Whistler was busy all his life painting just such white chrysanthemums. You smile? Well, I think I can persuade you to accept my point of view.
You are probably aware that Whistler was opposed to realism. The realists endorse every faithful reproduction of facts. Also, Whistler believed all objects beautiful, but only under certain conditions, at certain favoured moments. It is at long intervals and on rare occasions that nature and human life reveal their highest beauty. It was Whistler's life-long endeavour to fix such supreme and happy moments, the white chrysanthemums of his æsthetic creed, upon his canvases. Have you never seen a country lass and thought she should be dressed up as a page—her limbs have such a lyrical twist, as George Meredith would say—she should stand on the steps of a throne, and the hall should be illuminated with a thousand candles? Have you never met a New England girl, and thought that she was ill-suited to her present surroundings, that she would look well only standing on the porch of some old Colonial mansion, in the evening, when odours of the pelargoniums and gladioli begin to fill the garden? Have you not noticed that a bunch of cut flowers which looks beautiful in one vase may become ugly in another? And how often has it not happened to all of us that we were startled by a sudden revelation of beauty in a person whom we have known for years and who has looked rather commonplace to us? Suddenly, through some expression of grief or joy, or merely through a passing light or shadow, all the hidden beauty bursts to the surface and surprises us with its fugitive charms. Whistler's "At the Piano," "The Yellow Buskin," "Old Battersea Bridge," "Chelsea: Snow," are painted in that way. Could you imagine his "Yellow Buskin Lady" in any other way than buttoning her gloves, and glancing back, for a last time, over her shoulder, as she is walking away from you into grey distances! That peculiar turn of her body reveals the quintessence of her beauty. And that is the reason why Whistler has painted her in that attitude. Thus every object has its moment of supreme beauty. In life these moments are as fugitive as the fractions of a second. Through art they can become a permanent and lasting enjoyment.
The ancient Greek believed in an ideal standard of beauty to which the whole universe had to conform. The modern artist, on the other hand, sees beauty only in such moments as are entirely individual to the forms and conditions of life he desires to portray. And as it pains him that his conception of beauty will die with him, he becomes an artist through the very endeavour of preserving at least a few fragments of it for his fellow-men. With Whistler, this conception was largely a sense for tone, a realization of some dream in black and silvery grey, in pale gold or greenish blues. A vague flare of colour in some dark tonality was, to him, the island in the desert which he had to seek, unable to rest until he had found it. He saw life in visions, and his subjects were merely means to express them. In his "Lady Archibald Campbell" he cared more for black and grey gradations and the yellow note of the buskin than for the fair sitter. The figure is, so to speak, invented in the character of the colour arrangement. Whistler once said he would like best to paint for an audience that could dispense with the representation of objects and figures, with all pictorial actualities, and be satisfied solely with the music of colour.
And why should we not profit by his lesson, and learn to look at pictures as we look at the flush of the evening sky, at a passing cloud, at the vision of a beautiful woman, or at a white chrysanthemum!
[1] Published originally in "Camera Work," 1903.
CHAPTER II
QUARTIER LATIN AND CHELSEA
During Jean François Raffaelli's sojourn in America I had occasion to ask him the rather futile question of how long it took a painter in Paris to become famous. Of course I referred to a man of superior abilities, and meant by fame an international reputation. He answered twenty years at least, and I replied that about twenty years more would be needed in America.
Whistler had a long time to wait before fame knocked at his door, although he had a local reputation in London and Paris at forty. He was known as a man of curious ways, and an excellent etcher; but, with the exception of two medals, he had received no honours whatever for his paintings. His work still impressed by its novelty; but he had not yet captivated the public. He still had to fight for recognition, and, as long as a man has to do that, he is neither a popular nor a successful man.