The famous butterfly monogram, originally a decorative combination of the letters "J. M. W.," which evolved into a decorative design of a butterfly, enclosed in a circle, as it appeared in his "Sarasate" and "Carlyle," and, frequently, a mere stencil-like silhouette as seen in his correspondence, began to appear in Whistler's pictures in the late sixties. The "Symphony in Gray and Green—The Ocean" (painted in 1866) was probably the first important canvas in which it was introduced. In his earlier pictures he had made use of an ordinary written signature as most painters use. It is strange that it took an artist of Whistler's sensitiveness so long to realize the incongruities of these crude calligraphic displays. They disfigure many a good picture and smack of the materialism of this age. Every picture should have a signature, if for no other reason than to prove the authenticity at some future time. But surely it can Whistler treated his monogram in the same conscientious and picturesque fashion. He used it with preference in his symphonies, nocturnes and large portraits, but, at times, also in white, as on a rail post in the lower right corner of his "Bognor." He handled it with more than ordinary reverence, as everything that pertained to the exploiting of his own personality. He often introduced it at the first painting to judge the effect, and, of course, he wiped or scraped it out over and over again until he procured the desired effect. He continually made slight changes in the design, he toyed with it as with some curio, elaborated it in many ways, and, eventually, even bestowed a sting upon the insect, as it appears in his "Gentle Art of Making Enemies." The butterfly teaches a lesson. It proves that an artist can be self-assertive, arrogant But it has even a deeper significance in Whistler's life. It is in a way a symbol of his evolution as a painter. As we study his work we find that the butterfly monogram does not appear before Whistler freed himself from foreign influences, and invented an individual and independent style of his own. The butterfly may well stand for the full awakening and realization of his own faculties. Did he not say himself: "In the pale citron wing of the butterfly, with its dainty spots of orange, he saw the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and was taught how the delicate drawing high upon the walls should be traced in slender tones of orpiment and repeated by the base in notes of graver hue." Like all painters Whistler had to learn his trade, and then find his peculiar way of expression. It took him well nigh a quarter of a century. He entered the studio of Gleyre in the summer of 1855 as a young man of twenty-one, and was nearly forty-seven when he had finished the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" and had painted a few nocturnes. All his Charles Gleyre was an excellent draughtsman of the Ingres school, but all he could teach his pupils was to draw. That he had once been capable of some finer appreciation of colour and atmosphere, students of art may notice in his "Evening," painted in 1843, but he became, like so many other painters of this period, the victim of the academic style. Outline drawing reigned supreme, there was room for nothing else, and it was surely not a congenial environment for young Whistler, who, even at that time, differed with the prevalent ideas of art. Drawing, however, is one of the most important factors of the technique of painting. Velasquez even thought it was the most important one, and Whistler, with the peculiar tendency of his art, was, no doubt, fortunate that he reached Paris while draughtsmanship was still honoured and not neglected, as in the later days of the impressionists. A student in Paris either becomes an enthusiastic worker from the nude, making one study after the other, like all those Julian and Colarossi The canvases of this period show strong influences of Stevens and Courbet. He must have been enamoured with the style of that great painter of woman, as he was undoubtedly with the rude sincerity of Courbet. If any man could paint at that time it was Courbet. He was the simplifier of planes and values, who advocated frankness and freedom of expression, and detached painting from all the absurdities and abstractions of the classic and romantic periods. From him Whistler learned to put on his pigments in a bold, vigorous way. He was never fond of brushwork, but at that time he liked to pile it on in a flat and solid manner. Only gradually his brushwork became thinner and thinner, invisible and almost untraceable, carrying out his maxim: "A picture is finished when all traces of means used to bring about the end have disappeared." As is the case with all great paintings, one must forget all about technique. From Stevens he learned, as he often said Another more exotic influence became palpable in his work soon after, and exercised an almost despotic control for several years. At the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1863 Whistler became acquainted, for the first time, with Japanese art. The Parisian artists, particularly the set with which Whistler was acquainted, got colour mad. The suggestiveness of Oriental composition, which accentuates detail here and neglects it there; the peculiar space arrangement and the decorative treatment of detail, captivated all modern spirit. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, the Æsthetes of the Empire, and the forerunners of the Japanese enthusiasts, and specialists like Cernuschi, Regamey, Guimet, and Bing became the spokesmen for Japanese bibelots. Paris was deluged with little art objects fashioned out of bronze, porcelain, cloisonne, jade, ivory, wood and metal. Everybody started a collection, and became a member of the "SocietÉ du Jinglar," with annual meetings at SÈvres, which was fanatically devoted to the worship and exploitation of Eastern art. The harmonious arrangement of the Japanese colour prints in particular fascinated the cognoscenti. The application of colour in True enough, coloured prints were classified as vulgar art. They were considered ordinary pictorial commodities of no more importance to the natives than coloured supplements to our Sunday readers. But they were of such exquisite finish that we wonderingly ask ourselves if the nobler branches of art in this country really reached a higher standard of perfection. It is hardly possible. It was rather their application than their art value which offended the nobility. Many of the most cherished prints of Kiyonaga, Sharaku, Shunsho, and Outomaro, depicting teahouse scenes, actors, wrestlers and ladies of the Yoshiwara, The colour appreciation of the Japanese clerk, labourer and peasant must have been developed to an exceptional degree, if these designs, that were so cheap that everybody bought them as we do newspapers, could arouse nothing but ordinary appreciation and matter-of-fact comment. The Japanese used colours in combinations that seem strange and unusual to us. They did not seem to care about any complementary laws, but introduced yellow with pink, purple with green, brown with red without the slightest hesitation. This may be explained by the restraint of their palette. Their old hand-made colours are all keyed in middle tints; they did not lack decision or strength, but they were never loud or vehement. Thus arrangements were possible that would look crude with the use of Western colours. Cheret's and Toulouse Lautrec's posters, even when of three-sheet dimensions and seen in open air, seldom expressed more than contrast and animation. They worked on the principle of the Japanese colour print, but in a very crude and superficial fashion. They wished to startle, not to please. If colour is seen in flat tint patches it pro The European painter had a different idea. Although recognizing the supremacy of colour, he took visual appearances as they were and actually appeared in life as guiding models for his representations. Colour became submerged in other qualities almost equally important, as those of line, perspective, chiaroscura, relief drawing and minute observation. The Eastern artist applied colour for colour's sake, and kept all other elements, notably those of line, feeling, shape and space arrangement independent—not independent as far as the tonality of the final effect was concerned, but independent in their function as vehicles of expression. They were never diffused in the same way as in an Old Master. Whistler, at this stage of his development, was interested simply in recreating Japanese colour arrangements, to paint local values in such a way that they would reflect the beauty, contrast and variety of an Outamaro print. The pictures of this period remind one of that capricious Chinese princess, of whom Heinrich Heine speaks, whose quaint and solitary pleasure consisted of tearing costly silks into tatters, to scatter the rags to the winds and to watch them flutter like rose, blue and yellow butterflies to the lily ponds below. Already in his "Woman in White" Whistler had shown some preferences for colour, but not until after he had taken his first house in London, when his mother came to live with him, did he show those peculiar outbursts of colour that were a direct outcome of the study of Japanese prints. In later years it was all tone, but in the years 1863-66, it was all colour, with a preference for white. The principal pictures of this period were "Lange Leizen of the Six Marks: In purple and rose" (in the possession of John G. Johnson); "The Little White Girl" (owned by Arthur Studd), Whistler clothed his English models in Eastern dress, and reproduced the beautiful colours with Japanese detail. He was among the first to appreciate the beauty of Chinese porcelain, of which he owned many choice pieces. In his "Lange Leizen" is shown a young woman in a Japanese costume, seated and holding with her left hand on her lap a blue and white vase of the shape known in Holland as the "Lange Leizen of the Six Marks" (referring to the potter's mark on the bottom of the vase). Her right hand, covered by the sleeve of the kimono, is raised and holds a brush. Her skirt is black with a delicate design in colours. The kimono is cream white, decorated with bright flowers and lined with rose colours. Around her hair, which falls over her shoulders, is tied a black scarf. On the floor are several blue and white vases and an Oriental carpet. To the right is a red covered table, and behind the figure is a chest. The painting is signed "Whistler, 1864," in the upper right-hand corner. The frame was designed by Whistler himself and decorated Another picture of this period is the "Golden Screen." A young woman in Japanese costume is seated on a brown rug, her head seen in profile, as she examines a Japanese print. She wears a purple kimono decorated with multicoloured flowers and bordered with a vermilion scarf, and a green obi tied around her waist; her outer kimono is white with a red flowered design. To the left is a tea box, some roses and a white vase with pansies. Hiroshige prints are scattered over the floor. The background consists of a folding screen with Japanese houses and figures, painted on a gold ground. These two pictures are far from being satisfactory. The composition is restless, the colours do not harmonize, and the figure is one of that peculiar nightmarish type which some artists affect; a being belonging to that peculiar class of humanity who wear slouch drapery instead of tailor-made costumes, and carry crystal balls, urns and sunflowers as an Æsthetic amusement, I suppose, about their person. The model for both these pictures was Joanna Heffernan, an Irish girl, neither particularly handsome nor well educated; but she was a good model, who adapted herself easily A change of method is noticeable in "The Little White Girl," the colour scheme of which is exquisite. The white dress of the young girl, in profile, with loosened hair, leaning against a mantelpiece, and her reflection in the glass, are accentuated in a beautiful manner by the brilliant colour notes of a red lacquer box, a blue and white vase, a fan with a Hiroshige-like design and a decorative arrangement of pink and purple azaleas. The painting is thinner and there is greater repose in the composition. Swinburne saw the picture before it was sent up to the Royal Academy in 1865, and expressed his admiration by writing "Before the Mirror. Verses under a Picture:" "Come snow, come wind or thunder, High up in the air I watch my face and wonder At my bright hair. Naught else exalts or grieves The rose at heart that heaves With love of our own leaves, and lips that pair. "I cannot tell what pleasures Or what pains were, What pale new loves and treasures New Years will bear, What beam will fall, what shower With grief or joy for dower. But one thing knows the flower, the flower is fair." "La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine" (Whistler apparently was fond of using elaborate titles) is perhaps his finest work in vivid colouring. The colour differentiations are well placed, but the canvas, after all, looks too much like a huge Japanese print, painted in the Western style, which represents objects round and in relief, and not merely in flat tints. The placing of the screen with the face looming above it is as peculiar as it is attractive, but it is an arrangement that is strictly Japanese in character. Whistler began with painting detail, and only gradually learned to see life in a broader and more mysterious way. It is a portrait of Miss Christie Spartali, a real Rossetti type, daughter of the Consul-General for Greece in London in 1863. Her father did not like it; but Rossetti did, and sold it from his own studio to help Whistler along. Later it came into the possession of F. R. Leyland, and was used to decorate the "Peacock Room." It was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1865. It is really a combination of Rossetti and Outomaro, with a slight flavour of Whistler's individuality. "On the Balcony" (exhibited first in 1866) of the Freer collection is a peculiar combination of models masquerading in kimonos and a background of English river scenery. He In his later work Whistler returned once more to vivid colouring. It was solely in pastels and water colours, never in oils. And the butterfly, the symbol of Whistler's individuality, fluttered gaily from picture to picture, from print to print, and letter to letter; now disappearing in greyish mists, then peeping forth from a dark olive background, and again asserting his existence at times as a mere shadow, as a dark or coral red silhouette. Changing his colour and size on every canvas; he is now shaded blue, brown, rose, red, violet or peacock blue and then, suddenly assuming unusually large proportions, he spreads his wings in full flight to be lost once more as a grey, almost imperceptible spot, in some twilight atmosphere. At one moment he appears on a vase, a rug, or a curtain. He floats on the sea, rest on doorposts, wings his way over flowers and rocks, shifts sportively from the lower left to the right corner, thereupon rises to almost the middle of the canvas, flutters around the figures, even touches their forms |