The Whistler Book / A Monograph of the Life and Position in Art of James McNeill Whistler, Together with a Careful Study of His More Important Works

CHAPTER XI AS HIS FRIENDS KNEW HIM

One afternoon in 1892, walking along the boulevards with StÉphane MallarmÉ, during absinthe hours, I met Whistler. The poet and the painter raised their hats and shook hands and exchanged a few words in French, which I did not understand. I was introduced, Whistler bowed, shook hands and then we passed on. It was one of those fugitive meetings that occur so frequently and to which no importance can be attached. It gives one the sole and rather futile privilege of having seen Whistler, just as I have seen Liszt, the king of Bavaria, Ibsen and many others, without having become acquainted with them.

I do not remember how Whistler was dressed, I only recall the top hat, monocle and cane. He looked rather undersized to me, a trifle affected, but exceedingly picturesque, and possessing that peculiar magnetism which we feel in the presence of great men.

As for a more intimate analysis of Whistler's personality, I must refer to some of his friends, who have expressed themselves in print. I shall cite a number of paragraphs that have the merit of descriptive verity, and that will give a clear insight into his curious, highstrung character, as it appeared in every-day life.

"What strikes one in Whistler's biography," says Laurence Binyon, the London critic and poet, "is the extraordinary amount of time, trouble and energy he expended on things and people that did not matter, the record of his squabbles, the fanatical loyalty of his enmities, the rage of his 'egotism.'" This is the Whistler that the world knew. But there was another Whistler, Mr. Binyon suggests,—"A man of singular sensitiveness, who shunned the vulgar daytime and stole abroad at twilight ... bent always on revealing to his fellow men the loveliness that lurks in familiar sights and among the dingy aspects of a modern city."

One of his earliest intimates who writes of him in Vanity Fair, as one of the "Men of the Day," signed John Junior, says: "Mr. Whistler—'Jimmy' as his friends call him—is personally one of the most charming, simple and witty of men. He touches nothing but he embellishes and enlivens it with startling novelty of conceit. His hereditary lock of white hair is a rallying point of humour wherever he goes, and his studio is the resort of all who delight in hearing the new thing."

The article continues to say that it is evidently not difficult for the newspaper correspondent to approach him, as much had been written about his charming house and spacious studio in Chelsea. He was so thoroughly an artist that material seemed indifferent to him. His famous "Peacock Room," which he did for Mr. Leyland, shows his genius as a decorator, and conservative opinion is, that he was even greater as an etcher than as a painter. He had engraved, and painted in water-colours, of course, and his attire, from his top-coat to his shoe strings, was made from his own designs. Apparently he chafed under the academic tyranny of even the tailor. Of his powers in mimicry and in character acting his friend never tired of talking and telling anecdotes which illustrate it, and indicate that even in drollery his art is as subtle as in work of seriousness and dignity. "Dickens was not a patch on him," said someone, recently, who had seen the pantomiming of both.

Harper Pennington, one of his officially acknowledged pupils, gives a fine description of the man in the "Metropolitan Magazine" of 1910.

"Whistler was not a tall man, but of trim and muscular appearance, broad-shouldered, strong-armed, and well set up—the result of West Point training. He was intensely active and alert, although not in the least fidgety or nervous. His eyes were as bright as a bird's, flashing from face to face in a group of persons. It is noteworthy that he moved his eyes and not his head from side to side, fixing each speaker in his turn. This may have been another effect of West Point drills—'Eyes right,' 'Eyes left.' His long hands and bony wrists suggested force and delicacy of touch. If he was a trifle robin-legged, the effect served to enhance a certain dandified attitude he frequently assumed, especially when chaffing someone who deserved it, to the delight of the gallery, without which he seldom thought it worth while to perform.

"The man was above all things gregarious—he did not like to be alone—and most intensely human. He had his foibles, faults and virtues like the rest. The Whistler I knew was clean of person and speech. I never heard him utter one word that might not be repeated without offending the most easily shocked of prudes. He has been described as untidy. He was, on the contrary, the only man who ever washed his hair three times every day, and was fastidious to the point of being prinky about his person. His clothes, generally black, were always simple in the extreme and spotless, even when, in those old Venice days of dreadful poverty, they were worn threadbare—actually in holes. His courage was indisputable. He would fight any man, no matter what size or weight, and the jaunty cheerfulness with which he bore privations, when he lacked everything, even the materials necessary for his work, deceived those who were his daily companions and sufficiently proved his moral pluck.

"He wore a black silk ribbon tie at his neck, a bow with six inch loops and fluttering ends, but that was all that was unusual in his attire, unless the long bamboo wands of canes—a dark one for the night and a light for day—should be included. Nothing that glittered, not even a watch-chain or a ring, formed any part of his costume. A tiny white or yellow flower at his buttonhole was his unique adornment.

"Is it true, as Thackeray declared, that ordinary mortals do, indeed, delight to pry into the weakness of the strong, the smallness of the great? I have thought it best to show my Whistler as he really was, a simple, kind and tender-hearted fellow, who turned his best side towards the unappreciative world he lived in, not from vanity of person, but to hide his poverty, and the makeshifts he was driven to employ, as a man will say 'I like to walk,' when he can't afford to ride. His cackling laugh hid many a bitter thrust that had gone home and hurt him to the quick. He laughed, and then would come the swift riposte of witty repartee. He never attacked a living creature, never struck the first blow, and would have been glad to live in peace with all the world. But so coarse were the criticisms of his person and his work that he was driven to defend Art, which was the only thing he could not joke about. Upon the rare occasions when he talked with me, as a master might, about his work, his face itself seemed transfigured.

"Brave when he was well, his cowardice when ill or in pain was comical. If he caught cold he would disappear, and those who knew him well were sure he had fled to his doctor—his brother's house in Wimpole Street. Dr. Whistler told me that Jimmy would appear all muffled up and say: 'Willie, I am ill! I am going up to bed—here—and won't go home until you've cured me!' Any little malady was enough to demoralize him. In his hours of weakness he would hide away like a wounded animal and not show up again until he had been nursed back to his normal state.

ARRANGEMENT IN FLESH-COLOUR AND BLACK: T. DURET

ARRANGEMENT IN FLESH-COLOUR AND BLACK: THEODORE DURET.

"Whistler was extremely frugal and abstemious. He ate and drank most moderately the plainest fare. He liked dainty dishes and rare old wine, but had a horror of the 'groaning board' at huge set feasts and formal banquets. He could cook quite decently himself, and sometimes made an omelet or scrambled eggs, but these culinary feats I never saw performed; as to the Master's knowledge of wine, it was very limited indeed. I have seen him mistake a heavy vintage of champagne for 'Tisane.' I never saw him cook anything, even in his poorest days, in Venice, but I know that he liked a good dinner at a club even when it was punctually served and consisted of quite ordinary delicacies such as other men delight in."

The notes from his childhood are rather scarce. In his mother's diary, written during the stay in Russia, we find the following reference to him when he was twelve years old: "... Jimmie's eagerness to attain all his desires for information and his fearlessness often make him offend and it makes him appear less amiable than he really is." And at some other place, when they had watched some parade with the Empress passing: "He behaved like a man. With one compassing arm he guarded me, and with the other kept people at a proper distance, and I must confer, brilliant as the spectacle was, the greatest pleasure was derived by the conduct of my dear and manly boy." Miss Emma Palmer, his cousin, describes Whistler at this period as "tall and slight, with a pensive, delicate face, shaded by soft brown curls. He had a foreign appearance and manners, which, added to his natural abilities, made him very charming even at that age. He was one of the sweetest, loveliest boys I ever knew and was a great favourite."

"Whistler, as a boy, was exactly what those who knew him as a man would expect: gay and bright, absorbed in his work when that work was in any way related to art, brave and fearless, selfish, if selfishness is another word for ambition, considerate and kindly above all to his mother. The boy, like the man, was delightful to those who knew and understood him, 'startling' and 'alarming' to those who did not."

Joseph Pennell, in his excellent book, has given us a most fascinating description of Whistler as a student in Paris and a young painter in England. No one can refuse to admire the loyalty of this writer, who has gathered with such loving care every note of interest in Whistler's life. The following paragraphs are from his Quartier Latin chapter; "To Whistler the Frenchman was more sympathetic than the English, in his serious as in his light hours. His fellow students brought back to England the impression that he was an idler; it is hard to-day to make people believe that he was anything else in his youth. And yet he worked in Paris as prodigiously as he played. To us it is incomprehensible how he found time to read as a student, and yet he knew the literature of the period thoroughly, and always the charm of his manner and his courtesy made it delightful to do anything for him. Few men ever ate less than Whistler, but few were more fastidious about what they did eat—no man ever shrank more from thought, or at the mention of death than Whistler. There was always in life so much for him to do and so little time in which to do it.

"He was popular with the children, and delighted in music, though he was not too critical, for he was known to call the passing hurdy-gurdy into his garden and have it ground under his windows. Occasionally the brother (Greaves) 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 his brother never ceased to be astonished when he walked into the room alone and unhurt. 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 Greaves, but to dinners at the Little Holland House, where the Princess then lived, and to other houses, where he put it through amazing performances." Many notes are quoted from the writings of his associates. Here are some of the most interesting of them: Mr. Luke Ionides writes: "He was a great favourite among us all, and also among the grisettes we used to meet at the gardens where dancing went on. I remember one especially, they called her the tigress. She seemed madly in love with Jimmie and would not allow any other woman to talk to him when she was present. She sat for him several times with her curly hair down her back. She had a good voice and I have often thought she suggested 'Trilby' to Du Maurier. One time in a rage she tore up a lot of drawings, when Whistler came home and saw them piled high on the table, he wept." If Whistler had money in his pockets, Mr. Ionides says, he spent it royally on others.

Mr. Rowley, "Taffy," writes: "It was in 1857-8 that I knew Whistler, and a most amusing and eccentric fellow he was, with his long black thick curly hair and large felt hat with a broad black ribbon around it. I remember on the wall was a representation of him, I believe done by Du Maurier, a sketch of him, then a fainter one and then finally an interrogation—very clever it was and very much like the original. In those days he did not work hard."

"Whistler was never wholly one of us," Mr. Armstrong tells us; Drouet does not think that Whistler worked hard, certainly not in usual student fashion at the schools. He was every evening at the Students' ball, and as he never got up until ten or eleven in the morning, where was the time for work?

The personal observations and a glance at one of Whistler's self-portraits of this period should give us a fair vision of the young Whistler at Paris. The earliest known self-portrait in oil is the one painted in Paris about 1859, the Whistler with a hat, engraved by GuÉrard, which was lent by Samuel P. Avery to the Memorial Exhibition at Boston. It shows him with a slight mustache, a large Rubens hat, a big dotted tie, and a coat with a velvet collar. It is a good example of a dark silhouette against dark arrangement. The face has a few strong headlights, the remainder of it in middle tints, while the rest of the figure—the hat, the hair, the bust—are darker than the background. The space arrangement and position of the head are clever, but the shape of the bust is awkward, and, I fear slightly contorted.

Mrs. Jameson writes: "The man, as I knew him, was so different from the descriptions and presentations I have read of him, that I would like to speak of the other side of his character. It is impossible to conceive a more unfailingly courteous, considerate and delightful companion than Whistler as I found him, and I never heard a complaint of anything in my simple household arrangements from him. Any little failure was treated as a joke. His courtesy to servants and maids was particularly charming, indeed. I cannot conceive of his quarrelling with any one without provocation. His talk about his own work revealed a very different man to me from the self-satisfied man he is usually believed to have been. He knew his powers, of course, but he was painfully aware of his defects—in drawing for instance. To my judgment he was the most absolutely truthful man about himself that I ever met. I never knew him to hide an opinion or thought—nor to try to excuse an action."

THE UNSAFE TENEMENT (ETCHING)

THE UNSAFE TENEMENT (ETCHING).

Mr. Watts Denton, on the other hand, tries to make us believe that Dante Gabriel Rossetti got exceedingly tired of Whistler after a while and considered him a brainless fellow, who had no more than a quick malicious wit at the expense of others, and no real philosophy or humour.

Otto Bacher, the American painter and etcher, has written a delightful book entitled "With Whistler in Venice." The title is slightly deceptive as the contents are largely an eulogy on the beauties of Venice. Whistler is a mere picturesque incident. Bacher describes his friend in this fashion: "When he was talking the glass (monocle) was dropped. If he sat at one of the tables at the cafÉ the clanging of the eye-glass accentuated his conversation. If he was presented to any one it would drop and dangled to and fro from the neat cord for a few moments, to be readjusted after some moments of fumbling. His monocle was always a source of entertainment. He generally carried in his hand a Japanese bamboo cane, using it to emphasize his remarks.

"He rose early, worked strenuously and retired late. He seemed to forget ordinary hours for meals and would often have to be called over and over again. He was a fastidious smoker, but a continuous one—his choice of words was always a marked feature. His manners were elegant. He would always adapt himself to any situation and, at the same time, retain his dignity and personality."

Another interesting account was furnished in the Cornhill Magazine, 1903, by Mortimer Menpes: "Whistler was of all men essentially a purist—a purist in every sense of the word, both as a man and a worker. As a man he was sadly misunderstood by the masses. Whistler's nature was ever a combative one and his long and brilliant career was a continuous fight throughout. He revealed himself only to the few, and even that small inner circle, of whom I was one of the most devoted, saw the real man but seldom. But on those rare occasions Whistler could be gentle, sweet and sympathetic, almost feminine, so lovable was he. Whistler treated his hair as everything about him, purely from an artist's standpoint, as a picture, as a bit of decoration. Whistler wanted to produce certain lines in the frock coat and he insisted upon having the skirts cut very long, while there were to be capes over the shoulders, which must need form graceful curves in sympathy with the long-flowing lines of the skirt. The idea of wearing white duck trousers with a black coat was not conceived in order to be unlike other people, but because they formed a harmony in black and white he loved. His straight brimmed hats, his cane, the way he held his cane, each and every detail was observed, but only as the means of forming a decorative whole."

Less personal are Val Prinsep's remarks: "I have always thought that behind the 'poseur' there was quite a different Whistler. Those who saw him with his mother were conscious of the fact that the irrepressible Jimmy was very human. No one could have been a better son or more attentive to his mother's wishes; after his marriage I have heard that the life of this most Bohemian 'poseur' was most harmonious and domestic.

"The grammar of expression was a constant stumbling block to him, hence his slowness in producing. For let it not be supposed his pictures, which looked so simple in their execution, were produced with facility. The late Mr. Leyland told me that when he was sitting for his portrait, a standing full-length, Whistler nearly cried over the drawing of the legs and bitterly regretted that he had not learned something of the construction of the human form during his student years. He once spoke of himself as a 'soiled butterfly.' Surely this is the first recorded instance of a butterfly being an aggressive and vindictive insect. This however was a mere pose of Whistler's, the result of a well considered determination to exalt himself, which he found in the long run paid, even as all judicious publicity is said to bring in a sum percentage of profit."

A. Ludovici, a New York dealer, makes quite a hero of Whistler. "He soon made me feel that I was talking to an artist of great taste and refinement, full of love for his work and a ready wit, and, in spite of an academic training just received in Paris, I became that moment devoted to him and his art. The little I had seen of it at the Grosvenor engendered a desire to learn more regarding the mysterious technique of which he was such an undoubted master and confirmed my predilection in favour of painting the scene of life surrounding in preference to the making up of the conventional subject so much in vogue. I who knew him for the last twenty years of his life always found him most simple in his tastes, firm in his convictions, generous and open-hearted to those whose friendship he relied on and always ready to help and oblige any one in whom his interests had been awakened. A more brilliant and staunch friend one could not wish to have had."

Also Alexander Harrison, the marine painter, expresses himself in a highly enthusiastic manner: "I have never known a man of more sincere and genuine impulse even in ordinary human relations and I am convinced that no man existed who could have been more easily controlled on lines of response to a fair and square apprehension of his genuine qualities. When off his guard he was often a pathetic kid and I have spotted him in bashful moods, although it would be hard to convince the bourgeois of this. Wit, pathos, gentleness, affection, audacity, acridity, tenacity were brought instantly to the sensitive surface, like a spark by rough contact."

Mr. Percy Thomas says: "He was a man who could never bear to be alone. Through his own open door strange people drifted. If they amused him he forgave them, however they presumed, and they usually did succeed. Whistler seldom painted men except when they came for their portraits, and the models drifting in and out of the door of Linsey Row, were mostly women. He liked to have them with him. Mr. Thomas thinks he felt it necessary to see them about his studio, for, as he watched their movements they would take the pose that he wanted, or suggest a group, an arrangement. He lived at a rate that would have killed most men, and at an expense in details that was fabulous."

Walter Gray speaks about Whistler's technique. "No one can realize who has not watched Whistler paint the agony that his work gave him. I have seen him, after a day's struggle with a picture when things did not go, completely collapse, as from an illness. His drawing coat gave him infinite trouble. Whatever his friends charge against him it seems to me that Whistler's faults and weaknesses sprang from an unbalanced mentality; he was a desÉquilibrÉ, the common defect of great painters. Yet, underneath all his vagaries and eccentricities, one felt that indefinable yet unmistakable being—a gentleman."

Pennell gives a most valuable description of Whistler as a painter. "The long nights of observation of the river were followed by long days of experiment in his studio. In the end he gave up even making notes of subjects and effects. It was impossible for him to choose and mix his colour at night, and he was compelled to trust his memory, which he cultivated, when he painted his nocturnes. He reshaped his brushes, usually heating them over a candle, melting the glue and pushing the hairs into the form he wanted. Whistler told us he used a medium composed of opal, mastix and turpentine. The colours were arranged upon a palette, a long oblong board some two feet by three with the 'Butterfly' inlaid in one corner; round the edge, sunken boxes for brushes and tubes. The palette was laid upon the table; the colours were placed, though, more frequently, there were no pure colours at all. Large quantities of different tones of prevailing colours in the fashion and his paints were mixed, and so much medium was used that he called it 'sauce.' Mr. Greaves says, that the nocturnes were mostly painted on very absorbant canvas, sometimes on panels, sometimes on bare brown holland sized. For the blue nocturnes the canvas was covered with a red ground, or the panel was of mahogany, which had the advantage of forcing up the blues. Others were done in a practically warm black ground. For the fireworks there was a lead ground, or if the night was grey—the canvas was grey.

IN THE SUNSHINE (ETCHING)

IN THE SUNSHINE (ETCHING).

"So much 'sauce' was used that, frequently, the canvas had to be thrown flat on the floor to keep the whole thing from running off. He washed the liquid colours on the canvas, lighting and darkening the tone as he worked. In many nocturnes the entire sky and water is rendered with great sweeps of the brush exactly the right tone. How many times he may have wiped out that sweeping tone is another matter. Some one remembers seeing the nocturnes set out along the garden wall to bake in the sun, sometimes they dried out like body colour in the most unexpected manner. He had no recipe, no system.

"In his painting it was surprising to see how much he accomplished in a short time. He would decide upon any local tone, putting it on with five or six big strokes, any variation of tones would be added in the same way. In a given time he would put down more facts than any man I ever knew. In the beginning of a pastel he drew his subject crisply and carefully in outline with black crayon upon one of the sheets of tinted paper which fitted the general colour of the motives. A few touches with sky tinted pastels produced a remarkable effect. He never was in a hurry in his work, always careful and accomplished much. Every subject contrived some problem for nature which he wished to convey on canvas."

The portraits painted and etched by himself and various artist friends also comment favourably upon his personality. William Michael Rossetti, in his diary of February 5, 1857, mentions seeing in Whistler's studio "a clever, vivacious portrait of himself," believed to be that belonging to the late George McCullough and which appears as the frontispiece to Pennell's book. Another portrait sketch of this period or a little later was shown at the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1910.

Another portrait sketch can be seen in the Freer collection.

In 1874 Whistler planned a big picture similar to Fantin-Latour's "Hommage À Delacroix", only less serious and more eccentric in conception. Whistler was to be the centre figure and to be surrounded by the "Woman in White" on a couch and a kimonoed lady walking about the studio, while Albert Moore and Fantin-Latour were chosen to serve as black notes. One of the studies, Whistler in his studio, is illustrated in Pennell. A chalk drawing belonging to Thomas Way is likewise in the same book. There are three etched portraits in existence. A very early one dated 1859, the "Whistler with the White Lock," which appeared as frontispiece in Ralph Thomas' "Catalogue of Etchings and Drypoints of Whistler," and an etching very similar to the 1867 portrait, dated 1874.

In 1894 he was painting a portrait of himself in a white jacket which, according to the Pennells, was changed into a dark coat after the death of his wife. A full length portrait in long overcoat was in the Paris Exposition of 1900, under the title of "Brown and Gold." Another half length is known to belong to George W. Vanderbilt.

A dry-point by Helleu, drawn in 1878, has many admirers, but is rather superficial as a characterization. The most important portrait is the Mephistophilean interpretation by Boldini, painted 1897 and shown at the Exposition in 1900. But I almost prefer a certain photograph which shows him with top-hat, and overcoat over his shoulder. It reminds me of the glimpse I caught of him that afternoon, in Paris years ago, when I was still carefree and had not the slightest idea that I would one day write a book about the man I passed so nonchalantly.

The few paragraphs that are cited in this chapter may not do his personality full justice, but they must suffice. A personality can not be recalled from the shades. We can only produce a mental image, and an abundance of notes would only confuse the outlines. His work remains, that is the principal thing. Even the greatest painters of the past are mere ghosts and visions to us. And although Whistler, more than any other modern painter, has the chance of marching down posterity, unforgotten and wreathed in glory, a curious high-seasoned personality not unlike Benvenuto Cellini, the author of these lines must refrain, as he can add nothing new or original.

Prophets or seers, call them what you will, in the arts or in the sciences, must of necessity be few and far between, and in advance of their age. Whistler is to me one of these, in his absolute and genuine love of his profession, for the resolve to win out at any cost, for his conquests in various realms of art and the triumph of ideas they represent.

I admire his colossal vanity and egotism, but, more than all, I admire him for the seriousness with which he took himself and his business of being a painter. It is so rare a quality. Velasquez was so much of a solemn cavalier that he was almost ashamed of being a painter. It offended him to be reminded of his profession. It was a serious sport to him, but only a sport. He was like Goethe: a distinguished and conscientious amateur. Their exalted position in life enabled them to treat art with such ease and condescension. But Whistler had to climb to the very heights from which they started, and all the battles and victories, struggles and temporary defeats, magnificent successes and lavish praises were the result of his personal efforts. Whistler needed, and had the true autolatry of the artist; he could conceive genius only under an artistic guise; he entertained the absolute faith that the faculty of painting is something so hugely superior to anything else that it confers a sort of sacred character on its owner. And it is for this wholesome artistic seriousness, this salutary egotism, that I admire Whistler, the man.

THE POOL (ETCHING)

THE POOL (ETCHING).

Clyx.com