In his early piano picture the trembling white dress of the child surprises him into the representation of stuff itself; later his art passes to an almost ecstatic obliviousness to the quality of things themselves and he surrenders the representation of their surface qualities for a fluid, musical, all-embracing quality of paint in which the artist can render his theme as a virtuoso, ever striving to overtake some almost impossible inflection of tone. And as his art becomes thus abstract, as it assumes such a mission as music, he finds musical terms for the names of his pictures to give the public the clue.
His water-colours are executed with an extremely pleasant touch of brush to paper in which he himself delighted, and here, as also in the case of etching, he made the most of the particular qualities of the medium and as ever was careful not to out-step the limitations which an appreciation of those qualities imposed. They do not do much more than register the incident of colour which interested him in any particular scene. It was to register his pleasure in that, rather than to make a full record of surrounding country that he made his water-colours, and the spectator will understand them only by the responsiveness of his imagination to artistic suggestion.
By the process of what is termed in the language of art “suggestion” (that is, interpretation by thoughtful, economical, and expressive touches instead of a photographic imitation) all merely mechanical labour is eliminated and there is a consequent spiritualising of the whole method by which the artist makes his communication to our imagination. He infers that we have advanced beyond an understanding merely of the capital letters of art, and that this autographic handling of the brush or etching needle is as intelligible to us as the characteristic penmanship of our friends and as charming.
VII
The second great public event in Whistler’s career was his election in 1886 to the Presidency of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, which made exciting history at the time. Whistler was just one of those people who want everything in the world arranged after some secret pattern of their own. They make the best reformers. But what could be a more strange spectacle than the revolutionary Whistler in the presidential chair of the staidest of art societies? The desire for advertisement overcoming the scruples of older members, Whistler’s election as a member took place just before their winter exhibition in 1884. The Times of the 3rd of December 1884 recorded the fact that artistic society was startled by the news that this most wayward of painters had found a home among the men of Suffolk Street—of all people in the world.
His humour did not forsake him in this new environment. Mr. Horseley, R.A., lecturing before the Church Congress, attacked the nude models, especially and in particular at the Royal Academy Schools. Shortly after this, in sending a pastel of a nude to the Society of British Artists, Whistler attached the words “Horseley soit qui mal y pense,” and was only prevailed upon to remove them by the fear of older members that the attack upon an Academician might lead up to a libel case with the Royal Academy. The Royal Academy students at the time used to drape the legs of the chairs and tables when Mr. Horseley visited the schools. That was in 1885. It was the following year that Whistler was elected President of the Society for which he got a Royal Charter, and to which by his methods—as President—he brought fame for ever as the R.B.A.
Many of the electors who had supported his membership had concluded that he was not likely to take much part in the workings of the Society. However, he came to the meetings and to their surprise took an interest in the proceedings, proffering advice, intruding new ideas, not often welcomed by the older artists. He invited some of the members to one of his famous Sunday breakfasts at his studio in Tite Street, and regaled them with his theories of art. They were influenced by his personality and the character of the elections altered, men of the newer movements were elected, and they soon formed a small but very energetic and loyal group around Whistler, finally acquiring sufficient power to elect him as we have shown into the President’s chair. After that the meetings of the Society were exhilarating in the extreme, and Whistler talked with extreme brilliance to the members, and somehow got his way until their Gallery was hung with one line of pictures upon a carefully chosen background.
But the opposition became too strong from members who wished to run the exhibition on its old lines, and certainly the funds were suffering from these very high ideals. His opponents “brought up the maimed, the halt, and the blind,” “all except corpses, don’t you know!” as Whistler put it, the oldest members, the fact of whose membership had up to that time lingered only perhaps in their own memory, and thus effected his out-voting at the next election. Whistler congratulated them, for, as he explained, no longer was the right man in the wrong place. “You see,” he said, referring to the group of his followers who resigned with him, “the ‘Artists’ have come out and the ‘British’ remain.”
It was the first time in England that pictures had been so artistically arranged. No pictures were badly hung, no member had anything to complain of as far as that went. But they were disturbed at the loss of probable sales which they calculated the empty spaces on the walls might be taken to signify.