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MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR

EDITED BY--T. LEMAN HARE


WHISTLER

1834-1903




IN THE SAME SERIES

    ARTIST.             AUTHOR.
  VELAZQUEZ.          S. L. BENSUSAN.
  REYNOLDS.           S. L. BENSUSAN.
  TURNER.             C. LEWIS HIND.
  ROMNEY.             C. LEWIS HIND.
  GREUZE.             ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
  BOTTICELLI.         HENRY B. BINNS.
  ROSSETTI.           LUCIEN PISSARRO.
  BELLINI.            GEORGE HAY.
  FRA ANGELICO.       JAMES MASON.
  REMBRANDT.          JOSEF ISRAELS.
  LEIGHTON.           A. LYS BALDRY.
  RAPHAEL.            PAUL G. KONODY.
  HOLMAN HUNT.        MARY E. COLERIDGE.
  TITIAN              S. L. BENSUSAN.
  MILLAIS.            A. LYS BALDRY.
  CARLO DOLCI.        GEORGE HAY.
  GAINSBOROUGH.       MAX ROTHSCHILD.
  TINTORETTO.         S. L. BENSUSAN.
  LUINI.              JAMES MASON.
  FRANZ HALS.         EDGCUMBE STALEY.
  VAN DYCK.           PERCY M. TURNER.
  LEONARDO DA VINCI.  M. W. BROCKWELL.
  RUBENS.             S. L. BENSUSAN.
  WHISTLER.           T. MARTIN WOOD.
  HOLBEIN.            S. L. BENSUSAN.
  BURNE-JONES.        A. LYS BALDRY.
  VIGEE LE BRUN.      C. HALDANE MACFALL.
  CHARDIN.            PAUL G. KONODY.
  FRAGONARD.          C. HALDANE MACFALL.
  MEMLINC.            W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE.
  CONSTABLE.          C. LEWIS HIND.
  RAEBURN.            JAMES L. CAW.
  JOHN S. SARGENT     T. MARTIN WOOD.

_Others in Preparation._




[Illustration: PLATE I.--OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE. Frontispiece

(In the National Gallery)

This nocturne was bought by the National Collections Fund from
the Whistler Memorial Exhibition. It was one of the canvases
brought forward during the cross-examination of the artist in the
Whistler v. Ruskin trial.]




Whistler

BY T. MARTIN WOOD

ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR


[Illustration]


LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK

NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  Plate
     I. Old Battersea Bridge                            Frontispiece
          In the National Gallery
                                                                Page
    II. Nocturne, St. Mark's, Venice                              14
          In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq.

   III. The Artist's Studio                                       24
          In the possession of Douglas Freshfield, Esq.

    IV. Portrait of my Mother                                     34
          In the Luxembourg Galleries, Paris

     V. Lillie in Our Alley                                       40
          In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq.

    VI. Nocturne, Blue and Silver                                 50
          In the possession of the Hon. Percy Wyndham

   VII. Portrait of Thomas Carlyle                                60
          In the Corporation Art Galleries, Glasgow

  VIII. In the Channel                                            70
          In the possession of Mrs. L. Knowles




[Illustration]

I


At the time when Rossetti and his circle were foregathering chiefly at
Rossetti's house, quiet Chelsea scarcely knew how daily were
associations added which will always cluster round her name. Whistler's
share in those associations is very large, and he has left in his
paintings the memory of many a night, as he returned beside the river.
Before Whistler painted it, night was more opaque than it is now. It had
been viewed only through the window of tradition. It was left for a man
of the world coming out of an artificial London room to paint its
stillness, and also to show us that we ourselves had made night more
beautiful, with ghostly silver and gold; and to tell us that the dark
bridges that sweep into it do not interrupt--that we cannot interrupt,
the music of nature.

The figure of Whistler emerges: with his extreme concern as to his
appearance, his careful choice of clothes, his hair so carefully
arranged. He had quite made up his mind as to the part he intended to
play and the light in which he wished to be regarded. He had a dual
personality. Himself as he really was and the personality which he put
forward as himself. In a sense he never went anywhere unaccompanied; he
was followed and watched by another self that would perhaps have been
happier at home. Tiring of this he would disappear from society for a
time. Other men's ringlets fall into their places accidentally--so it
might be with the young Disraeli. Other men's clothes have seemed
characteristic without any of this elaborate pose. He chose his clothes
with a view to their being characteristic, which is rather different and
less interesting than the fact of their becoming so because he,
Whistler, wore them. Other men are dandies, with little conception of
the grace of their part; with Whistler a supreme artist stepped into the
question. He designed himself. Nor had he the illusions of vanity, but a
groundwork of philosophy upon which every detail of his personal life
was part of an elaborate and delicately designed structure, his art the
turret of it all, from which he saw over the heads of others. There is
no contradiction between the dandy and his splendid art. He lived as
exquisitely and carefully as he painted. Literary culture, merely, in
his case was not great perhaps, yet he could be called one of the most
cultured figures of his time. In every direction he marked the path of
his mind with fastidious borders. And it is interesting that he should
have painted the greatest portrait of Carlyle, who, we will say,
represented in English literature Goethe's philosophy of culture, which
if it has an echo in the plastic arts, has it in the work of Whistler.
In his "Heretics" Mr. G. K. Chesterton condemned Whistler for going in
for the art of living--I think he says the miserable art of living--I
have not seen the book for a long time, but surely the fact that
Whistler was more than a private workman, that his temperament had
energy enough to turn from the ardours of his work to live this other
part of life--indicates extraordinary vitality rather than any weakness.
Whistler was never weak: he came very early to an understanding of his
limitations, and well within those limitations took his stand. Because
of this his art was perfect. In it he declined to dissipate his energy
in any but its natural way. In that way he is as supreme as any master.
Attacked from another point his whole art seems but a cobweb of
beautiful ingenuity--sustained by evasions. Whistler, one thinks, would
have been equally happy and meteorically successful in any profession;
one can imagine what an enlivening personality his would have been in a
Parliamentary debate, and how fascinating. Any public would have
suited him. Art was just an accident coming on the top of many other
gifts. It took possession of him as his chief gift, but without it he
was singularly well equipped to play a prominent part in the world. As
things happened all his other energy went to forward, indirectly and
directly, the claims of art. Perhaps his methods of self-advancement
were not so beautiful as his art, and his wit was of a more robust
character. For this we should be very glad; the world would have been
too ready to overlook his delicate work--except that it had to feed his
inordinate ambition. At first it recognised his wit and then it
recognised his art, or did its level best to, in answer to his repeated
challenges.

[Illustration: PLATE II.--NOCTURNE, ST. MARK'S, VENICE

(In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq.)

This picture was first exhibited in the winter of 1886 at the Royal
Society of British Artists. The painter's election as President of the
Society taking place just after the hanging of the exhibition. A
newspaper criticism at the time was to the effect that the only
note-worthy fact about the painting was the price, L630, "just about
twenty shillings to the square inch." The figure of an investment, we
may add, which was to improve beyond the wildest calculations.]

It is easier to explain Whistler's personality than his work. In his
lifetime most people had recognised all the force of his personality,
but it was not so with his art. In this he is as a player of violin
music, or a composer after the fashion of the masters of music--his
relationship to the subject which suggests the motif, of course, could
not be quite so slight as theirs--but it was their standpoint that he
adopted and so approached his art from another direction than the
ordinary one. To a great extent he established the unity of the arts.
Without being a musical man, through painting he divined the mission of
music and passed from the one art almost into the other. And the effort
above everything else for self-expression was in its essence a musical
