The Whistler book

by Sadakichi Hartmann

Little Miss Alexander, with her plumed hat in her hand and her white dress relieved by grey and black accents against a general background, depicts a "pose" such as the painter seldom indulged in. There is a flavour of aristocratic coquetry, a flavour of Gainsborough and Boldini in this attitude, an attribute that in this instance is as important to the picture as the unusual colour scale. It took him years to finish this picture, and nobody can appreciate how many weary hours of anguish it cost the little model. More than once it reduced her to tears. One day as she was entering the studio she met Carlyle, who was sitting also for his portrait. "Puir lassie! Puir lassie!" he said. But Whistler had no pity. He had but little consideration for his sitters or models; he forgot their presence as soon as he became entangled in the intricacies of his technique.

The Duret on the other hand shows superior characterization. It may be because the figure is more clearly silhouetted, the outlines of the gaunt figure are as plain as they can be. The painter tried to brighten up the black suit problem with a light background and pink domino. The strange combination of an awkward shape, with almost a touch of brutality in its make-up, and the gay insignia of an opera ball, the domino and red fan, arouse a feeling of grotesque drollery, and yet it is all so forbiddingly proud that one is strongly fascinated by the canvas.

One of the most important portraits that compete with the Leyland, Duret and Miss Alexander is the "Arrangement in Black:—Portrait of the Senor Pablo de Sarasate," painted about 1884.

Here we have the true Whistler atmosphere, the blurred contour of the violinist's figure, which melts into the background without losing the form, the elimination of all unnecessary details and accessories, and the concentration of light on the face, shirt-front, hands and cuffs. It is astonishing how few bright planes there are in most of Whistler's portraits. In the "Sarasate" the lighted planes scarcely occupy one-thirtieth part of the picture. The rest is all darkness, except the vague shimmer on the floor, suggesting the footlight on the platform of a concert hall. The light floor is one of the leading characteristics of his single standing figures. It helps to suggest space. There is depth in the background; it is not opaque like most backgrounds but vibrant with subtle differentiations of values. The figure is standing in space. One might think at first that this is brought about by the smallness of the figure.

Joseph Pennell says that "what Whistler was trying to do was to paint the man on a shadowy concert platform as the audience saw him." Sarasate is intended to look small, less than life-size, as he would appear upon the concert stage. I do not agree with this. I have heard Sarasate play in Europe and America but never saw him on a shadowy platform. To me the conception is a much bigger one. This is not the Sarasate of ordinary life, nor is it the one we know from the concert hall. The artist has attempted to suggest the whole atmosphere that surrounds the life of musical genius. And he accomplished it by introducing a male figure in an ordinary dress-suit with a shimmering shirt front, the outlines of which are lost in vibrant emptiness. Only the violin and bow occupy a certain prominence. "All is balanced by the bow," as Whistler remarked to Sidney Starr.

The figure always seemed to me a trifle small. I personally prefer the Leyland size, as it is more dignified. It does not seem logical to sacrifice beauty and breadth to a mere illusion.

The whole tonal school and pictorial photography in particular have been influenced by the "Pablo Sarasate," now at the Carnegie Art Institute, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. It gives unparalleled joy to the followers of dark tonalities. As usual the imitators—painters as well as photographers—have exaggerated the extreme rather than normal aspect of the painter's art.

For what is most to be admired technically in Whistler is the frugality, the thinness of his brush work, that, despite the low pitch and flatness of its colour tints, reveals an astounding variety, subtlety and virility, a vibrancy that seems to radiate from the canvas. For unobtrusiveness of paint Whistler has few rivals. In comparison with him Monet seems a plebeian and Sargent a sleight of hand performer. He combines the fanaticism of a perfect technique with the search for truth and a desire to create new sensations, and expresses our breathless modern life, with all its intricate moods. His art revels in the realms of imagination unknown to Manet's realism, and Zorn's and Sargent's pyrotechnical displays of technique look barbarous in comparison to Whistler's smooth, fluid, unerring brushwork, which masters all the optical illusions of this world with wizard-like dexterity.

He created a style for himself, and his space and colour arrangements have exerted a deep and lasting influence on modern painting. Whether he is as great a painter as some critics make him—whether he is as "big" as Franz Hals, for instance, is still a matter of discussion. He will always live in the history of art as being the first man who combined the beauties of Eastern design with the principles of Western art. The mysterious atmosphere of some of his canvases (from which solid forms emerge or recede into), is a poetic translation of Japanese suggestiveness—which does not care to create an illusion, but rather suggests it. Whistler in his portraits was not an initiator of a new art like Monet in his landscapes. He was the last and most perfect of an old school. He merely pushed to their extreme consequence the principles which all great painters since Velasquez have championed. He followed more closely what one might call the thematic development of tone, and discerned more plainly the significance and mystery that lie hidden in blurred objects.