Grey is the colour of modern life. There is some truth in the statement. Modern civilization shuns the slashed doublet and purple cloak. Beauty of colour, as a Titian and Veronese understood it, belongs to the past. The brilliancy and splendour has faded out of it. The modern painter uses a more limited scale of colour, and the tendency is toward grey.

Man's garb is monotone, and the life in large cities devoid of the rich colour-bursts of mediÆval life. The contrasts are all in lower, paler and murkier tones, and grey, in most instances, furnishes the keynote and general harmonizer. All the artists who have a fine feeling for the arrangement of colours have realized that harmonies of red, green and violet, which shone so resplendently from the warm brown tones of the Old Masters, are the dreams of another age. Even the impressionists, by the very character of their technical innovations, notably the abolition of browns, the struggle for a higher pitch of light by the interaction of purely applied colours and the exaggeration of the transparency of shadows, are pursuing the grey phantom of modern art. Their ambition is no longer a combination of bright colours, as in Veronese's "Marriage of Cana," but a tonality of dull yellow or green, which pervades the whole surface of the pictures. The flowing robes, flowers and gold ornaments, once so radiant on the canvases of the Renaissance, have turned as pale as ashes.

We take delight to-day in subtler gradations, in semi and quarter tones, the losing of forms in mystic shadows, a restless, suggestive technique of mobile touches, nervous sparkles, of delicate broken tints that show a hundred differentiations. And this over-sensitiveness and fastidious objection to strong contrast, this love for the externals of technique, raising brushwork to a higher pedestal than the idea, has much to do with the exclusiveness of modern painting and the keener appreciation for monochrome.

In monochrome representation the eye has to deal only with one mode of perception—that of form. The perception of colour depends upon the differentiation of the effect upon the optical nerve fibres, that of form on the numbers and relative position of the latter. The latter mode of Æsthetic perception is, in our times, more trained and developed, as it is in constant usage. Reproductive processes, the halftone and photography, have made monochrome a vehicle of expression almost as popular as the spoken word.

To former ages only the various processes of engraving were known. With the exception of etching and wood engraving, they were applied largely to popularize the products of painters, and the independent etchers and block-cutters generally adhered to a severe and classical style of art. It was the nineteenth century with its principle of universal education, newspapers, books and manifold publications, that brought about the great change.

Texture constitutes to most collectors the principal charm of the graphic arts. It is a rare and fantastic valuation, an appreciation of preciosity, this occupying oneself with the fascination of the minor arts. Art would be too austere if it were not for the makers of etchings and lithographs, of pastels and water-colours.

Photography, the latest arrival in the ranks of the graphic arts, has the widest range of expression, and its technique is interesting as far as it can express mechanically and with comparative ease gradations of tone that without visible touches, marks, strokes or lines melt imperceptibly into each other. But this smoothness of texture will also be its most formidable drawback. There is no chance for manual expression without destroying the charm of photographic texture. Chemistry is the only legitimate means to accomplish it.

NOCTURNE (LITHOGRAPH).

Copper and steel engravings lack that freedom of expression, and are restricted largely to reproductive purposes. Carried out by cross-hatching, they are limited by the black of the ink and the white of the paper, and the precise character of the line work. Modern reproductive wood engraving, notably of the American school, is the only medium which has conquered the subtleties of tone.

The scale in monochrome painting in colour is so limited that few artists apply it. India ink and sepia, however, are much in favour, and if handled by an artist, fulfil the requirements of painting. The only short-comings are a certain transparency in the middle tints and an artificial look in the texture.

Charcoal and chalk have a great similarity, and also lend themselves to elaborate composition, although the more delicate and lighter greys are frequently muddy. Pen and ink can merely give an impression of line, and next to etching it is the best medium for sketching, only a less pliable one, which is largely due to the unelasticity of the steel pen; all subtler gradations are left out, as the brightest tints are lost in the white and the darkest in the black.

In lead pencil sketches the lowest tones are grey as compared with black, and consequently can not produce any decided depth. Crayon lithography is capable of producing beautiful soft greys. As the gradations from one tint to another are not continuous, the texture, consisting of innumerable minute dots, does not permit clear uninterrupted line work and even flow of tone. It does not lend itself particularly well to faithful copying from nature. The very character of its granulated line and surface suggests a sketchy and fragmentary treatment. Whistler, who, with Fantin-Latour, shares the honour of the happy revival of artistic lithography, readily realized this. He laid special stress upon the texture; its detached shapes creep over the paper like grey moss over a stone. They are all carried out in grey monotonous middle tints but marvellously delicate and subtle in values. Superficial but delicious in quality, his lithographic croquis impress us like the laborious trifles and harmonious bagatelles of a Herrick.

Theodore Duret tells us that Whistler made his first series of six lithographs during the years 1877-78 (republished in 1887 by Boussod Valadon in Paris). They were drawn directly on stone, contrary to his later method, when he used transfer paper almost exclusively. They were rather large in size, and resembled his painted nocturnes in general treatment. This is particularly the case with his "View on the Thames," the most beautiful print of the series. I do not believe that these representations were of particular importance, as they contradict his own theory. What can be and has been perfectly expressed in one medium, can not reach equal perfection in another medium. It was really nothing but a translation of a painted nocturne into black and white. The essential charm of a Whistler nocturne consists of colour. Black and white can convey only a vague idea of vibrancy.

When Whistler took up lithographing for the second time in 1885-86, he had become thoroughly familiar with his medium. He no longer worked on the stone, and abandoned all elaborate finished compositions. His motifs are sketchy little figure studies, street scenes, portraits and occasionally a nude or semi-nude like his "Dancing Girl" in fluttering drapery. The printing he entrusted to a lithograph printer in London, Thomas Way by name, who was somewhat of an artist himself and consequently better equipped than the ordinary pressman to do justice to Whistler's vague fancies. Frequently Whistler took a hand in the printing, or at least made corrections. Printer Way told Mr. Wedmore, with reference to the sometimes disputed matter of the transfer paper, "that even when the artist drew on that in the first instance, and saw in proofs things that were lacking or things that were exaggerated, he would make his correction upon the stone itself, and so, of certain of his lithographs—his later ones especially—he produced different 'states,' though it was not easy to expressly define them, and though these differences were, of course, but the exceptions, and whereas very often, though of course not always in etchings—Whistler's or other peoples'—the earlier state is finer than the later; in these lithographs, generally speaking, the later state is finer than the earlier."

Whistler's lithographs can easily be classified according to the subjects they represent. During the years Whistler lived in Paris he depicted views and scenes of the city like the "Pantheon," "The Grand Gallery of the Louvre," "The Luxembourg Gardens" and interesting types like "La belle New Yorkaise" and "La belle Dame Paresseuse." One print, "Les Confidences dans le Jardin," depicts two gossiping women in the garden of his house in the rue du Bac.

His London subjects are equally numerous. In 1895, when he painted "The Master Smith" and the "Little Rose of Lyme Regis," while at a watering place in Dorsetshire he made several sketches of the picturesque streets of the old town. Of particular charm are his "Early Morning" (a view of the Thames from his Chelsea window) and "The Locksmith of the Dragon Square." In 1886, during an illness of his wife, he lived in the Surrey Hotel and executed a number of panoramic views of the Strand, the Thames with its river traffic, the quays, St. Paul's Cathedral and bird-eye views of London streets.

Boston Museum of Fine Arts
LITTLE ROSE OF LYME REGIS.

All these designs are beautifully enveloped in a misty atmosphere. The paper is used as a value as important as the grey lines of the crayon, and the forms are softened as if broken by light and generally massed in an unsymmetrical fashion.

Some of the portrait sketches are superb, in particular that of StÉphane MallarmÉ, who was Whistler's life-long friend and one of his staunchest supporters. It was largely due to MallarmÉ that the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" found a home in the Luxembourg. He also translated the "Ten O'clock" into French. Whistler's sketch of the poet appeared on the front of the Parisian edition of "Vers et Prose" (1893). It is apparently hurriedly dashed off, but the result of many careful studies and experiments. It is a mere fragment, negligent, disdainful; but how knowingly made, and how characteristic of the poet's personality! Despite its vagueness it is a likeness, and preferable, to me at least, who was fortunate to know MallarmÉ in the early eighties, to most portraits made of him.

Whistler never surpassed this particular effort, although his portraits of Joseph Pennell, Mrs. Pennell, Walter Sickert, W. E. Henley and his wife, Miss Philip and Comte Montesquieu are excellent character studies. Way published in 1896 a catalogue of 130 lithographs. Later additions probably increase the number to 150. The London Fine Arts Society held in 1895 a special sale of 75 lithographs. The "Grolier Club" of New York in 1900 held an exhibition of 106 prints.

His nudes are charming little inventions in pose and gesture with considerable knowledge of the human figure. In the Society exhibition of 1885 he exhibited a nude entitled "Caprice." A R. A. Horsley took exception to it, and in a lecture before a Church Congress, after indulging in most curious, pedantic and mediÆval arguments, ended with the following tirade:

"Is not clothedness a distinct type and feature of our Christian faith? All art representations of nakedness are out of harmony with it."

STUDY OF NUDE FIGURE (CHALK DRAWING).

Whistler, ever ready to take up the cudgel, avenged himself by writing under the picture: "Horsley soit qui mal y pense," and leaving it there during the entire exhibition.

Strange, that Whistler never attempted to paint a large nude in oil. He, no doubt, had a reason for this omission, although it is nowhere recorded. Perhaps he agreed on the point with Ruskin that a realistic nude had no place in modern life, not for any moral reason but merely that the human body was too defective to allow the highest Æsthetic gratification. A figure in modern garb is a part of modern life, a nude is an alien in space without any special significance. This should have appealed to Whistler; perhaps he strove hard to realize it but never succeeded in doing so. His lithographs and pastels of nudes seem largely experimental. They never go beyond the sketch and vaguely remind one of Tanagra figures. "The Model Resting," and "The Little Nude Reading," a profile view of a young girl sitting in bed holding with both hands a book, are two of the best known.

Whistler also made a few attempts in coloured lithography, as for instance, "La Maison Jaune." But it is hardly coloured lithography, it is merely a black and white design with a few touches of colour, as expressed in "A Lannion" or the "Maison Rouge À Paimpol," the result of an excursion to Brittany. Perhaps the most exquisite and delicate of his efforts are these slight delicate renderings of female forms. When he adds a little colour it is always done with rare preciosity, the "un-finish" always being masterly. And there is such a thing as masterly "un-finish" always being just at the right spot as there is merit in the masterly inactivity of a Russian general opposing an invading army. The very essence of Whistler's art is to be seen in these coloured drawings.

Of peculiar charm are Whistler's pastels. The majority, some fifty which he exhibited in the London Fine Arts Society in 1880, depict Venetian scenes. They were catalogued as "harmonies in blue and browns, in opal and turquoise, etc." They show a rare elegance of design and a peculiar suavity of colour. They are the last remnants of his early period of vivid colouring, and are highly valued. They represent canals with draped gondolas, views from the lagoons with ships at anchor, archways, and white churches, the cemetery with green trees, lights gleaming on the distant shore and reflections in the water. His figures in pastels are mostly young girls, semi-nude or in quaintly coloured robes, frequently in pink and red against vague backgrounds. Whistler's virtuosity in these sketches and pictorial fragments is entirely different from the so-called impressionist's work. It is primarily full of imagination, of a high mental tone and dignity. Whistler has shown how noble an aspect can be given to the expression of an extremist, for he also was an extremist. He perfectly realized that aggressive sketchiness can never be monumental, that sketches are merely gymnastic exercises that lend health and strength to a painter's technique, although they remain to the end merely exercises. At the same time, if rightly handled, they express certain Æsthetic aspects of life better than more elaborate efforts. He knew what a sketch could and could not convey, and the wonderful freshness and spontaneity which they exhibit are witness alike to the clear crispness of his perception and to his sympathetic handling.

Owned by Th. R. Way
PASTEL STUDY.