PANELS FROM THE PEACOCK ROOM.
One feels, however, to a nature like Whistler's, the sort of notoriety which such situations give to the principals had a distinct attraction, added to the fighting instinct which possessed him.
From this time onward this attraction seems to have grown more and more powerful and to have influenced the life and work of the artist in anything but a fortunate way, and it becomes fatiguing to follow the course of the continual brawls in which he was involved.
He was a conspicuous figure at the Grosvenor Gallery private views in the early days, with his white lock and his long wand, but I never got further than a slight acquaintance with him, personally, which may have been as much my fault (or misfortune) as his.
When we come to his "Ten o'clock," in which Whistler gives us his philosophy of art, we find his views, characteristically, intensely individualistic. Period, traditions, gradual evolution in art and artists, are nothing to him. It is always the "one man show," a purely personal view of art, from the first etcher on a cave-bone to Rembrandt. The artist is always an accident. His predecessors or his contemporaries are nothing. Heredity and environment, economic and social conditions, are of no account. Race or country don't matter. The inspiration of symbol and story is ignored or despised as "literary." The unifying and ennobling influence of architecture, the co-operation of the crafts, the associated chain of human endeavour and experiment in the arts, which link the ages together, and find their highest expression in great public monuments, do not interest him apparently. "Art happened." This is as much as to say one is only concerned with the flower, and the roots, the soil from which it springs or the evolution of the plant itself are matters of no account! Thus the individualistic artist kicks away the ladder by which he arrived and expects the stage to be cleared for him. Ah, well, "Ten o'clock" suited the hour, the audience, and the man. It would be too much to expect brilliant artists and witty inventors of bons mots, or butterflies to be profound philosophers as well.
In many ways Whistler, though distinctly a decorative artist, was the complete antithesis of William Morris. Mr. Pennell makes a true remark in his book in speaking of Whistler's ideas in decoration when he says (p. 221, vol. i): "Colour for him (Whistler), was as much decoration as pattern was for William Morris." One would be inclined however to qualify this by saying that Whistler's main principle in decoration, in which he showed a fine taste, was by tones of colour; especially was he successful in the choice of pale delicate tones. Whistler appeals to one as a great craftsman in tone, rather than as a colourist.
As a painter his most distinctive and original works will always be his "nocturnes," and, of his portraits (which, however, he often treated as landscapes) his fame seems likely chiefly to rest upon those of his Mother and Carlyle.
The picture of Whistler himself, of his character as a man, which this book reveals—in spite of some relieving touches—is not an attractive one.
One can only feel sorry that so genuine an artist was so consumed by his own opinion of himself, and wasted so much time and energy in litigation, and that he could stoop to be professor of "the gentle art of making enemies" or glory in the distinction of being a past-master in the craft of losing friends. Still, he fought the Philistines.