The butterfly teaches a lesson. It proves that an artist can be self-assertive, arrogant and yet refined. Whistler thus introduced a method of picture signing that should be generally adopted. Every artist should have his own monogram, and use it with discretion.
But it has even a deeper significance in Whistler's life. It is in a way a symbol of his evolution as a painter. As we study his work we find that the butterfly monogram does not appear before Whistler freed himself from foreign influences, and invented an individual and independent style of his own. The butterfly may well stand for the full awakening and realization of his own faculties. Did he not say himself:
"In the pale citron wing of the butterfly, with its dainty spots of orange, he saw the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and was taught how the delicate drawing high upon the walls should be traced in slender tones of orpiment and repeated by the base in notes of graver hue."
Like all painters Whistler had to learn his trade, and then find his peculiar way of expression. It took him well nigh a quarter of a century. He entered the studio of Gleyre in the summer of 1855 as a young man of twenty-one, and was nearly forty-seven when he had finished the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" and had painted a few nocturnes. All his earlier pictures remind us of some other master. "The Music Room" recalls Stevens, "The Blue Wave: Biarritz" the forceful style of Courbet, and "The White Symphony" even the light manner of Alma Tadema.
Charles Gleyre was an excellent draughtsman of the Ingres school, but all he could teach his pupils was to draw. That he had once been capable of some finer appreciation of colour and atmosphere, students of art may notice in his "Evening," painted in 1843, but he became, like so many other painters of this period, the victim of the academic style. Outline drawing reigned supreme, there was room for nothing else, and it was surely not a congenial environment for young Whistler, who, even at that time, differed with the prevalent ideas of art. Drawing, however, is one of the most important factors of the technique of painting. Velasquez even thought it was the most important one, and Whistler, with the peculiar tendency of his art, was, no doubt, fortunate that he reached Paris while draughtsmanship was still honoured and not neglected, as in the later days of the impressionists. A student in Paris either becomes an enthusiastic worker from the nude, making one study after the other, like all those Julian and Colarossi pupils—or he gets so imbued with the art atmosphere that he sets about on conquests of his own, and the city of Seine, with its museums, monuments, artists, population, pleasures and sights is just the right place for "free lance" education. Whistler chose the latter way.
The canvases of this period show strong influences of Stevens and Courbet. He must have been enamoured with the style of that great painter of woman, as he was undoubtedly with the rude sincerity of Courbet. If any man could paint at that time it was Courbet. He was the simplifier of planes and values, who advocated frankness and freedom of expression, and detached painting from all the absurdities and abstractions of the classic and romantic periods. From him Whistler learned to put on his pigments in a bold, vigorous way. He was never fond of brushwork, but at that time he liked to pile it on in a flat and solid manner. Only gradually his brushwork became thinner and thinner, invisible and almost untraceable, carrying out his maxim: "A picture is finished when all traces of means used to bring about the end have disappeared." As is the case with all great paintings, one must forget all about technique.
From Stevens he learned, as he often said in later years, all that could be learned from him. I believe that the influence was subtler and more spiritual, and one that lasted all his life. Stevens was for him what the chart from which we learn history in school days remains for us. We can never forget it and entirely get away from it. In the beginning, of course, it was a technical preference. Like Stevens, he used precise outlines, a profusion of details and yet with all a poetic atmosphere that is produced principally by a beautiful juxtaposition of colour values. Even to-day few of Whistler's earlier canvases have more admirers than the "Harmony in Green and Rose," perhaps better known as "The Music Room" (in the possession of Frank J. Hecker). It was painted in 1860, in the London home of Haden, the painter-etcher. This picture was first known as "The Morning Call." In the corner of the room a mirror reflects the profile of a woman, who is not represented in the picture. This is a portrait of Lady Seymour Haden, Whistler's stepsister, with whom he was lodging at the time. In front of the window hang a pair of white curtains with a green and red flower pattern. A young woman (Miss Booth, a relative of the Hadens) in a black riding habit, which she holds up with her gloved hand, stands on the dark red carpet. In the background sits a little girl reading.
Owned by Frank J. Hecker
HARMONY IN GREEN AND ROSE: THE MUSIC ROOM.