American life is not particularly kind to budding geniuses, either in the period of revolt or of later evolution. There is no gainsaying we are a very material race just now. And it is nowise peculiar that it should be so. We do not expect much from Australia and Canada in the way of art. Why should we of the United States, where there are vast territories in very much the same primitive condition as in other emigrant countries? Of course there are certain parts and centres in this country which can boast of a culture dating back a few centuries, but the population has always lived in turmoil and conflict. Self-assertion and self-improvement are the ideals of any man who has changed his domicile, in the one hope to better his material welfare. In a country which is so vast as ours and which has at times an increase of ten thousand aliens a week, the national pride in intellectual accomplishments cannot run high.
All that wealth can do is done at present. We have numerous private collections of rare excellence and will have National Galleries and Kensington Museums in due time, but, as Whistler has said, art is not a matter of education, or of royal, civic or municipal encouragement. It is a growth and the soil must be ripe for it. No doubt, in due time collectors will divert some of their attention from the battered relics of past ages to the quite as admirable productions of their contemporaries. It would be pleasant to find that people cease the worship of dubious pictures by Old Masters as the one certain and infallible proof of enlightenment.
The artist of to-day has to subsist on the Spartan principle; he has either to do or to die. These are no stimulants to inspiration. He has to dig it all out of himself. That engenders martyrdom. And very few, particularly those equipped with lesser talent, are willing to give up a half-way respectable existence for a life in a garret and a long wait until fame knocks at the door. Nearly all the great European artists had their struggle and lived in hovels. The American is less willing to enter upon such a precarious existence, as he realizes that if he accepts it, he may have to stay in a garret until the end of his life. American artists do not assist each other. Each goes his own way, partly under the stress of conditions, because the vastness of the country and larger towns permits no closer association; and partly by choice, by personal inclination or professional reasons. There is but little intellectual intercourse. The atmospheric conditions are just as beautiful here as anywhere. And so are the subjects equally beautiful and plentiful. It would be ridiculous to deny it. Yet it takes courage to be a pioneer. It needs leisure, some incentive and sympathy. No man is inexhaustible. He needs some encouragement from outside; and if it fails to come he will grow indifferent. He may open up a restaurant, or become an illustrator on a comic paper. Deserters of this kind may not represent an irreparable loss, as they were never ensign-bearers, nor ever stood in the firing line.
"They were not carved as from iron or wood,
Cut with an axe, or hammered with sledge,
Till the man shows strong and good."
as Daniel Dawson sang, another young poet who fell by the wayside.
Our conditions are not conducive to the evolution and exploitation of a genius. Graft and prohibition laws, whose evil influences are felt in all strata of society, also injure artistic progress, if not directly, surely by the stress of public opinion. Such conditions would no doubt have retarded the progress of even a man like Whistler for years. If a man has not the means to sip his demi-tasse at Florian's, in Venice on the piazza, he can not make any etchings or lithographs of the Campanile. And if a man cannot afford to buy plates and an etching press he cannot make any etchings at all. And that is the fate of hundreds of artists in our larger cities.
No, to go to Paris and then to find another congenial abode in Europe, to settle there, to live his own life, and to do in art what he wanted to do was the wisest move Whistler ever made. It helped him to expand and to mature the great talent that was slumbering within him, ever since he stared, lost in wonder, at the Velasquez of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg.
Whistler admired the Greek as much as anybody, but this emotional reverence did not hinder him from smashing some traditions of ancient beauty to pieces. Greek art was so perfect that for centuries no artist could escape its influence. All the Old Masters were nursed on the marble breasts of Grecian goddesses. In all art schools the white corpses of plaster cast facsimiles were worshipped on bended knee. The pupils never dared to glance about. They did not see the beauty of the world around them. They could perceive it only through Greek conventions. This had to cease. There was no life blood in these artificial constructions. But tradition was so deeply ingrained in Western æstheticisms that it lingered on for centuries, until Manet entered the studio, opened the windows, let in the light, and Monet took the young students by the arm, pushed them into the open air and led them to the meadows and riverside, and the open road.
Whistler, in the meanwhile, had scoured the whole horizon of art, and beheld a new dawn in the East. There he saw an old civilization, as deep and broad as ours. It was just at a stage when modern materialism had begun to wash out some of its finest colours. Art was deteriorating in the East under the stress of missionaries and merchants. An era of manufacture had set in. Could not the noble, unselfish spirit of old Japan be kept alive, revived,—amalgamated with our art, and be made to pour new life into our valiant dreams of beauty!
You remember what Whistler said of the primitive artist. The words are worth repeating: