A new art form is always the expression of a new spirit. In painting the new spirit is rebellious. In addition it is emphatically individualistic. It is opposed to previous schools and academic training. It aims at attaining the maximum of personal intensity. The exigencies of the classic style—the necessity of a literary subject—at once stay the free use of the brush and hamper the virile expression of technique. Why not give to art a new twist, graft upon it a new beauty, enliven it with a purer flame, that it may shine forth again in its old pristine beauty!
The Western mind still rebels that this resurrection should come from the East, through another race. Even the most ardent disciples of Whistler make little of the Japanese influence. It is still a question of conquest. In my mind, as in that of many of our foremost artists, there is not the slightest doubt that the Eastern idea will win out and that a new era, as important as that of Greek influence, will set in. The meaning of the old symbols has faded and it is the artist's duty to create new ones.
Whistler disclosed new harmonies of tone, of arrangement, and visual poetry, all of them sensitive and expressive, using blacks and browns and a touch of vivid colour or a flare of white, and thereby succeeded in stirring the depth of our nature. His art has a tender pallor, tones purposely deadened, faded tints like those on Japanese screens of old feudal castles, of a wondrous harmony and softness. Details, discreetly accentuated, allow the ensemble to retain its full importance, and against dark background, in soft neutral tints, figures that the painter desires to bring out show with an illusion of life truly magical. Herein consists the last great pictorial invention; it is through this that painting still has the faculty to powerfully address the modern mind.
He said in his "Ten O'Clock" that the story of the beautiful was complete. He surely, like Monet, has added a valuable chapter. He, in his own words, was "one of the chosen—with the mark of the gods upon him—who had to continue what had gone before."
THE END.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bacher, Otto H.: "With Whistler in Venice." New York, 1908.