. As for smell, he really has almost lost the sense; and taste, through the use of stimulants and condiments, has likewise nearly gone. Man can see and recognize another man a quarter of a mile away, but at the same distance is practically color-blind.
Yet we were all quite willing to set ourselves up as standards until science came with spectroscope, telephone, microscope and Roentgen ray to force upon us the fact that we are tiny, undeveloped and insignificant creatures, with sense quite unreliable and totally unfit for final decisions.
Whistler sees more than other men. He has taught us to observe, and he has taught the art world to select.
Oratory does not consist in telling it all—you select the truth you wish to drive home; in literature, in order to make your point, you must leave things out; and in painting you must omit. Selection is the vital thing.
The Japanese see one single lily-stalk swaying in the breeze and the hazy, luminous gray of the atmosphere in which it is bathed—just these two things. They give us these, and we are amazed and delighted.
Whistler has given us the night—not the black, inky, meaningless void which has always stood for evil; not the darkness, the mere absence of light, the prophet had in mind when he said, "And there shall be no night there"—not that. The prophet thought the night was objectionable, but we know that the continual glare of the sun would quickly destroy all animal or vegetable life. In fact, without the night there would be no animal or vegetable life, and no prophet would have existed to suggest the abolition of night as a betterment. In the night there are flowers that shed their finest perfume, lifting up their hearts in gladness, and all nature is renewed for the work of the coming day. We need the night for rest, for dreams, for forgetfulness. Whistler saw the night—this great, transparent, dark-blue fold that tucks us in for one-half our time. The jaded, the weary and the heavy-laden at last find peace—the day is done, the grateful night is here.