In lead pencil sketches the lowest tones are grey as compared with black, and consequently can not produce any decided depth. Crayon lithography is capable of producing beautiful soft greys. As the gradations from one tint to another are not continuous, the texture, consisting of innumerable minute dots, does not permit clear uninterrupted line work and even flow of tone. It does not lend itself particularly well to faithful copying from nature. The very character of its granulated line and surface suggests a sketchy and fragmentary treatment. Whistler, who, with Fantin-Latour, shares the honour of the happy revival of artistic lithography, readily realized this. He laid special stress upon the texture; its detached shapes creep over the paper like grey moss over a stone. They are all carried out in grey monotonous middle tints but marvellously delicate and subtle in values. Superficial but delicious in quality, his lithographic croquis impress us like the laborious trifles and harmonious bagatelles of a Herrick.
Theodore Duret tells us that Whistler made his first series of six lithographs during the years 1877-78 (republished in 1887 by Boussod Valadon in Paris). They were drawn directly on stone, contrary to his later method, when he used transfer paper almost exclusively. They were rather large in size, and resembled his painted nocturnes in general treatment. This is particularly the case with his "View on the Thames," the most beautiful print of the series. I do not believe that these representations were of particular importance, as they contradict his own theory. What can be and has been perfectly expressed in one medium, can not reach equal perfection in another medium. It was really nothing but a translation of a painted nocturne into black and white. The essential charm of a Whistler nocturne consists of colour. Black and white can convey only a vague idea of vibrancy.
When Whistler took up lithographing for the second time in 1885-86, he had become thoroughly familiar with his medium. He no longer worked on the stone, and abandoned all elaborate finished compositions. His motifs are sketchy little figure studies, street scenes, portraits and occasionally a nude or semi-nude like his "Dancing Girl" in fluttering drapery. The printing he entrusted to a lithograph printer in London, Thomas Way by name, who was somewhat of an artist himself and consequently better equipped than the ordinary pressman to do justice to Whistler's vague fancies. Frequently Whistler took a hand in the printing, or at least made corrections. Printer Way told Mr. Wedmore, with reference to the sometimes disputed matter of the transfer paper, "that even when the artist drew on that in the first instance, and saw in proofs things that were lacking or things that were exaggerated, he would make his correction upon the stone itself, and so, of certain of his lithographs—his later ones especially—he produced different 'states,' though it was not easy to expressly define them, and though these differences were, of course, but the exceptions, and whereas very often, though of course not always in etchings—Whistler's or other peoples'—the earlier state is finer than the later; in these lithographs, generally speaking, the later state is finer than the earlier."
Whistler's lithographs can easily be classified according to the subjects they represent. During the years Whistler lived in Paris he depicted views and scenes of the city like the "Pantheon," "The Grand Gallery of the Louvre," "The Luxembourg Gardens" and interesting types like "La belle New Yorkaise" and "La belle Dame Paresseuse." One print, "Les Confidences dans le Jardin," depicts two gossiping women in the garden of his house in the rue du Bac.
His London subjects are equally numerous. In 1895, when he painted "The Master Smith" and the "Little Rose of Lyme Regis," while at a watering place in Dorsetshire he made several sketches of the picturesque streets of the old town. Of particular charm are his "Early Morning" (a view of the Thames from his Chelsea window) and "The Locksmith of the Dragon Square." In 1886, during an illness of his wife, he lived in the Surrey Hotel and executed a number of panoramic views of the Strand, the Thames with its river traffic, the quays, St. Paul's Cathedral and bird-eye views of London streets.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
LITTLE ROSE OF LYME REGIS.
All these designs are beautifully enveloped in a misty atmosphere. The paper is used as a value as important as the grey lines of the crayon, and the forms are softened as if broken by light and generally massed in an unsymmetrical fashion.
Some of the portrait sketches are superb, in particular that of Stéphane Mallarmé, who was Whistler's life-long friend and one of his staunchest supporters. It was largely due to Mallarmé that the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" found a home in the Luxembourg. He also translated the "Ten O'clock" into French. Whistler's sketch of the poet appeared on the front of the Parisian edition of "Vers et Prose" (1893). It is apparently hurriedly dashed off, but the result of many careful studies and experiments. It is a mere fragment, negligent, disdainful; but how knowingly made, and how characteristic of the poet's personality! Despite its vagueness it is a likeness, and preferable, to me at least, who was fortunate to know Mallarmé in the early eighties, to most portraits made of him.