THE THAMES IN ICETHE THAMES IN ICEOILIn the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art(See page 63)
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In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art
(See page 63)
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ROTHERHITHEROTHERHITHEETCHING. G. 66(See page 63)
ETCHING. G. 66
(See page 63)
Those who thought he idled in Paris were as sure of his application in London. "On the Thames he worked tremendously," Armstrong said, "not caring then to have people about or to let anyone see too much of his methods." He stayed for months at Wapping to be near his subjects, though not cutting himself off entirely from his friends. Sir Edward Poynter, Mr. Ionides, M. Legros, Du Maurier visited him. Mr. Ionides recalls long drives down by the Tower and the London Docks to get to the place, as out of the way now as then. He says Whistler lived in a little inn, rather rough, frequented by skippers and bargees, close to Wapping steamboat pier. But there is no doubt that much of his work was done from Cherry Gardens, on the other side of the river. Unfortunately it was not until after his death that we looked into this matter. At any rate, if he lived at Wapping, he worked a great deal at Cherry Gardens, also often from boats and barges, he told us, and this one can see in the prints. Sometimes he would get stranded in the mud, and at others cut off by the tide. "When his friends came," Armstrong wrote us, "they dined at anordinarythere used to be. People who had business at the wharves in the neighbourhood dined there, and Jimmie's descriptions of the company were always humorous." Mr. Ionides drove down once for a dinner-party Whistler gave at his inn:
"The landlord and several bargee guests were invited. Du Maurier was there also, and after dinner we had songs and sentiments. Jimmie proposed the landlord's health; he felt flattered, but we were in fits of laughter. The landlord was very jealous of his wife, who was rather inclined to flirt with Jimmie, and the whole speech was chaff of a soothing kind that he never suspected."
Another and more frequent visitor to Wapping was Serjeant Thomas, one of those patrons who recognise the young artist and appear when recognition is most needed. He bought drawings and prints from Holman Hunt and Legros when they were scarcely known, and he helped Millais through difficult days. Whistler had issued his French Set of etchings in London in 1859:Twelve Etchings from Nature by James Abbott Whistler, London.Published by J. A. Whistler, At No. 62 Sloane Street(Haden's house). The price, as in Paris, forArtist's Proofs on India, two guineas. Serjeant Thomas saw the prints, got to know Whistler, and arranged to publish them, and also the Thames etchings which he sold separately at 39 Old Bond Street, where he had opened a shop with his son, Edmund Thomas, as manager.
Mr. Percy Thomas, a younger son, has told us that, as a little fellow, he often went with his father by boat to Wapping, and that his father and brother posed for two of the figures—the third is Whistler—inThe Little Pool, used as an invitation card. He has also told us that much of the printing was done at 39 Old Bond Street, where the family lived in the upper part of the house. A press was in one of the small rooms, and Whistler would come in the evening, when he happened to be in town, to bite and prove his plates. Sometimes he would not get to work until half-past ten or eleven. In those days he put his plate in a deep bath of acid, keeping to the technical methods of the Coast Survey, though it is said that the Coast Survey plates were banked up with wax and the acid poured over them. This is supposed to have been the method of Rembrandt. Serjeant Thomas, in his son's words, was "great for port wine," and he would fill a glass for Whistler, and Whistler would place the glass by the bath, and then work a little on the plate and then stop to sip the port, and he would say, "Excellent! Very good indeed!" and they never knew whether he meant the wine or the work. And the charm of his manner and his courtesy made it delightful to do anything for him. Serjeant Thomas brought Delâtre from Paris, the only man, he thought, who could print Whistler's etchings as the artist would have printed them himself. "Nobody," Ralph Thomas wrote, "has ever printed Mr. Whistler's etchings with success except himself and M. Delâtre," and to-day many people are of the same opinion. Whistler's relations with the firm were pleasant while they lasted. But they did not last long. Edmund Thomas cared less for art than the law, and in the shop he would sit at his desk reading his law books, never looking up nor leaving them, unless someone asked the price of a print or drawing. A successful business is not run on those lines, and in a few years he gave up art for the law, to his great advantage.
Whistler, in 1860, devoted more time to painting on the river and less to etching, though theRotherhithebelongs to this year. One picture he described in a letter to Fantin. "Chut! n'en parle pas à Courbet" was his warning, as if afraid to trust so good a subject to anyone. It was to be a masterpiece, he had painted it three times, and he sent a sketch which M. Duret reproduced in hisWhistler. M. Duret, unable to trace the picture, thought he might never have carried it beyond the sketch. But it was finished: theWappingshown in the Academy of 1864, a proof how long Whistler kept his pictures before exhibiting them. In 1867 he sent it to the Paris Exhibition. It was bought by Mr. Thomas Winans, taken to Baltimore, where it has remained. Whistler wanted to exhibit it at Goupil's in 1892, but could not get it. Never seen in Europe since 1867, it has been forgotten. It was painted from an inn, probably The Angel on the water-side at Cherry Gardens which exists to-day, one of a row of old houses with overhanging balconies. In the foreground, in a shadowy corner of the inn balcony, is a sailor for whom a workman from Greaves' boat-building yard, Chelsea, sat; next, M. Legros; and on the other side of M. Legros, with her back turned to the river, the girl with copper-coloured hair, Jo, the model forThe White GirlandThe Little White Girl. On the river are the little square-rigged ships that still anchor there; on the opposite side is the long line of Wapping warehouses, which give the name. Artists feared Jo's slightly open bodice would prevent the picture being hung in the Royal Academy. But Whistler insisted, if it was rejected on that account, he would open the bodice more and more every year until he was elected and hung it himself.
He paintedThe Thames in Icethis year (1860) from the same inn. It was called, when first exhibited,The Twenty-fifth of December, 1860, on the Thames. For an idle apprentice it was a strange way of spending Christmas. Whistler told us that Haden bought it for ten pounds—ample pay, Haden said: three pounds for each of the three days he spent painting it, and a pound over. To Whistler the pay seemedanything but ample. "You know, my sister was in the house, and women have their ideas about things, and I did what she wanted, to please her!"
Two other pictures of 1860 are the portrait of Mr. Luke Ionides andThe Music Room. In both the influence of Courbet is evident. The portrait, painted in the Newman Street studio, has the heavy handling ofThe Piano, though much more brilliant. But the other picture is a tremendous advance.
Fantin could not have been more conscientious in rendering the life about him as he found it than Whistler inThe Music Room; only, the room in the London house, with its gay chintz curtains, has none of the sombre simplicity of the interior where Fantin's sisters sit. Fantin's home had an austerity he made beautiful; the Haden's house had colour—Harmony in Green and Rosewas Whistler's later title for the picture. He emphasised the gaiety by introducing a strong black note in the standing figure, Miss Boot, while the cool light from the window falls on "wonderful little Annie," in the same white frock she wears inThe Piano Picture. Mrs. Thynne (Annie Haden) says:
"I was very young whenThe Music Roomwas painted, and beyond the fact of not minding sitting, in spite of the interminable length of time, I do not know that I can say more. It was a distinctly amusing time for me. He was always so delightful and enjoyed the 'no lessons' as much as I did. One day inThe Morning Call(the first name ofThe Music Room) I did get tired without knowing it, and suddenly dissolved into tears, whereupon he was full of the most tender remorse, and rushed out and bought me a lovely Russia leather writing set, which I am using at this very moment! The actual music-room still exists in Sloane Street, though the present owners have enlarged it, and the date of the picture must have been '60 or '61, after his return from Paris. It was then he gave me the pencil sketches I lent to the London Memorial Exhibition. I had kept them in an album he had also brought me from Paris, with my name in gold stamped outside, of which I was very proud. We were always good friends, and I have nothing all through those early days but the most delightful remembrance of him."
This picture is described under three titles:The Morning Call,The Music Room, andHarmony in Green and Rose, The Music Room; thepresent confusion in Whistler's titles is usually the result of his own vagueness. It became the property of Mrs. Réveillon, George Whistler's daughter, and was carried off to St. Petersburg, never to return to London until the exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in 1892.
It has become the fashion to say that Whistler had not mastered his trade and could not use oil paint. These early pictures are technically as accomplished as the work of any of his contemporaries. He never was taught, few artists are, the elements of his trade, and some of his paintings have suffered.The Music RoomandThe Thames in Ice, so far as we can remember, are wonderfully fresh. They were painted more directly, more thinly, than theWapping, in which the paint is thickly piled, as in thePiano Picture, which has cracked, no doubt the result of his working over it probably on a bad ground. Of two pictures painted at the same period, theWappingis badly cracked, and theThames in Iceis in perfect condition. But this is due to his want of knowledge of the chemical properties of paints and mediums. Later, he gave great attention to these matters. He kept theWappingfour years before he showed it. Though started down the river in 1860, it contains a portrait of Greaves' man, whom he did not see for two or three years after. Walter Greaves stated, or allowed to be stated, in a preface to the catalogue of his exhibition in May 1911, that he met Whistler in the late fifties when Whistler lived in Chelsea and made the Thames series of etchings. But the statement was proved to be inaccurate, and the preface was withdrawn. We have quoted Greaves on several occasions, but, before doing so, we have verified every statement of importance he made to us, and we first met him some few years ago when his memory was clearer and more reliable, and when he possessed letters from Whistler which we have seen.
Mr. Thynne stood in 1860 for the beautiful dry-pointAnnie Haden, in big crinoline and soup-plate hat, the print Whistler told Mr. E. G. Kennedy he would choose by which to be remembered. It was the year also of the portraits of Axenfeld, Riault, and "Mr. Mann." In 1861 there were more plates on the Upper as well as the Lower Thames. Two of the plates of 1861 were published as illustrations by the Junior Etching Club inPassages from Modern English Poets, and Whistler proved the plates at the press of Day and Son, and met the lad he called "the best professional printer in England," Frederick Goulding.
Whistler told us that he worked about three weeks on each of the Thames plates. He therefore must have spent on dated plates alone thirty-six weeks in 1861, leaving but fourteen weeks for other work and for play. Some of them are much less elaborate than theDrouet, which, Drouet said, was done in five hours, so that it seems difficult to reconcile the two statements. But it was about theBlack Lion Wharf, one of the fullest of detail, that we asked Whistler. We had many discussions with him about them. Whistler maintained that they were youthful performances, and J. as strongly maintained that that had nothing to do with the matter; that he never surpassed the wonderful drawing and composition and biting. He insisted that his later work in Venice and in Holland was a great development, a great advance, and his final answer was: "Well, you like them more than I do!" But there is no doubt that the Thames plates, notably theBlack Lion Wharf, have, for artistic rendering of inartistic subjects and for perfect biting, never been approached. Another thing that astonished J. was that he could see such detail and put it on a copper-plate. "H'm," was Whistler's comment, "that's what they all say."
Whistler got to know the Upper Thames when he stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Edwards at Sunbury. Edwards figures in his dry-pointEncampingwith M. W. Ridley, who was Whistler's first pupil, and Traer, Haden's assistant, not "Freer," as he has long masqueraded in Mr. Wedmore's catalogue. Ridley also is inThe StormandThe Guitar-Player. To these visits we owe an etching ofWhistler at Moulsey, by Edwards. Whistler introduced Fantin, who, in a note for 1861, refers to the "jolies journées chez Edwards à Sunbury." Mrs. Edwards wrote us shortly before her death:
"Whistler often came to see me, turning up always when least expected, perhaps driving down in a hansom cab from London. At that time there was no railway at Sunbury; Hampton Court three miles distant. He might send a line to be met by boat at Hampton Court. He was always very eccentric."
Doubtless the driving down was an eccentricity. But Whistler knew he might see some "foolish sunset," or a Nocturne, on the way. "We had a large boat with waterproof cover," Mrs. Edwards added; "my husband and friends several times went up the river and slept in the boat. Whistler went once," when he did the plateEncampingand possiblySketchingandThe Punt, and in Mrs. Edwards' words, "got rheumatism." It had been his trouble since St. Petersburg. He could not risk exposure.
Whistler, though not settled in London, sent work regularly to the Academy, where it was an unfailing shock to the critics. He showed hisMère Gérardin 1861. TheAthenæumdescribed the picture as "a fine, powerful-toned, and eminently characteristic study." TheDaily Telegraphthought it "far fitter hung over the stove in the studio than exhibited at the Royal Academy, though it is replete with evidence of genius and study. If Mr. Whistler would leave off using mud and clay on his palette and paint cleanly, like a gentleman, we should be happy to bestow any amount of praise on him, for he has all the elements of a great artist in his composition. But we must protest against his soiled and miry ways." It seemed a good, serious study of an old woman and nothing more, when we saw it in the London Memorial Exhibition, and the appallingly low level of the Academy alone can explain the attention it attracted.
Whistler was in France in the summer of 1861, paintingThe Coast of Brittany, orAlone with the Tide, which might have been signed by Courbet—an arrangement in brown under a cloudy sky, a stretch of sand at low tide in the foreground, water-washed rocks against which a peasant girl sleeps, a deep blue sea beyond. It was "a beautiful thing," Whistler said years afterwards. At Perros Guirec he made his splendid dry-pointThe Forge. Another print of this year is the rare dry-point of Jo, who, for awhile, appeared in Whistler's work as often as Saskia in Rembrandt's. She was Irish. Her father has been described to us as a sort of Captain Costigan, and Jo—Joanna Heffernan, Mrs. Abbott—as a woman of next to no education, but of keen intelligence, who, before she had ceased to sit to Whistler, knew more about painting than many painters, had become well read, and had great charm. Her value to Whistler as a model was enormous, and she was an important element in his life during the first London years. She was with him in France in 1861-2, going to Paris in the winter to give him sittings for the bigWhite Girl, which he painted in a studio in the Boulevard des Batignolles hung all in white. There Courbet met her, and, looking at the copper-coloured hair, saw beauty in the beautiful. He painted her, though perhaps not that winter, asLa Belle Irlandaise,and asJo, femme d'Irlande. Whistler's study of Jo,Note Blanche, lent by Mrs. Sickert to the Paris Memorial Exhibition, was doubtless done in 1861, for the technique is like Courbet's. Drouet remembered breakfasts in the studio which Whistler cooked.
He fell ill before the end of the winter. Miss Chapman says he was poisoned by the white lead used in the picture. Her brother, a doctor, recommended a journey to the Pyrenees. At Guéthary Whistler was nearly drowned when bathing. He wrote to Fantin:
"It was sunset, the sea was very rough, I was caught in the huge waves, swallowing gallons of salt water. I swam and I swam, and the more I swam the less near I came to the shore. Ah! my dear Fantin, to feel my efforts useless and to know people were looking on saying, 'But theMonsieuramuses himself, he must be strong!' I cry, I scream in despair—I disappear three, four times. At last they understand. A brave railroad man rushes to me, and is rolled over twice on the sands. My model hears the call, arrives at a gallop, jumps in the sea like a Newfoundland, manages to catch me by the foot, and the two pull me out."[2]
At Biarritz he paintedThe Blue Wave, a great sea rolling in and breaking on the shore under a fine sky, but quite unlike theCoast of Brittany. Whistler painted few pictures in which the composition, the arrangement, is more obvious. It is an extraordinary piece of work. It has lately been said that he painted this picture after he had seen Courbet'sVague, now in the Louvre. But theVaguewas not shown until 1870. If there was any influence, it was all the other way. At Fuenterrabia Whistler was in Spain, for the only time; "Spaniards from theOpéra-Comiquein the street, men inbéretsand red blouses, children like little Turks." He wanted to go farther, to Madrid, and he urged Fantin to join him. Together they would look atThe LancesandThe Spinnersas together they had studied at the Louvre. In another letter he promised to describe Velasquez to Fantin, to bring back photographs. Such "glorious painting" should be copied. "Ah! mon cher, comme il a du travailler," he winds up in his enthusiasm. But the journey ended at Fuenterrabia. Fantin could not join him. Madrid was put off for another spring, for ever, though the journey was for ever being planned anew.
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THE MUSIC ROOMTHE MUSIC ROOMHARMONY IN GREEN AND ROSEOILIn the possession of Colonel F. Hecker(See page 64)
HARMONY IN GREEN AND ROSE
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In the possession of Colonel F. Hecker
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ANNIE HADENANNIE HADENDRY-POINT. G. 62(See page 65)
DRY-POINT. G. 62
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WhistlersentThe White Girlto the Academy of 1862, withThe Twenty-fifth of December, 1860, on the Thames;Alone with the Tide; and one etching,Rotherithe.The White Girlwas rejected. The two other pictures and the print were accepted, hung, and praised. TheAthenæumcompared theRotheritheto Rembrandt. Whistler could scarcely be mentioned as an etcher without this comparison; since Rembrandt his were "the most striking and original" etchings, everyone then said, Mr. W. M. Rossetti being among the first in England to say it boldly.Alone with the Tidewas approved as "perfectly expressed," andThe Twenty-fifth of Decemberas "broad and vigorous, though perhaps vigour was pushed over the bounds of coarseness to become mere dash." Other work he showed elsewhere was praised.The PuntandSketching, published inPassages from Modern English Poets, were singled out for admiration.Thames WarehousesandBlack Lion Wharfwon him recognition as "the most admirable etcher of the present day," at South Kensington Museum, where in 1862 an International Exhibition was held. Whistler had no pictures, but the collection of modern continental art was one of the finest ever seen in England.
In nothing had Whistler been so completely himself as inThe White Girl, and it failed to please. The artist is born to pick and choose, and group with science, the elements in Nature that the result may be beautiful, he wrote inThe Ten O'Clock, andThe White Girlwas his first attempt to conform to a principle no one ever put so clearly into words. It was an attempt, we know now, comparing the painting to the symphonies and harmonies that came after. But at the time it was disquieting in its defiance of modern conventions. It was without subject according to Victorian standards, and the bold massing of white upon white was more bewildering than the minute detail of the Pre-Raphaelites. This summer (1862) the Berners Street Gallery was opened, "with the avowed purpose of placing before the public the works of young artists who may not have access to the ordinary galleries." Maclise, Egg, Frith, Cooper, Poynter forced their way in. But the Manager had the courage to exhibitThe White Girl, stating in the catalogue that the Royal Academy had refused it. TheAthenæumwas independent enough to say that it was the most prominent picture in the collection, though not the most perfect, for,"able as this bizarre production shows Mr. Whistler to be, we are certain that in a very few years he will recognize the reasonableness of its rejection. It is one of the most incomplete paintings we ever met with. A woman in a quaint morning dress of white, with her hair about her shoulders, stands alone in the background of nothing in particular. But for the rich vigour of the textures, we might conceive this to be some old portrait by Zucchero, or a pupil of his, practising in a provincial town. The face is well done, but it is not that of Mr. Wilkie Collins'Woman in White."
The criticism brought from Whistler his first letter to the press, published in theAthenæum, July 5:
"62 Sloane Street. July 1, 1862."May I beg to correct an erroneous impression likely to be confirmed in your last number? The Proprietors of the Berners Street Gallery have, without my sanction, called my picture 'The Woman in White.' I had no intention whatever of illustrating Mr. Wilkie Collins' novel; it so happens, indeed, that I have never read it. My painting simply represents a girl dressed in white, standing in front of a white curtain.—I am, &c.,James Whistler."
"62 Sloane Street. July 1, 1862.
"May I beg to correct an erroneous impression likely to be confirmed in your last number? The Proprietors of the Berners Street Gallery have, without my sanction, called my picture 'The Woman in White.' I had no intention whatever of illustrating Mr. Wilkie Collins' novel; it so happens, indeed, that I have never read it. My painting simply represents a girl dressed in white, standing in front of a white curtain.—I am, &c.,
James Whistler."
The critics were spared the sting of his wit, but they disapproved strongly enough for him to tell his friends thatThe White Girlenjoyed asuccès d'exécration.
A different success awaited his Thames etchings in Paris, where they were shown in a dealer's gallery. Baudelaire saw them and understood, as he was the first to understand the work of Manet, Poe, Wagner, and many others. He wrote:
"Tout récemment, un jeune artiste américain, M. Whistler, exposait à la galerie Martinet une série d'eaux fortes, subtiles, éveillées comme l'improvisation et l'inspiration, représentant les bords de la Tamise; merveilleux fouillis d'agrés, de vergues, de cordages; chaos de brumes, de fourneaux et de fumées tire-bouchonnées; poésie profonde et compliquée d'une vaste capitale."
According to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Whistler soon moved to Queen's Road, Chelsea: "I fancy that the houses in Queen's Road have been much altered since Whistler was there in 1862-63. They were then low (say two-storeyed), quite old-fashioned houses, of a cosy, homelycharacter, with small forecourts. I have a kind of idea that Whistler's house was No. 12, but this is quite uncertain to me.[3]As my brother and I were much in that neighbourhood, to and fro, prior to settling down in No. 16 Cheyne Walk, we came into contact with Whistler, who every now and then accompanied us on our jaunts. I forget how it was exactly that we got introduced to him; possibly by Mr. Algernon Swinburne, who was also to be an inmate of No. 16. Either (as I think) before meeting Whistler or just about the time we met him, we had seen one or two of his paintings.At the Pianomust have been one, and we most heartily admired him, and discerned unmistakably that he was destined for renown."
The friendship may have led to Whistler's interest in black-and-white, for in England it was Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who revolutionised illustration and proved it a dignified and serious form of art. The more brilliant of the younger men were working for the illustrated magazines, and Whistler found a place among them. He made six drawings in 1862. Four appeared inOnce a Week:The Morning before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew,Count Burckhardt,The Major's Daughter,The Relief Fund in Lancashire, intended to be used as an illustration to the reprint of an address by Tennyson on the subject of the famine in Lancashire, but never written because of his illness. To this fund we believe Whistler contributed a drawing. The two other illustrations, forThe First Sermon, were published inGood Words. They were drawn on wood in pencil, pen and wash, are full of character, and, in the use of line, are like his etchings. They were engraved by the Dalziel Brothers and Joseph Swain, and from Mr. Strahan, the publisher ofOnce a Week, we have these additional facts:
"They were arranged for by Edward Dalziel, and I cannot say how he came to know the artist or his work, as Mr. Whistler was young then, and, as far as I know, had not contributed to any magazine.
The average price we paid to artists was nine pounds, and we reckoned that the same amount had to be paid for engravings. As a matter of fact, the sum paid to Mr. Whistler was nine pounds for each drawing."
We showed Whistler onceThe Morning before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. "Well, now, not bad, you know—not bad even then!" and he followed, with his expressive little finger, the flowing line, pointing to the hand lost in the draperies. This andThe Major's Daughterwere the two he preferred, and when J. was preparingThe History of Modern IllustrationWhistler picked them out as "very pretty ones" that should be reproduced, though, if but a single example of his work could be used, he wishedThe Morning before the Massacreto be selected, for it was "as delicate as an etching, and altogether characteristic and personal."Count Burckhardthe did not care for, insisting that he would rather not be represented if this were to be the only example in the book. "It was never a favourite," he added.
The four drawings ofOnce a Weekwere reprinted in Thornbury'sLegendary Ballads, 1876. Thornbury implied that the drawings were made for the book, and thought that "the startling drawings by Mr. Whistler prove his singular power of hand, strong artistic feeling, and daring manner."
Our copy belonged to George Augustus Sala. On the margin ofThe Morning before the Massacrehe wrote: "Jemmy Whistler.—Clever, sketchy, and incomplete, like everything he has done. A loaf of excellent, fine flour, but slack-baked." So Sala believed in 1883, and it is typical of the time.
Another important work of 1862 wasThe Last of Old Westminster. Mr. Arthur Severn knows more about it than anyone, as his account to us explains: "On my return from Rome to join my brother in his rooms in Manchester Buildings, on the Thames at Westminster Bridge (where the New Scotland Yard now is), I found Whistler beginning his picture of Westminster Bridge. My brother had given him permission to use our sitting-room, with its bow-windows looking over the river and towards the bridge. He was always courteous and pleasant in manner, and it was interesting to see him at work. The bridge was in perspective, still surrounded with piles, for it had only just been finished. It was the piles with their rich colour and delightful confusion that took his fancy, not the bridge, which hardly showed. He would look steadilyat a pile for some time, then mix up the colour, then, holding his brush quite at the end, with no mahlstick, make a downward stroke and the pile was done. I remember his looking very carefully at a hansom cab that had pulled up for some purpose on the bridge, and in a few strokes he got the look of it perfectly. He was long over the picture, sometimes coming only once a week, and we got rather tired of it. One day some friends came to see it. He stood it against a table in an upright position for them to see; it suddenly fell on its face, to my brother's disgust, as he had just got a new carpet. Luckily Whistler's sky was pretty dry, and I don't think the picture got any damage, and the artist was most good-natured about my brother's anxiety lest the carpet should have suffered."
The Last of Old Westminsterwas ready for the Academy of 1863, to which it was sent with six prints:Weary,Old Westminster Bridge,Hungerford Bridge,Monsieur Becquet,The Forge,The Pool. The dignity of composition in the picture and the vigour of handling impressed all who saw it in the London Memorial Exhibition, though they had to regret its shocking condition, cracked from end to end. It failed to impress Academicians in 1863, and was badly hung, as were the prints, reproductive work being then, as now, preferred to original etching.
The White Girl, after its Berners Street success, was sent by Whistler to theSalon. He took it to Paris, to Fantin's studio, there having it unrolled and framed. It is hard to say why the strongest work of the strongest young men was rejected from theSalonof 1863. Fantin, Legros, Manet, Bracquemond, Jongkind, Harpignies, Cazin, Jean-Paul Laurens, Vollon, Whistler were refused. It was a scandal; 1859 was nothing to it. The town was in an uproar that reached the ears of the Emperor. Martinet, the dealer, offered to show the rejected pictures in his gallery. But before this was arranged, Napoleon III ordered that aSalon des Refusésshould be held in the same building as the officialSalon, thePalais de l'Industrie. The decree was published in theMoniteurfor April 24, 1863. The notice was issued by theDirecteur-Généralof the Imperial Museums, and the exhibition opened on May 15. The success was as great as the scandal. The exhibition was the talk of the town, it was caricatured as theExposition des Comiques, and parodied as theClub des Refusésat theVariétés; everyone rushed to the galleries. The rooms were crowded by artists, because,in the midst of much no doubt weak and foolish, the best work of the day was shown; by the public, because of the stir the affair made. The public laughed with the idea that it was a duty to laugh, and because the critics said that never wassuccès pour rirebetter deserved. Zola described inL'Œuvrethe gaiety and cruelty of the crowd, convulsed and hysterical in front ofLa Dame en Blanc. Hamerton wrote in theFine Arts Quarterly:
"The hangers must have thought her particularly ugly, for they have given her a sort of place of honour, before an opening through which all pass, so that nobody misses her. I watched several parties, to see the impressionThe Woman in Whitemade on them. They all stopped instantly, struck with amazement. This for two or three seconds, then they always looked at each other and laughed. Here, for once, I have the happiness to be quite of the popular way of thinking."
On the other hand, Fernand Desnoyers, who wrote a pamphlet on theSalon des Refusés, thought that Whistler was "le plus spirite des peintres," and the painting the most original that had passed before the jury of theSalon, altogether remarkable, at once simple and fantastic, the portrait of a spirit, a medium, though of a beauty so peculiar that the public did not know whether to think it beautiful or ugly. Paul Mantz considered it the most important picture in the exhibition, full of knowledge and strange charm, and his article in theGazette des Beaux-Artsis the more interesting because he described the picture as aSymphonie du Blancsome years before Whistler called it so, and pointed out that it carried on French tradition, for, a hundred years earlier, painters had shown in theSalonstudies of white upon white.
The picture hardly explained the sensation of its first appearance when we saw it withMiss Alexander, theMother,Carlyle,The Fur Jacket, andIrvingin the London Memorial Exhibition. But it seemed revolutionary enough in the sixties, to become theclouof theSalon des Refusés, though nothing was further from Whistler's intention. It eclipsed Manet'sDéjeuner sur l'herbe, then calledLe Bain.
Whistler was in Amsterdam with Legros, looking at Rembrandt with delight, at Van der Helst with disappointment, etchingAmsterdam from the Tolhuis, no doubt hunting for old paper and adding to his collection of blue and white, when the news came of the reception ofhis picture in Paris, and he wrote to Fantin that he longed to be there and in the movement. It was a satisfaction that the picture, slighted in London, should be honoured in Paris. He was all impatience to know what was said in theCafé de Bade, thecaféof Manet, and by the critics.
To add to his triumph in Paris, official honours were coming to him in Holland and England. Some of his etchings were in an exhibition at The Hague, though he said he did not know how they got there, and he was given one of three gold medals awarded to foreigners—his first medal. Though atrociously hung at the Academy, his prints were honoured at the British Museum, where twelve were bought for the Print Room this year.
The excitement did not keep him from work, to which, as he wrote to Fantin, wandering was a drawback. He felt the need of his studio, of "the familiar all about him." The "familiar" he loved best was in London, and when he returned he began to look for a house of his own. It was fortunate for him that his mother was in England. At the beginning of the Civil War, in which Whistler took the keenest interest as a patriot and a "West Point man," she had been in Richmond with her son William, serving as surgeon in the Confederate Army, had run the blockade, and come to join her other children in London.
Whistler no longer made the Hadens' house his home. The relations of the brothers-in-law had become strained, both being of strong character. Haden had had much to put up with, while Whistler, the artist, resented the criticism of Haden, the surgeon. One story we have from Whistler explains the situation, and though he never gave a date, it can be told here. Haden was the schoolmaster Whistler found him when they first met; one's older relatives have a way of forgetting one can grow up. Once, when Whistler had done something more enormous than ever in Haden's eyes, he was summoned to the workroom upstairs, and lectured until he refused to listen to another word. He started down the four flights of stairs, with Haden close behind still lecturing. At last the front door was reached. And then: "Oh, dear," said Whistler, "I've left my hat upstairs, and now we have got to go all through this again!" As there was no further question of Whistler living with the Hadens, it was decided that he and his mother should live together, and some of his most delightful years were those that followed.
Footnotes[2]See Duret'sWhistler.[3]Not only have the houses been much altered, but the name of the street has changed, and Queen's Road is now Royal Hospital Road. The present No. 12 corresponds to Mr. Rossetti's description, but we think it more likely—and he does too—that Whistler lived in one of the little brick cottages of Paradise Row. In any case, we doubt if he had more than rooms or lodgings. He gave us to understand that the house he took shortly after, in Lindsey Row, was his first in London.
Footnotes[2]See Duret'sWhistler.[3]Not only have the houses been much altered, but the name of the street has changed, and Queen's Road is now Royal Hospital Road. The present No. 12 corresponds to Mr. Rossetti's description, but we think it more likely—and he does too—that Whistler lived in one of the little brick cottages of Paradise Row. In any case, we doubt if he had more than rooms or lodgings. He gave us to understand that the house he took shortly after, in Lindsey Row, was his first in London.
Footnotes
[2]See Duret'sWhistler.
[2]See Duret'sWhistler.
[3]Not only have the houses been much altered, but the name of the street has changed, and Queen's Road is now Royal Hospital Road. The present No. 12 corresponds to Mr. Rossetti's description, but we think it more likely—and he does too—that Whistler lived in one of the little brick cottages of Paradise Row. In any case, we doubt if he had more than rooms or lodgings. He gave us to understand that the house he took shortly after, in Lindsey Row, was his first in London.
[3]Not only have the houses been much altered, but the name of the street has changed, and Queen's Road is now Royal Hospital Road. The present No. 12 corresponds to Mr. Rossetti's description, but we think it more likely—and he does too—that Whistler lived in one of the little brick cottages of Paradise Row. In any case, we doubt if he had more than rooms or lodgings. He gave us to understand that the house he took shortly after, in Lindsey Row, was his first in London.
Whistler's first house in London was No. 7 Lindsey Row, Chelsea, now 101 Cheyne Walk. It adjoins the old palace of Lord Lindsey, which still stands, the original building divided into several houses, stuccoed and modernised, much of its stateliness gone, though the spacious stairway and part of the panelling have been preserved. Whistler's was a three-storey house, with a garden in front, humble compared with the palaces Academicians were building. "All these artists complain of nothing but the too great prosperity of the profession in these days," Hamerton wrote to his wife; "they tell me an artist's life is a princely one now." But Whistler lived his own life, and from his windows he could paint what he wanted. Only the road separated the house from the river; opposite was Battersea Church and a group of factory chimneys; old Battersea Bridge stretched across, and at night he could see the lights of Cremorne.
At the end of the Row the boat-builder Greaves lived. He had worked in Chelsea for years. He had rowed Turner about on the river, and his two sons were to row Whistler. One of the sons, Mr. Walter Greaves, has told us that Mrs. Booth, a big, hard, coarse Scotchwoman, was always with Turner when he came for a boat. Turner would ask Greaves what kind of a day it was going to be, and if Greaves answered "Fine," he would get Greaves to row them across to Battersea Church, or to the fields, now Battersea Park. If Greaves was doubtful Turner would say: "Well, Mrs. Booth, we won't go far," and afterwards for the sons—boys at the time—Turner in their memory was overshadowed by her. They had also known Martin, the painter of big Scripturalmachines, whose house was in the middle of the Row. It had a balcony, and on fine moonlight nights, or nights of dramatic skies, Greaves or one of the sons would knock him up, and keep on knocking until they saw the old man in his nightcap on the balcony, where he would get to work and sketch the sky until daylight. Greaves remembered, too, Brunel, who built theGreat Eastern, living at the end of the Row. Of other associations, dating a couple of centuries before, the little Moravian graveyard at the back was a reminder, for Lindsey Palace was one of the first refuges of Zinzendorf and the Brotherhood. A hundred years or so later Mrs. Gaskell was born there. The Row, indeed, was a place of history. But Whistler was to make it more famous.
[Pg 76a]
THE WHITE GIRL SYMPHONY IN WHITE. NO. ITHE WHITE GIRL SYMPHONY IN WHITE. NO. IOILIn the possession of J. H. Whittemore, Esq.(See page 67)
OIL
In the possession of J. H. Whittemore, Esq.
(See page 67)
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JOJODRY-POINT. G. 77(See page 68)
DRY-POINT. G. 77
(See page 68)
The two Greaves, Walter and Harry, painted, and Whistler let them work with and for him. We have often heard him speak of them as his pupils. From them he learned to row. "He taught us to paint, and we taught him the waterman's jerk," Mr. Walter Greaves says. Whistler would start with them in the twilight, Albert Moore sometimes his companion, and they would stay on the river for hours, often all night, lingering in the lights of Cremorne, drifting into the shadows of the bridge. Or else he was up with the dawn, throwing pebbles at their windows to wake them and make them come and pull him up or down stream. At night, on the river and at Cremorne, he was never without brown paper and black and white chalk, with which he made his notes for the Nocturnes and the seemingly simple, but really complicated, firework pictures. In the Gardens it was easy to put down what he wanted under the lamps. On the river he had to trust to his memory, only noting the reflections in white chalk.
Walter Greaves, in his exhibition of 1911, made the statement, or allowed it to be made, that before he and his brother knew Whistler, they were "painting pictures of the Thames and Cremorne Gardens, both day and night effects." This statement Mr. Greaves was unable to substantiate by dates and facts, and as other dates and facts given in his catalogue were wrong, little reliance can be placed upon it. He and his brother were Whistler's pupils, and they worked for Whistler for many years, helping him, at any rate until after The Peacock Room. Whistler naturally wished to control his pupils in their work as any other master would, as he controlled and directed the work of Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Addams, his last pupils. He also did his best to prevent Mr. Walter Greaves and his brother from appropriating his subjects, which letters from Whistler to Greaves prove was exactly what they were doing. They were to carry on his tradition, and this included his methods and even at times his colours which they used, while Whistler as undoubtedly worked on their canvases and plates as he worked on those of other pupils at later dates. But the statement that he refused to allow them to exhibit is untrue, for on the few occasions when weare able to find that Greaves did exhibit, it was because Whistler, in his generosity, got the pictures hung. In his recent exhibition Greaves showed a painting calledPassing under Old Battersea Bridge, signed and dated 1862, and he stated that he had exhibited it in the International Exhibition at South Kensington of that year. No other picture we have seen by him has any such date or signature on it, and his statement that it was in the International Exhibition of 1862 has been proved false. It is now admitted that he did not show until 1873. There are two distinct qualities of work in the picture which must be the work either of two people or of two periods. The piers of the bridge are hard and tight, the background resembles Whistler's work of years later, for neither Whistler nor Greaves had painted a Nocturne in that manner at the time. Nevertheless, these misstatements of Greaves were used by critics all over the world to belittle Whistler.
At one time, master and pupils attended a life class held in the evening by M. Barthe, a Frenchman, in Limerston Street, not far from the Row. Mr. J. E. Christie was another student, and from him we have the following account:
"Whistler was not a regular attender, but came occasionally, and always accompanied by two young men—brothers—Greaves by name. They simply adored Whistler, and were not unlike him in appearance, owing to an unconscious imitation of his dress and manner. It was amusing to watch the movements of the trio when they came into the studio (always late). The curtain that hung in front of the door would suddenly be pulled back by one of the Greaves, and a trim, prim little man, with a bright, merry eye, would step in with 'Good evening,' cheerfully said to the whole studio. After a second's survey, while taking off his gloves, he would hand his hat to the other brother, who hung it up carefully as if it were a sacred thing, then he would wipe his brow and moustache with a spotless handkerchief, then in the most careful way he arranged his materials, and sat down. Then, having imitated in a general way the preliminaries, the two Greaves sat down on either side of him. There was a sort of tacit understanding that his and their studies should not be subjected to our rude gaze. I, however, saw, with the tail of my eye, as it were, that Whistler made small drawings on brown paper with coloured chalks, that the figure (always afemale figure) would be about four inches long, that the drawing was bold and fine, and not slavishly like the model. The comical part was that his satellites didn't draw from the model at all, that I saw, but sat looking at Whistler's drawing and copying that as far as they could. He never entered into the conversation, which was unceasing, but occasionally rolled a cigarette and had a few whiffs, the Greaves brothers always requiring their whiffs at the same time. The trio packed up, and left before the others always."
Sometimes in the evening Whistler, with his mother, would go to the Greaves' house after dinner, and work there. Often he sent in dessert, that they might enjoy and talk over it together. Then he would bring out his brown paper and chalks and make studies of the family and of himself, or sketches of pictures he had seen, working until midnight and after. In those days he never went to bed until he had drawn a portrait of himself, he told us. Many of the portraits are in existence. The sister was an accomplished musician, and Whistler delighted in music, though he was not critical, for he was known to call the passing hurdy-gurdy into his front garden, and have it ground under his windows. Occasionally the brothers played so that Whistler might dance. He was always full of drolleries and fun. He would imitate a man sawing, or two men fighting at the door so cleverly that Mrs. Greaves never ceased to be astonished when he walked into the room alone and unhur. He delighted in American mechanical toys, and his house was full of Japanese dolls. One great doll, dressed like a man, he would take with him not only to the Greaves', but to dinners at Little Holland House, where the Prinseps then lived, and to other houses, where he put it through amazing performances.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was, by this time, settled in Tudor House (now Queen's House), not far from Lindsey Row, and Swinburne and George Meredith were living with him. Mr. W. M. Rossetti came for two or three nights every week, and Frederick Sandys, Charles Augustus Howell, William Bell Scott, and, several years later, Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton were constant visitors.
For Rossetti Whistler had a genuine affection, and, in his early enthusiasm, wrote of him as "une grand artiste" to Fantin. But later his enthusiasm did not blind him. "A charming fellow, the only white man in all that crowd of painters," he assured us; "not an artist,you know, but charming and a gentleman." Mr. Watts-Dunton says that Rossetti got tired of Whistler after awhile, and considered him a brainless fellow, who had no more than a malicious quick wit at the expense of others, and no genuine philosophy or humour. But Whistler never realised any change in Rossetti's feelings towards him.
It was inevitable that Whistler and Rossetti should disagree in matters of art. Whistler asked Rossetti why he did not frame his sonnets. Rossetti thought that the "new French School," in which Whistler had been trained, was "simply putrescence and decomposition." It is said that Rossetti influenced Whistler. Whistler influenced him as much. They influenced each other in the choice of models, in a certain luxuriance of type and the manner of presenting it, an influence which was superficial and transitory.
Upon many other subjects they agreed. Rossetti shared Whistler's delight in drollery and his love of the fantastic. No one understood better than Whistler why Rossetti filled his house and garden with strange beasts. It was from Whistler we heard of the peacock and the gazelle, who fought until the peacock was left standing desolate, with his tail strewed upon the ground. From Whistler, too, we had the story of the bull of Bashan, bought at Cremorne, and tied to a stake in the garden, and Rossetti would come every day and talk to him, until once the bull got so excited that he pulled up the stake and made for Rossetti, who went tearing round and round a tree, a little fat person with coat-tails flying, finally, by a supreme effort, rushing up the garden steps just in time to slam the door in the bull's face. Rossetti called his man and ordered him to tie up the bull, but the man, who had looked out for the menagerie, who had gone about the house with peacocks and other creatures under his arms, who had rescued armadilloes from irate neighbours, who had captured monkeys from the tops of chimneys, struck when it came to tying up a bull of Bashan on the rampage, and gave a month's warning. From Whistler also we first had the story of the wombat, bought at Jamrach's by Rossetti for its name. Whistler was dining at Tudor House, and the wombat was brought on the table with coffee and cigars, while Meredith talked brilliantly, and Swinburne read aloud passages from theLeaves of Grass. But Meredith was witty as well as brilliant, and the special target of his wit was Rossetti, who, as he had invited two or three of his patrons,did not appreciate the jest. The evening ended less amiably than it began, and no one thought of the wombat until late, and then it had disappeared. It was searched for high and low. Days passed, weeks passed, months passed, and there was no wombat. It was regretted, forgotten. Long afterwards Rossetti, who was not much of a smoker, got out the box of cigars he had not touched since that dinner. He opened it. Not a cigar was left, but there was the skeleton of the wombat.
Whistler and Rossetti also agreed about many of the group who met at Tudor House, though eventually Whistler felt what appeared to him the disloyalty of Swinburne and Burne-Jones. He was never, at any time, so intimate with Burne-Jones as with Swinburne, who often came to the house in Lindsey Row, not only for Whistler's sake, but out of affection for Whistler's mother. Miss Chapman tells us that Swinburne was once taken ill there suddenly, and Mrs. Whistler nursed him till he was well. Miss Chapman also remembers Swinburne sitting at Mrs. Whistler's feet, and saying to her: "Mrs. Whistler, what has happened? It used to be Algernon!" Mrs. Whistler, who had accepted Whistler's friends and their ways, said quietly, "You have not been to see us for a long while, you know. If you come as you did, it will be Algernon again." And he came, and the friendship lasted until the eighties, when he published the article in theFortnightly Reviewwhich Whistler could not forgive.
Meredith wrote us of these Chelsea days: "I knew Whistler and never had a dissension with him, though merry bouts between us were frequent. When I went to live in the country, we rarely met. He came down to stay with me once. He was a lively companion, never going out of his way to take offence, but with the springs in him prompt for the challenge. His tales of his student life in Paris, and of one Ernest, with whom he set forth on a holiday journey with next to nothing in his purse, wereimpayable."
Quarrels and distrust never made Whistler deny the charm of Charles Augustus Howell, remembered for the part he played in the lives of some of the most distinguished people of his generation. Who he was, where he came from, nobody knew. He was supposed to be associated with high, but nameless, personages in Portugal, and sent by them on a secret mission to England: he was said tohave been involved in the Orsini conspiracy, and obliged to fly for his life across the Channel. According to Mr. E. T. Cook, he was descended from Boabdil il Chico, though Rossetti called him "the cheeky." Mr. Cook says that in his youth, as he used to tell, he had supported his family by diving for treasure, and had lived in Morocco as the Sheik of a Tribe. But Ford Madox Brown described him as the Münchausen of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. The unquestionable fact is that he was a man of great personal charm and unusual business capacity. Mr. W. M. Rossetti has written of him: "As a salesman—with his open manner, winning address, and his exhaustless gift of amusing talk, not innocent of high colouring and of actualblague—Howell was unsurpassable."
He was secretary to Ruskin; he was Rossetti's man of affairs; he became Whistler's, though on a less definite basis. He appears in published reminiscences as the magnificent prototype of the author's agent. His talk was one of his recommendations to both Rossetti and Whistler. Rossetti rejoiced in Howell's "Niagara of lies," and immortalised them: