BLACK LION WHARF (ETCHING).
Otto H. Bacher has written a few analytical notes of Whistler's line work. "Where it required accuracy he was minute. He used his needle with the ease of a draughtsman with a pen. He grouped his lines in an easy, playful way that was fascinating. They would often group themselves as tones, a difficult thing to get in an etching. He used line and dot in all its phases with certainty. Sometimes the lines formed a dark shadow of a passage through a house, with figures in the darkness so beautifully drawn that they looked far away from the spectator. These shadows which so beautifully defined darkness were made only by many lines carefully welded together and made vague as the shadows became faint in the distance or contrasted with some light object. He made his etched lines feel like air against solids.... If he etched a doorway, he played with the lines and allowed them to jumble themselves into beautiful forms and contrasts, but was always very careful of the general direction they should run as a whole." Bacher saw a good deal of Whistler in Venice, perhaps more so than any one else, and his observations on Whistler's etching tools, how he ground and bit his plates, are extremely interesting. "In grounding plates Whistler used the old-fashioned ground, composed of white wax, bitumen, pitch and rosin. He heated the plates with an ordinary alcohol flame, holding the plate in a small hand vise. The silk covered dabber that spread the ground over the plate was fascinatingly managed by Whistler.... When he came to smoking the plate he preferred the old wax taper made for that purpose. He kept his two etching needles, very sharp ordinary dentist tools, in cork, to preserve their fine points. Whistler always had his stopping-out varnish with him in a small bottle, applying it with a brush in a most delicate manner. He did not make use of any mirror but preferred the old negative process. When he bit a plate he put it on the corner of a kitchen table, with his retouching varnish, etching needle, feather and bottle of nitric acid, at hand, ready for instant use. Taking a feather, he would place it at the mouth of the bottle of acid, tipping bottle and allowing acid to run down the feather and drip on plate. He moved bottle and feather always in the same position around the edges until plate was covered,—would use feather continually to wash acid backward and forward upon the plate, keeping parts equally covered, and blowing away air bubbles."
Frequently Whistler sketched directly on copper plates. He carried the prepared plates in his pockets or in a book and when he found a motif sketched it in improvisatore fashion. His sketches of the "Annual Review at Spithead," in 1887, show his uncommon facility as a sketch artist. He was the champion of dry point. Already during the Leyland period he selected dry point as a favourite medium. And in this, to my notion, lies the strength of Whistler as an etcher. "Whistler added," as Joseph Pennell has so beautifully said, "a new scientific method to the art of etching—that of painting on the copper plate with the needle."
As a printer of his own plates he seems to have been quite an expert. He, no doubt, allowed himself great latitude and experimented with each plate, so that few impressions resemble each other. Although he had abolished blacks and dark tonal passages at an early date, he frequently painted on the plate with printer's ink, and went through an elaborate process of wiping. Of course this makes the excellence of the impression uneven, but also makes a particularly good one a more valuable possession.
The intention was always the same. From the very start he sought for the same arrangement of lines and spaces, the same effect as in his Venetian plates. He wanted breadth—not breadth of line itself, but breadth of expression. After all it was a growth and slow development. He became simpler and simpler, and well nigh reached perfection in his Parisian series of 1892-93, of little shops, boulevard scenes, and public gardens, and in prints like "The Little Mast," "The Riva," "The Barber," and "Zaandam" he acquired his wonderful sense for right workmanship on a small scale. Some of his etchings of fragments of architecture have never been surpassed in sketchy treatment; most noticeable perhaps in the exaggerated simplicity of the "London Bridge" and in the Holland series of the nineties. There we realize that great simplicity of motif is dependent on great simplicity of genius. The effects are so spontaneous and subdued that their value might well escape common observation. The extreme sensibility is a matter of both touch and vision. His plates look as if the rapidity of execution had been extraordinary, and yet his line, as delicate at times as in silver point drawings, is not exactly what we could call nervous, but of remarkable freedom and unerring precision. It is piquant and sprightly, subtle and alert.
The lines can almost be counted in some of his later etchings. He had learned the truth of the proverb "Wise economy is everything." It was even more than wise economy. It was the highest expression of artistic wisdom, which had almost disappeared since the surface decorations of Greek vases, in which mood, character and incident were reduced to a few details, strong enough to incite in the imagination of the beholder all that was eliminated.
Every art is at its best when it is most itself. Nobody realized this more than Whistler, who invariably emphasized this. He had an absolutely clear idea of what every medium could do. In his larger paintings it was the exploitation of a few dull colours, of a silhouette in space combined with psychological research; in his nocturnes, a play of slightly differentiated tones; in his water-colours a mere suggestion of reality; and in his pastels a certain joyousness of expression. Pure line, caprice of detail, distance and atmosphere, he reserved for his etchings; and a subtle expression of values of "moss-like gradations" for his lithographs. His decision may not always appear right to others, but it was right to him. How carefully he thought out these technical problems is shown in his "Propositions," which he addressed to an American etching club that had invited him to take part in a competition of large plates. He wrote the following series of maxims that should be posted on the wall of every studio:
"That art is criminal to go beyond the means used in its exercise."
"That the space to be covered should always be in proper relation to the means used for covering it."
"That in etching, the means used, or instruments employed, being the finest possible point, the space to be covered should be small in proportion."