[Pg 180]
PORTRAIT OF MRS. LOUIS HUTHPORTRAIT OF MRS. LOUIS HUTHARRANGEMENT IN BLACK. NO. IIOILIn the possession of the Executors of the Family(See page 126)
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK. NO. II
OIL
In the possession of the Executors of the Family
(See page 126)
[Pg 180]
FANNY LEYLANDFANNY LEYLANDSTUDY FOR THE ETCHING. G. 108PENCIL SKETCHFormerly in the possession of J. H. Wren, Esq.(See page 124)
STUDY FOR THE ETCHING. G. 108
PENCIL SKETCH
Formerly in the possession of J. H. Wren, Esq.
(See page 124)
Whistler explained this position inWhistlerv.Ruskin—Art and Art Critics(December 1878), the first of his series of pamphlets in brown-paper covers. It was printed by Spottiswoode, though his idea was to have it lithographed by Way, and published by Chatto and Windus. He dedicated it to Albert Moore. It is a protest against the folly of the Pen in venturing to criticise the Brush. Literature is left to the literary man, science to the scientist, why then should art be at the mercy of "the one who was never in it," but whose boast it is that he is doing good to art. The critics "are all 'doing good'—yes, they all do good to Art. Poor Art! what a sad state the slut is in, and these gentlemen shall help her." Ruskin resigned the Slade Professorship. He wrote to Dean Liddell from Brantwood (November 28, 1878) that the result of the Whistler trial left him no option. "I cannot hold a chair from which I have no power of expressing judgment without being taxed for it by British Law." Unless he continued to be the Pope and the Prophet he believed himself, he could not go on. He could not stand criticism, and he collapsed when his criticism was questioned. The trial, he wrote, made his professorship a farce. Whistler suggested that Ruskin might fill a Chair of Ethics instead. "Il faut vivre," was the cry of the art critic but Whistler said, "Je n'en vois pas la nécessité."
Whistler won. The trial was a triumph. But he had to pay heavily for his victory.
Footnotes[8]This picture then belonged to Mr. Graham, and some years after at his sale at Christie's was received with hisses. It was purchased by Mr. Robert H. C. Harrison for sixty pounds, and at the close of the London Whistler Memorial Exhibition was sold for two thousand guineas to the National Arts Collection Fund, by whom it was presented to the nation. It now hangs in the National Gallery. See Chapter XXIX.
Footnotes[8]This picture then belonged to Mr. Graham, and some years after at his sale at Christie's was received with hisses. It was purchased by Mr. Robert H. C. Harrison for sixty pounds, and at the close of the London Whistler Memorial Exhibition was sold for two thousand guineas to the National Arts Collection Fund, by whom it was presented to the nation. It now hangs in the National Gallery. See Chapter XXIX.
Footnotes
[8]This picture then belonged to Mr. Graham, and some years after at his sale at Christie's was received with hisses. It was purchased by Mr. Robert H. C. Harrison for sixty pounds, and at the close of the London Whistler Memorial Exhibition was sold for two thousand guineas to the National Arts Collection Fund, by whom it was presented to the nation. It now hangs in the National Gallery. See Chapter XXIX.
[8]This picture then belonged to Mr. Graham, and some years after at his sale at Christie's was received with hisses. It was purchased by Mr. Robert H. C. Harrison for sixty pounds, and at the close of the London Whistler Memorial Exhibition was sold for two thousand guineas to the National Arts Collection Fund, by whom it was presented to the nation. It now hangs in the National Gallery. See Chapter XXIX.
Whistler'sfinancial affairs were in hopeless confusion. The builder's estimate for the White House was largely exceeded, the cost of the trial had to be paid for, theatelierwaited for pupils, and the debts brought from Lindsey Row were many. He wrote to his mother at Hastings of his economies and his hopes to pay his debts, but he did not know the meaning of economy. There is a legend of a grocer who had let a bill for tomatoes and fruit run up to six hundred pounds, and when, after the trial, he insisted on settlement, Whistler said:
"How—what—why—why, of course, you have sent these things—most excellent things—and they have been eaten, you know, by most excellent people. Think what a splendid advertisement. And sometimes, you know, the tomatoes are not quite up to the mark, the fruit, you know, not quite fresh. And if you go into these unseemly discussions about the bill—well, you know, I shall have to go into discussions about all this—and think how it would hurt your reputation with all these extraordinary people. I think the best thing is not torefer to the past—I'll let it go, and in the future we'll have a weekly account—wiser, you know."
The grocer left without his money, but was offered in payment two Nocturnes, one the upright Valparaiso. Another story of the same grocer is that he arrived with his account as a grand piano was being carried in. Whistler said he was so busy he couldn't attend to the matter just then, and the grocer thought if grand pianos were being bought, it must be all right. To a dealer in rugs Whistler would have given three Nocturnes in payment, but the dealer refused and spent the rest of his life regretting it.
It was nothing unusual for bailiffs to be in possession, or for bills to cover the walls. The first time this happened, Whistler said to the people whom he invited to dine that they might know his house by the bills on it. When someone complained that creditors kept him walking up and down all night, Whistler was amused:
"Dear me! Do as I do! Leave the walking up and down to the creditors!"
Of the bailiffs he made a new feature at his breakfasts. Mrs. Lynedoch Moncrieff has told us of a Sunday when two or three men waited with Whistler's servant, John, and she said to Whistler:
"I am glad to see you've grown so wealthy."
"Ha, ha! Bailiffs! You know, I had to put them to some use!"
Mr. Rossetti and his wife once found the same "liveried attendants."
"'Your servants seem to be extremely attentive, Mr. Whistler, and anxious to please you,' one of the guests said. 'Oh yes,' was his answer, 'I assure you they wouldn't leave me.'"
Others remember a Sunday when the furniture was numbered for a sale. When breakfast was announced by a bailiff, Whistler said: "They are wonderful fellows. You will see how excellently they wait at table, and to-morrow, you know, if you want, you can see them sell the chairs you sit on every bit as well. Amazing."
Mrs. Edwin Edwards wrote us that when three men were in possession, he treated them while his friends carted away his pictures out of the back door. Others say that the bailiffs, multiplied to seven, were invited into the garden, and given beer with a little something in it. No sooner had they tasted than down went their heads on the table round which they sat. People dining with Whistler that eveningwere taken into the garden to see the seven sleepers of Ephesus: "Stick pins in them, shout in their ears—see—you can't wake them!" All evening it rained and it rained, and it thundered, and it lightened, and it hailed. All night they slept. Morning came and they slept. But at the hour when he had given them their glass the day before, they all woke up and asked for more.
One of the bailiffs at the end of a week, demanded his money. Whistler said:
"If I could afford to keep you I would do without you."
"But what is to become of my wife and family if I don't get my wages, sir?"
"Ha ha! You must ask those who sent you here to answer that question."
"Really, Mr. Whistler, sir, I need the money."
"Oh ho! Have a man in yourself."
Whistler said "it was kind of them to see to such tedious affairs." One he asked: "And how long will you be 'the man in possession?'"
"That, Mr. Whistler, sir, depends on your paying Mr. ——'s bill.
"Awkward for me, but perhaps more for you! I hope you won't mind it, though, you know, I fear your stay with me will be a lengthy one. However, you will find it not entirely unprofitable, for you will see and hear much that may be useful to you."
When things got more desperate, bills covered the front of the house, announcing the sale. Whistler, begging the bailiffs to be at home, went one night to dine. It was stormy, and, returning late, he found that the rain had washed the bills loose and they were flapping in the wind. He woke up the bailiffs, made them get a ladder, and paste every bill down again. He had allowed them to cover his house with their posters, but, so long as he lived in it, no man should sleep with it in a slovenly condition.
Early in May 1879, Whistler was declared bankrupt. His liabilities were four thousand six hundred and forty-one pounds, nine shillings and three pence, and his assets, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-four pounds, nine shillings and four pence. In his long overcoat, longer than ever, swinging his cane lengthening in defiance, his hat set jauntily on his curls, he appeared in the City:
"Ha ha! Well, you know, here I am in the City! Amazing!You know, on the way, I dropped in to see George Lewis, being in the neighbourhood, and, you know, ha ha, he gave me a paper for you to sign!"
It was a petition in bankruptcy.
The creditors met at the Inns of Court Hotel in June. Sir Thomas Sutherland was in the chair, and Leyland, the chief creditor, and various Chelsea tradesmen attended. The only novelty in the proceedings was a speech by Whistler on plutocrats, men with millions, and what he thought of them, and it was with difficulty he was called to order. A committee of examiners was appointed, composed of Leyland, Howell, and Thomas Way.
Leyland was not let off by Whistler. As Michael Angelo, painting the walls of the Sistine Chapel, plunged the critic who had offended him into hell, so Whistler immortalised the man by whom he thought himself wronged. He painted three pictures. The first wasThe Loves of the Lobsters—an Arrangement in Rats, the most prominent lobster in the shirt-frills of Leyland. "Whom the gods wish to make ridiculous, they furnish with a frill!" he said, and the saying was repeated until it reached Leyland, as he meant it should. The second wasMount Ararat, Noah's Ark on a hill, with little figures all in frills. The third was theGold Scab—Eruption in Frilthy Lucre, a creature, breaking out in scabs of golden sovereigns, wearing the frill, seated on the White House playing the piano. The hideousness of the figure is more appalling because of the colour, the design. A malicious joke begun in anger, Mr. Arthur Symons has described it, from which "beauty exudes like the scent of a poisonous flower." Years after, when it was exhibited at the Goupil Gallery, one of the serious new critics regretted that Whistler allowed himself to be influenced by Beardsley. These caricatures alone were in the studio when Leyland and the committee made the inventory. Augustus Hare wrote (May 13, 1879) of a visit in the meantime:
"This morning I went with a very large party to Whistler's studio. We were invited to see the pictures, but there was only one there,The Loves of the Lobsters. It was supposed to represent Niagara, and looked as if the artist had upset the inkstand, and left Providence to work out its own results. In the midst of the black chaos were two lobsters curveting opposite each other, and looking as if they were donewith red sealing-wax. 'I wonder you did not paint the lobsters making love before they were boiled,' aptly observed a lady visitor. 'Oh, I never thought of that,' said Whistler. It was a joke, I suppose. The little man, with his plume of white hair ('the Whistler tuft' he calls it) waving on his forehead, frisked about the room, looking most strange and uncanny, and rather diverted himself over our disappointment in coming so far and finding nothing to see. People admire like sheep his pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery, following each other's lead because it is the fashion."
Worried as he was, Whistler sent to the Grosvenor of 1879 thePortrait of Miss Rosa Corder,Portrait of Miss Connie Gilchrist,The Pacific,Nocturne in Blue and Gold, six etchings, two studies in chalk, and three pastels. His etching,Old Putney Bridge, was at the Royal Academy. The critics talked the usual nonsense, and have since repented it. Mr. (now Sir) Frederick Wedmore distinguished himself by an article:Mr. Whistler's Theories and Mr. Whistler's Art, in theNineteenth Century(August 1879), and afterwards reprinted inFour Masters of Etching(1883). He could appreciate Whistler's work as little as he could understandArt and Art Critics, and from its wit was—and is—still smarting. Whistler he placed as:
"Long ago an artist of high promise. Now he is an artist often of agreeable, though sometimes of incomplete and seemingly wayward performance.... That only the artist should write on art by continued reiteration may convince the middle-class public that has little of the instinct of art. But, sirs, not so easily can you dispense with the services of Diderot and Ruskin."
Wedmore had apparently never heard of Cennini and Dürer, Vasari and Cellini, Da Vinci and Reynolds and Fromentin, who remain, while Diderot and Ruskin and Wedmore himself are discredited or forgotten. He regretted that Whistler's "painted work is somewhat apt to be dependent on the innocent error that confuses the beginning with the end." He condemned thePortrait of Henry Irvingas a "murky caricature of Velasquez," theCarlyleas "a doleful canvas." The Nocturnes were "encouraging sketches," with "an effect of harmonious decoration, so that a dozen or so of them on the upper panels of a lofty chamber would afford even to the wallpapersof William Morris a welcome and justifiable alternative.... They suffer cruelly when placed against work not, of course, of petty and mechanical finish, but of patient achievement. But they have a merit of their own, and I do not wish to understate it."
Whistler had "never mastered the subtleties of accurate form"; "the interest of life—the interest of humanity" had little occupied him,butWedmore hoped that the career, begun with promise, "might not close in work too obstinately faithful to eccentric error." By his etchings his name might "aspire to live," though, "for his fame, Mr. Whistler has etched too much, or at least has published too much," though there is "commonness and vulgarity" in the figures in many prints, though he "lacked the art, the patience, or the will to continue" others.
"The future will forget his disastrous failures, to which in the present has somehow been accorded, through the activity of friendship, or the activity of enmity, a publicity rarely bestowed upon failures at all."
In the same month and year, August 1879, an American, Mr. W. C. Brownell, published inScribner's Monthlyan article onWhistler in Painting and Etching. He treated Whistler and his work with a seriousness in "significant" contrast to Wedmore's clumsy flippancy. This was the first intelligent American article in Whistler's support, and it was illustrated by wood-engravings of his paintings and prints. Amidst the torrent of abuse, it came when Whistler most needed it. But it was not taken seriously, and much was made of Mr. Brownell's slip in describing the dry-pointJoas a portrait of Whistler's brother.
Whistler, left homeless by his bankruptcy, revived the plan for the journey to Venice, and a series of etchings there. He suggested it to Ernest G. Brown, Messrs. Seeley's representative when theBillingsgatewas published in thePortfolio, and now with the Fine Art Society who, at his persuasion, had brought out four of the London plates this year:Free-Trade Wharf,Old Battersea Bridge,Old Putney Bridge, andThe Little Putney, No. 1. They liked the new scheme so well that they gave Whistler a commission for twelve plates in Venice to be delivered in three months' time. One hundred proofs of each were to be printed, and he was to receive, we believe, twelve hundred pounds.
By September 7 (1879), Whistler apparently in great spirits, though"everything was to be sold up," was "arranging his route to Venice" says Mr. Cole. From the receiver he had permission to destroy unfinished work. Copperplates were scratched and pictures smeared with glue, stripped off their stretchers and rolled up. Then he packed his trunk, wrote over his front door: "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. E. W. Godwin, F.S.A., built this one," and started for Venice.
The White House was sold on September 18, 1879, to Mr. Harry Quilter, who paid for it two thousand seven hundred pounds in money at the time, and later in Whistler's jeers. The public laughed at the furniture and effects, "at which even a broker's man would turn up his nose. If ever the seamy side of a fashionable artist's existence was shown, it was during that auction in Chelsea.... Truly, if Ruskin had wished to have his revenge, he might have enjoyed it at the White House, when his prosecutor's specially built-to-order abode was characterised as a disgrace to the neighbourhood by Philistinic spectators, and its contents supplied material for the rude jokes of Hebrew brokers and the special correspondent of theEcho."
"Two wooden spoons, a rusty knife handle and two empty oil tins," was one of the lots. Rolls of canvases were carried off for a few shillings. Out of them came aValparaiso, aCremorne Gardens, the portrait of Sir Henry Cole, aWhite Girland aBlue Girl, the portrait of Miss Florence Leyland, in such a condition that nothing now remains but the two blue pots of flowers on either side. TheCremorne Gardens, a few years after Whistler's death, was sold by T. R. Way for twelve hundred pounds to Mr. A. H. Hannay. Then an effort was made to sell it, through London dealers, for almost four times the price to the Melbourne Gallery, where there were no Whistlers and where, therefore, those who had Whistler's interests at heart thought it would not represent him worthily. Later on the painting was sold to the Metropolitan Museum, New York. It was first cleaned by T. R. Way, and when we saw it and had it photographed for the earlier edition of this book, it contained portraits of both Leyland and Whistler. It has since been cleaned again and the portraits have completely disappeared. Whether the Metropolitan is responsible for the vandalism we do not know. But we do know that it is this way history is wiped from the face of the earth by the restorer. Thomas Way, at the sale, boughtThe LobstersandMount Ararat. Other pictures went astray or disappeared temporarily, for a few intelligent people were at the sale. Whistler wrote to Mrs. William Whistler from Venice begging her to trace and find them, which she was unable to do. But they are turning up now.
Whistler's china, prints, and a few pictures were reserved for a sale at Sotheby's, on Thursday, February 12, 1880. The title-page of the catalogue is: "In Liquidation. By order of the Trustees of J. A. McN. Whistler. Catalogue of the Decorative Porcelain, Cabinets, Paintings and other Works of Art of J. A. McN. Whistler. Received from the White House, Fulham, comprising Numerous Pieces of Blue and White China; the Painting in Oil ofConnie Gilchrist, Dancing with a Skipping-Rope,styledA Girl in Gold,by Whistler; A Satirical painting of a Gentleman, styledThe Creditor,by Whistler. Crayon Drawings and Etchings, Cabinets, and Miscellaneous Articles." When Leyland learned that theGold Scab—The Creditor, was in the sale he did his best to have it removed. Dealers and amateurs were there: Way, Oscar Wilde, Huish, The Fine Art Society, Dowdeswell, Lord Redesdale, Deschamps, Wickham Flower, and Howell were purchasers. Howell secured the Japanese screen, the background of thePrincesse du Pays de la Porcelaine. The Japanese bath fell to Mr. Jarvis.The Creditorwas bought by Messrs. Dowdeswell for twelve guineas, vanished, turned up in the King's Road, Chelsea, years later, and was purchased by Mr. G. P. Jacomb-Hood for ten pounds, and is now in the collection of Mrs. Spreckles in San Francisco. It is one of the documents Mr. Freer should have—and could have had—as he should have theWhistlerwith the brushes, theMrs. Leyland, theDr. Whistler, and others which would add enormously to the historic value as well as artistic completeness of his collection.Connie Gilchristwas sold to Mr. Wilkinson for fifty guineas. Whistler's bust by Boehm was bought by Way for six guineas. A crayon sketch, catalogued as a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, was knocked down for five guineas to Oscar Wilde, who asked her to sign it, which she did, writing that it was very like her. It might have been handed down as her portrait, had it not appeared at Oscar Wilde's sale, and found its way back to Whistler, who declared that Madame Bernhardt never sat to him. The sale at Sotheby's realised three hundred and twenty-eight pounds, nineteen shillings.
Foryears Whistler wanted to go to Venice. When he got there he found it a difficult place to work in. It was cold, and he felt the cold. It is almost impossible to hold a copper-plate or a needle with numbed fingers, and Venice in ice made him long for London in fog. He would gladly have exchanged the Square of St. Mark's for Piccadilly, a gondola for a hansom. Even Ruskin says this.
Affairs in London worried him. He wrote for news of the vanished pictures. He knew that his letters had got into second-hand bookshops—even letters to his mother. He was ill and the Doctor was far away.
Venice he thought beautiful, most beautiful after rain when, he wrote his mother, the colour and reflections were gorgeous. The Venetian masters interested him. At the Scuola di San Rocco he is remembered climbing up for a closer look at the Tintorettos. Veronese and Titian were great swells; Canaletto and Guardi, great masters. He went to St. Mark's for Mass at Christmas, though he wrote that the ceiling of The Peacock Room was more splendid than the dome. But, as he told Fantin years before, it was a waste of time to search for new subjects, and all subjects were new to him in Venice. Countess Rucellai (Miss Edith Bronson) writes that "he used to say Venice was an impossible place to sit down and sketch, 'there was something still better round the corner.'"
Mr. Henry Woods says: "He wandered for motives, but no matter how much he wandered, and appeared to loaf, when he found a subject he worked with a determination that no cold and cheerlessness could daunt. I remember his energy—and suffering—when doing those beautiful pastels, nearly all done during the coldest winter I have known in Venice, and mostly towards evening when the cold was bitterest! He soon found out the beautiful quality of colour there is here before sunset in winter. He had a strong constitution. He was only unwell once with a bad cold."
The Fine Art Society asked him to make twelve plates in three months. The plates were not started for weeks, and the Fine Art Society demanded what he was doing. The answer was at first silenceand then a request for more money. The Fine Art Society began to doubt and Whistler was furious. Then reports came that he was doing enormous plates they had not ordered. Howell and others said that Whistler would never come back, and Academicians laughed at the idea of the Society getting either plates or their money from such a "charlatan." With each new suggestion of doubt, Whistler's fury grew. "Amazing their letters and mine, but, perhaps, not for the public." The delay was his care. Even Frank Duveneck, most procrastinating of mortals, made his Venetian etchings, and Otto Bacher changed his style and did his Venetian plates, before Whistler found his subjects.
It amused him to tell the American Consul that idleness is the virtue of the artist, but it was a virtue he denied himself. It was "the same old story" he wrote his mother, "I am at my work the first thing at dawn and the last thing at night." He could not stand the Venetian crowd, and he worked as much as possible out of windows. He did little from gondola or sandolo. To the tourist, a gondola is a thing of joy; to the worker, it is a terrible, unstable studio, and even in the old days it cost a hundred francs a month, but then, the gondolier was your slave.
He mostly left the monuments of Venice, as of London, alone. In London he preferred Battersea and Wapping to Westminster and St. Paul's; in Venice little canals andcalli, doorways and gardens, beggars and bridges made a stronger appeal to him than churches and palaces. He deliberately avoided the motives of Guardi and Canaletto. To reproduce the masterpieces of the masters is, he said, an impertinence, and he found for himself "a Venice in Venice."
Whistler, Mr. Howard Walker tells us, took a room in the Palazzo Rezzonico, where he would paint the sunset and then swear at the sun for setting. We know of no work done from the palace, thoughThe Palaceswhich he etched are on the opposite side of the Grand Canal. Mr. Ross Turner remembers that he found Whistler in a small house with a small garden in front near the Frari, no doubt "the quarters" of which Otto Bacher speaks, and Mr. Turner remembers, too, that canvases were hanging on the wall, and a large one, with a big gondolier sketched on it, stood by the door. He was living then in the Rio San Barnaba, and there Maud came to join him. She could tell the whole story, but she will not.
Bacher says Whistler wore a "large, wide-brimmed, soft, brown hat tilted far back, suggesting a brown halo. It was a background for his curly black hair and singular white lock.... A dark sack-coat almost covered an extremely low turned-down collar, while a narrow black ribbon did service as a tie, the long, pennant-like ends of which, flapping about, now and then hit his single eye-glass."
Bacher describes him in evening dress without a tie, and Mr. Forbes recalls his coming without one to the Bronson's, and Bronson saying it was sad to see artists so poor that they could not afford a necktie. Bacher also quotes Whistler as always substituting "Whistler" for "I" in his talk, which we never knew him to do and it seems little like him.
Several of Duveneck's pupils followed on from Florence in 1880, and they lived in the Casa Jankovitz, the house that juts out squarely at the lower end of the Riva degli Schiavoni, all Venice in front of it. Whistler was enchanted with the place when he went to see them, and moved there. He had one room, the windows looking over the Lagoon, and from them the etchings and pastels of the Riva and the Lagoon were made. Many things are told of this room, of plates bitten on the top of the bureau, the acid running down, and the scramble to save his shirts in the drawers beneath. Other stories are of the printing-press on which Canaletto's plates may have been pulled and many of Duveneck's and Bacher's were; the press which used to work up to a certain point and then go with such a rush that it had to be stopped, for fear the bed would come out on the floor.
There was a large colony of foreign artists and art lovers and a club, English in name, really cosmopolitan, in Venice, where Whistler met Rico, Wolkoff, Van Haanen, Tito, Blaas, if he had not already met them on the Piazza. Alexander, Rolshoven, De Camp, and Bacher were with Duveneck. Harper Pennington came in the autumn, and Scott, Ross Turner, Blum, Woods, Bunney, Jobbins, and Logsdail were amongst the other men he knew. The American Consul Grist, and the Vice-Consul Graham, were persons of importance, and the United States Consulate a meeting-place. Mrs. Bronson lived in Casa Alvisi, the Brownings and the Curtises had houses in Venice, and with all three families Whistler became intimate. Londoners turned up. Harry Quilter told of one encounter:
"In the spring of 1880 I spent a few weeks in Venice. I had been drawing for about five days, in one of the back canals, a specially beautiful doorway, when one morning I heard a sort of war-whoop, and there was Whistler, in a gondola, close by, shouting out as nearly as I can remember: 'Hi, hi! What! What! Here, I say, you've got my doorway!' 'Your doorway? Confound your doorway!' I replied. 'It's my doorway, I've been here for the last week.' 'I don't care a straw, I found it out first. I got that grating put up.' 'Very much obliged to you, I'm sure; it's very nice. It was very good of you.' And so for a few minutes we wrangled, but seeing that the canal was very narrow, and that there was no room for two gondolas to be moored in front of the chosen spot, mine being already tied up exactly opposite, I asked him if he would not come and work in my gondola. He did so, and, I am bound to say, turned the tables on me cleverly. For, pretending not to know who I was, he described me to myself, and recounted the iniquities of the art critic of theTimes, one ''Arry Quilter.'"
Everybody says Whistler was penniless in Venice, always borrowing, why, we do not know, unless the money went to pay for things in London. But there were dinners and Sunday breakfasts. Many were given in a little open-airtrattoria, near the Via Garibaldi. The Panada, the noisiest of noisy restaurants, was one of his haunts, and there was another opposite the old post-office. The food, "nothing but fowl," he wrote, tired him so that he surprised himself by spending a fortune on tea, and carrying home strange pieces of fat, which he tried to fry into resemblance of the slices of bacon served by Mrs. Cossens, his Chelsea housekeeper. Mr. Scott says:
"If Whistler could not lay a table, he knew how to turn out tasty little dishes over a spirit-lamp; and it was not long before the inevitable Sunday breakfasts were instituted in that little room.Polenta à l' Américaine, which he had induced the landlady to prepare under his direction, we used to eat with such sort of treacle, alias golden syrup, as could be obtained. Fish was cheaper and more plentiful then than now in the Water City, and the lanky serving-women could fry with the best of the famous Ciozzotte. The 'thin red wine' of the country, in large flasks at about sixpence a quart, was plentiful, and these simple things, with the accompanying 'flow of soul' made a feast for the gods. There was no room for many guests at one time, but HenryWoods, Ruben, W. Graham, Butler, and Roussoff were often with us."
Days were spent on the Lido, and, doubtless he went to Chioggia, Murano, Burano, and Torcello. These little journeys were more costly and difficult then than now, and there are no plates except of theLidoand theMurano Glass-Furnace, and no pastels except one or two on the Lido.
Whistler loved the nights at the never-closed clubs in the Piazza, Florian's and the Quadri, or the Orientale on the Riva, where the coffee was just as good and twocentessimicheaper. Around these nights endless legends are growing, and like all the legends, they are such a part of Whistler they cannot be ignored. No one delighted in them more than he, no one ever told them so well. They became the favourite yarns of Duveneck's boys, to which we listened many an evening when we came to Venice four years later. It was then we first heard of Wolkoff, or Roussoff as he is known in Bond Street, and his boast that he could make pastels like Whistler's and the Americans' bet of a champagne dinner that he couldn't, and the evening in the Casa Jankovitz, when Rico, Duveneck, Curtis, Bacher, Woods, and Van Haanen recognised Wolkoff's work and every time one of his pastels was produced cried: "Take it away!" The Russian said to Whistler after dinner: "You know, you scratch a Russian, and you find a Tartar!" "Ha ha!" said Whistler, "I've scratched an artist and found an ama-Tartah!" Another story was of the tiny glass figure, or maybe a little black baby from the shrine of St. Anthony at Padua, dropped into Whistler's glass of water at thecafé, where it looked like a little devil bobbing up and down, so that Whistler, when he saw it, thought something was wrong with his eyes, and sipped the water and shook the glass, and the more he sipped and shook the more the little devil danced, and finally he upset the glass over everybody, and the little demon fell in his lap. And there was another of the night when abarca, with a transparency showing Nocturnes and a band playing "Yankee-Doodle," moved up and down the Grand Canal and along the Riva, never stopping until it was greeted with a loud "Ha ha!" from the darkness. And we heard of the day when Whistler, seeing Bunney on a scaffold struggling with St. Mark's, his life-work for Ruskin, fastened a card, "I am totally blind," to his coat-tail. And we weretold of the hot noon when Whistler, leaning out of his window, discovering a bowl of goldfish below on the window-ledge of his landlady, against whom he had a grudge, let down a fishing-line, caught the fish, fried them, dropped them back into the bowl, and watched the return of their owner, who was sure her fish had been fried by the sun. And the story of Blum and Whistler, without aschei, crossing the Academy Bridge, Blum sticking in his eye a little watch with a split second-hand that went round so fast the keeper thought he had the evil eye, and they got over without paying; or of the boys' farewellfêteto Whistler in August when it was rumoured he was going, and in a coal barge, which Bacher transforms into a "fairy-like floating bower festooned with the wealth of autumn," a feast of melons and salads and Chianti was spread and eaten as they drifted up the Grand Canal with the tide, the lights of their lanterns bringing everyone to stare, until the rain drove them under the Rialto, where they spent the rest of the night, and then Whistler didn't go after all. When Whistler left they say he asked the authors of these adventures up to his room and showed them a number of prints, and said, "Now, you boys have been very good to me all this time and I want to do something for you," and he turned over his prints carefully, and said, "I have thought it out," and he took one, a spoiled one, and he counted their heads, and he cut it into as many pieces as there were people, and presented a fragment to each, and as they marched downstairs all they heard was "Ha ha!" These, and hundreds like them, are the legends you hear on the Piazza.
Two friends of the Venetian days, Mr. Harper Pennington and Mr. Ralph Curtis, have sent us their impressions. Mr. Harper Pennington writes us: "He gave me many lessons there in Venice. He would hook his arm in mine and take me off to look at some Nocturne that he was studying or memorising, and then he would show me how he went about to paint it—in the daytime. He let me—invited me, indeed, to stand at his elbow as he set down in colour some effect he loved from the natural things in front of us. What became of many such—small canvases, all of them—I do not know.The St. George Nocturne, Canfield has. Who ownsThe Façade of San Marco?[9]
"There was an upright sunset, too, looking from my little terrace on the Riva degli Schiavoni over towards San Giorgio, and others that I saw him work on in 1880."
Mr. Curtis gives us other details: "Shortly before his return to England with some of the etchings and the pastels, he gave his friends a tea-dinner. As seeing the best of his Venetian work was the real feast, the hour for thehors d'œuvre, consisting of sardines, hard-boiled eggs, fruit, cigarettes, and excellent coffee prepared by the ever-admirable Maud, was arranged for six o'clock. Effective pauses succeeded the presentation of each masterpiece. During theseentr'actesWhistler amused his guests with witty conjectures as to the verdict of the grave critics in London on 'these things.' One of his favourite types for sarcasm used to be the eminently respectable Londoner who is 'alwayscalled at 8.30, closed-shaved at a quarter to 9, and in the City at 10.' 'What will he make ofthis? Serve him right too! Ha ha!'
"Whistler was a constant and ever-welcome guest at Casa Alvisi, the hospitable house of Mrs. Bronson, whom he often calledSanta Cattarina Seconda. During happy years, from lunch till long past bedtime, her house was the open rendezvous for the rich and poor, the famous and the famished,les rois en exiland the heirs-presumptive to the thrones of fame. Whistler there had his place, and he held the floor. One night a curious contrast was the great and genial Robert Browning commenting on the projected form of a famous 'Jimmy letter' to theWorld.
"Very late, on hotscirocconights, long after the concert crowd had dispersed, one little knot of men might often been seen in the deserted Piazza, sipping refreshment in front of Florian's. You might be sure that was Whistler in white duck, praising France, abusing England, and thoroughly enjoying Italy. He was telling how he had seen painting in Paris revolutionised by innovators of powerful handling: Manet, Courbet, Vollon, Regnault, Carolus Duran. He felt far more enthusiasm for the then recently resuscitated popularity of Velasquez and Hals.
"Thears celare artemof Terborgh and Vermeer always delighted him—the mysterious technique, the discreet distinction of execution, the 'one skin all over it,' of the minor masters of Holland was one ofhis eloquent themes. To Whistler it was a treat when a Frenchman arrived in Venice. If he could not like his paint, he certainly enjoyed his language. French seemed to give him extra exhilaration. From beginning to end he owed much to the French for first recognising what he had learned from Japan."
Footnotes[9]Mr. J. J. Cowan was for some years the owner, and he sold it to the French Gallery.
Footnotes[9]Mr. J. J. Cowan was for some years the owner, and he sold it to the French Gallery.
Footnotes
[9]Mr. J. J. Cowan was for some years the owner, and he sold it to the French Gallery.
[9]Mr. J. J. Cowan was for some years the owner, and he sold it to the French Gallery.
Nothingin Whistler's life is more astonishing than the praise and blame raised by the Venetian pastels on their exhibition in London. Artists fought over them. To some, they were original, they gave the character of Venice; to others, they were cheap, anybody could do them. Both were wrong, as both always were. "Anybody" cannot do them; he had been making pastels: the subject, not the method, was new. Had some of the combatants visited the Academy at Venice, they might have discovered his inspiration in the drawings of the Old Masters, where he had found it years before at the Louvre. He was only carrying on tradition.
Whistler used coloured paper for the pastels because it gave him, without any work, the foundation of his colour-scheme in the simplest manner, and because he could work straight away on it, and not ruin the surface and tire himself getting the tone. Bacher describes him in his gondola laden with pastels. But his materials were so few that he could wander on foot in the narrow streets, the best way to work as everyone who has worked in Venice knows. For it is difficult to find again a place, and impossible to see again the effect, that fascinated you. He carried only a little portfolio or drawing-board, some sheets of tinted paper, black chalk, half a dozen pastels, and varnished or silver-coated paper to cover the drawing when finished. Once he found what he wanted, he made a sketch in black chalk and then with pastel hinted the colour of the walls, the shutters, the spots of the women's dresses, putting in the colour as in mosaic or stained glass between the black lines, never painting, but noting the right touch in the right place, keeping the colour pure. It looked so easy, "only the doing it was the difficulty," he would say. When he finished the drawings he showed them. Mr. Scott recalls that "the latest pastels used to be brought out for inspection. Whistler would always show his sketches in his own way or not at all. In the absence of a proper easel and a proper light, they were usually laid on the floor."
[Pg 196]
WHISTLER IN HIS STUDIOWHISTLER IN HIS STUDIOOILIn the Chicago Art Institute(See page 130)
OIL
In the Chicago Art Institute
(See page 130)
[Pg 196]
MAUD STANDINGMAUD STANDINGETCHING.(See page 125)
ETCHING.
(See page 125)
The "painter fellows" were startled by their brilliancy, Whistler told his mother, and he thought rather well of them himself.
The pastels have been praised with the inconsequence characteristic of so much praise of his work. The drawing often is either not good in itself or so slight as to be of little importance. The beauty is in the suggestion of colour or the arrangement of line. Though he passed the spring, summer, winter, and part of two autumns in the city there is no attempt, save in a few sunsets, to give atmospheric effect, or the season, or the time of year. What he saw that pastel would do, what he made it do, was to record certain lines and to suggest certain colours. Critics and artists, having never studied pastel, were unaware of what had been done with it. The revival did not come for some years after Whistler showed his Venetian series, when there was a "boom" all over the world, and pastel societies were started, most of which have since collapsed.
The "boom" in etching commenced years before Whistler went to Venice. There were standards: Whistler had already accomplished great things, after a formula laid down by Dürer, Rembrandt, and Hollar. Therefore, when he made etchings which struck the uncritical, and even those who cared, as something new, the uncritical were shocked because their preconceived notions were upset, and those who cared were astonished. The difference between the Venetian and the London plates was so great that the two series might be attributed to two men. This was due partly to the difference between London and Venice seen by an artist sensitive to the character of places, but more to the difference of technique between the earlier and the later plates. Not so many years ago, talking to him about this subject, we said that the Venetian plates seemed to be done in a new way. It so happened that theAdam and Eve—Old ChelseaandThe Traghettowere, as they are now, hanging almost side by side on our walls. In five minutes he proved that one was the outgrowth of the other, and that there was a natural development from thebeginning of his work. Until the London Memorial Exhibition it was impossible to trace this, because the prints had never been hung together chronologically, not even at the Grolier Club, in New York, where, for want of space, two separate shows were made. Before Whistler exhibited his Venetian plates most people knew nothing but the French Set and the Thames Set. The intermediate stages had not been followed, and the Venetian plates seemed a new thing. But the difference between them and the Thames series is one of development. Whistler always spoke of theBlack Lion Wharfas boyish, though it is impossible to conceive of anything of its kind more complete. His estimate has been accepted by many. Mr. Bernhard Sickert, in writing of it, thinks it misleading to say that every tile, every beam has been drawn. "These details are merely filled in with a certain number of strokes of a certain shape, accepted as indicating the materials of which they are constructed." When an etching is in pure line and owes little to the printer, as in this case, it is the wonderful arrangement of lines, the wonderful lines themselves, which make you feel that everything, every beam and every tile, has been drawn; that every detail actually has been drawn we did not suppose anybody would be so absurd as to imagine. The character of the lines gives you this impression, which is exactly what the artist wanted, and this is what proved Whistler an impressionist. Another critic has said that Whistler exhausted all his blacks on the houses. He did nothing of the sort. He concentrated them there, and did not take away from the interest of the wharf he was drawing by an equal elaboration in the boats, the barges, and the figures. As he learned more he gave up his literal, definite method. Instead of drawing the panes of a window in firm outline, he suggested them by drawing the shadows and the reflected lights with short strokes, and scarcely any outline. In the London plates he got the effect on his buildings by different bitings. In Venice he suggested the shadows. In both, the figures in movement are nearly the same, but there is a great advance in the drawing in the Venice plates, where they give the feeling of life. In theMillbankand theLagoon, the subjects, or the dominating lines in the subjects, are the same, a series of posts carrying the eye from the foreground to the extreme distance, but their treatment in the Venetian plate, as well as the drawing of the figures, is moreexpressive. Simplicity of expression has never been carried further. Probably the finest plate, in its simplicity and directness, isThe Bridge. Whistler now obtained the quality of richness by suggesting detail, and also by printing. InThe Traghettothere is the same scheme as inThe MiserandThe Kitchen, but the Venice plate is more painter-like. Without taking away from the etched line he has given a fullness of tone which makes the background ofThe Burgomaster Sixweak in comparison. And he knew this.
He was doing his own printing for the first time to any extent. There were a hundred prints of the first Venice Set. All were not pulled by him, and the difference between his printing and Goulding's, done after his death, is unmistakable. In the hand of any professional printer plates likeThe TraghettoandThe Beggarswould be a mass of scratches, though scratches of interest to the artist; it required Whistler's printing to bring out what he wanted. And it is the more surprising that he could print in Venice, so primitive was the press. Bacher had a portable press, but most was done on the old press. Whistler protested against the professional printer, his pot of treacle and his couches of ink. But no great artist ever carried the printing of etchings so far or made such use of printer's ink as he did in these plates. Without the wash of ink, they would be ghosts, and he was justified in printing as he wanted to get what he wished. And he used ink in all sorts of ways on the same plate, he tried endless experiments with ever-varying results, even to cover up the weak lines of an indifferent design, as inNocturne—Palaces, prized highly by collectors, but one of his poorest Venice plates. It, andThe Garden,Nocturne—Shipping, and one or two besides are by no means equal to the others in line, though some of his prints of these are superb. But there are no such perfect plates in the world asThe Beggars,The Traghetto, the twoRivas,The Bridge, andRialto.
While printing Whistler continually worked on his plates, and instead of there being—as the authorities say—half a dozen states there are a hundred; only the authorities cannot see. A curious fact aboutThe Traghettois that there were two plates. He was displeased with the first and etched it again. Bacher writes thatThe Traghetto"troubled him very much." He pulled one fine proof and then overworked the plate so that he had to makea second. He got copper of the same size and thickness made by the Venetian from whom they had their plates. When this was ready, the first plate was inked with white paint instead of black ink. This was placed on the second varnished plate, and they were then run through the press. The result was "a replica in white upon the black etching ground." Bacher says that on the new plate Whistler worked for days and weeks with the first proof before him, that he might find and etch only the original lines. When the second was printed Whistler placed the two proofs side by side and minutely compared them. And he was pleased, for the examination ended in the one song he allowed himself in Venice: