Part 1 (1/2)

Modern Painting

by George Moore

TO SIR WILLIAM EDEN, BART

OF ALL MY BOOKS, THIS IS THE ONE YOU LIKE BEST; ITS SUBJECT HAS BEEN THE SUBJECT OF NEARLY ALL OUR CONVERSATIONS IN THE PAST, AND I SUPPOSE WILL BE THE SUBJECT OF MANY CONVERSATIONS IN THE FUTURE; SO, LOOKING BACK AND FORWARD, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO YOU

G M

_The Editor of ”The Speaker” allowed me to publish from time to tiathered frorown about theinally intended_

_G M_

WHISTLER

I have studied Mr Whistler and thought about hi time incoonistic, so mutually destructive, that I had to confess ical laws, and classed hiical; she only seeht is not sufficient to see into her intentions; and with study ical difficulties dwindled, and now the man stands before ic All that seemed discordant and discrepant in his nature has now becoest and most erratic actions of his life now seera at theat the pictures I see the man

But at the outset the difficulties were enormous It was like a newly-discovered Greek text, without punctuation or capital letters

Here was aportraits, perhaps not quite so full of grip as the best work done by Velasquez and Hals, only just falling short of these est, but plainly exceeding then, ould lay down his palette and run to a newspaper office to polish the tail of an epigraainst an unfortunate critic who had failed to distinguish between an etching and a pen-and-ink drawing! Here was a reatest, would spend his evenings in frantic disputes over dinner-tables about the ultih for _Punch_, soht have said, and that otten! It will be conceded that such divagations are difficult to reconcile with the possession of artistic faculties of the highest order

The ”Ten o'clock” contained a good deal of brilliant writing, sparkling and audacious epigrao”

there are state as a denial of the rotundity of the earth would be in a pa the name of Professor Huxley Mr Whistler is only serious in his art--a grave fault according to acade except their ”art” A very boyish utterance is the state as an artistic period has never been known

One rubbed one's eyes; one said, Is this a joke, and, if so, where is the point of it? And then, as if not content with so much mystification, Mr Whistler assured his ten o'clock audience that there was no such thing as nationality in art, and that you lish art We do not stop to inquire if such answers contain one grain of truth; we know they do not--we stop to consider them because we know that the criticisenious defence of his oork--an ingenious exaltation of a weakness (a weakness which perhaps none suspects but himself) into a conspicuous merit

Mr Whistler has shared his life equally between Aland He is the one solitary exa in his pictures to show that they come from the north, the south, the east, or the west They are coreat in Eastern and Western culture Conscious of this, and fearing that it ainst his art, Mr

Whistler threw over the entire history, not only of art, but of the world; and declared boldly that art was, like science, not national, but essentially cosenius in his generation, Mr Whistler undertook to explain away the ano the fifth century BC in Athens, the fifteenth century in Italy, and the seventeenth in Holland, and hu that artists never appeared in nuly like aerolites Now our task is not to disprove these statements, but to work out the relationshi+p between the author of the ”butterfly Letters” and the painter of the portrait of ”The Mother”, ”Lady Archibald Campbell”, ”Miss Alexander”, and the other forty-one alleries

There is, however, an intermediate step, which is to point out the intimate relationshi+p between the letter-writer and the physical h there is no internal evidence to show that the pictures were not painted by a Frenchlishman, or a Westernised japanese, it would be ined letters without feeling that the author was a , we should involuntarily picture him short and thin rather than tall and stalwart But what has physical condition got to do with painting? A great deal The greatest painters, I elo, Velasquez, and Rubens--were gifted by Nature with as full a enius Their physical constitutions reseelo lay on his back for three years painting the Sistine Chapel Rubens painted a life-size figure in aof pleasant work, and went out to ride in the afternoon But Nature has dowered Mr Whistler with only genius His artistic perceptions are moreexquisite than Velasquez's He knows as much, possibly even a little more, and yet the result is never quite equal Why? A question of health _C'est un temperament de chatte_ He cannot pass from masterpiece to masterpiece like Velasquez The expenditure of nerve-force necessary to produce such a work as the portrait of Lady Archibald Caed to wait till Nature recoups herself; and these necessary intervals he has ened ”butterfly” to the papers, quarrelling with Oscar over a fewhis artistic existence, at the expense of the entire artistic history of the world, collecting and classifying the stupidities of the daily and weekly press

But the lesser side of a enius is instructive to study--indeed, it is necessary that we should study it if ould thoroughly understand his genius ”No man,” it has been very falsely said, ”is a hero to his _valet de chambre_” The very opposite is the truth Man will bow the knee only to his own ie and likeness The deeper the humanity, the deeper the adoration; and from this law not even divinity is excepted All we adore is hurovels wetowards the divine stars

And so the contemplation of Mr Whistler, the author of the ”butterfly Letters”, the defender of his little jokes against the plagiarising tongue, should stimulate rather than interrupt our prostrations I said that Nature had dowered Mr Whistler with every gift except that of physical strength If Mr Whistler had the bull-like health of Michael Angelo, Rubens, and Hals, the Letters would never have been written They were the safety-valve by which his strained nerves found relief from the intolerable tension of the th to pass froreat ones of old tiony re is the most indiscreet of all the arts, and here and there an omission or a feeble indication reveal the painter to us in moments of exasperated impotence To understand Mr

Whistler's art you must understand his body I do not mean that Mr

Whistler has suffered froreat artists have excellent health, but his constitution isht Were he six inches taller, and his bulk proportionately increased, his art would be different Instead of having painted a dozen portraits, every one--even the mother and Miss Alexander, which I personally take to be the two best--a little febrile in its extreh they be, are clearly touched eakness, and marked with hysteria--Mr

Whistler would have painted a hundred portraits, as strong, as vigorous, as decisive, and as easily accomplished as any by Velasquez or Hals But if Nature had willed him so, I do not think we should have had the Nocturnes, which are clearly the outco, bloodless nature whetted on the whetstone of its oeakness to an exasperated sense of volatile colour and evanescent light It is hardly possible to doubt that this is so e look on these canvases, where, in all the stages of her repose, the night dozes and dreams upon our river--a creole in Nocturne 34, upon whose tre; a quadroon in Nocturne 17, who turns herself out of the light anhungered and set upon soem-like pictures, whose blue serenities are comparable to the white perfections of Athenian th in portraiture, if the distribution of Mr Whistler's genius had been left in our hands So Nature has done her ell, and we have no cause to regret the few pounds of flesh that she withheld A few pounds more of flesh and muscle, and we should have had another Velasquez; but Nature shrinks from repetition, and at the last moment she said, ”The world has had Velasquez, another would be superfluous: let there be Jimmy Whistler”

In the Nocturnes Mr Whistler stands alone, withouta rival In portraits he is at his best when they are near to his Nocturnes in intention, when the theinative and decorative treatment; for instance, as in the mother or Miss Alexander Mr Whistler is at his worst when he is frankly realistic

I have seen pictures by Mr Henry Moore that I like better than ”The Blue Wave” Nor does Mr Whistler seehest level in any one of the three portraits--Lady Archibald Campbell, Miss Rose Corder, and ”the lady in the fur jacket” I know that Mr

Walter Sickert considers the portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell to be Mr Whistler's finest portrait I submit, however, that the attitude is theatrical and not very explicit It is a movement that has not been frankly observed, nor is it a ined It has none of the artless elegance of Nature; it is full of studio coement, as the portrait of the omasters, he was careful to place thes He never left us in doubt either as to the tiations of time and place, which Hals never shi+rked, seem to me to rest on the painter, if he elects to paint his sitter in any attitude except one of conventional repose

Lady Archibald Ca backwards over her shoulder as she walks up the picture; yet there is nothing to show that she is not standing on the low table on which the model poses, and the few necessary indications are left out because they would interfere with the general harmony of his picture; because, if the table on which she is standing were indicated, the movement of outstretched arm would be incomprehensible The hand, too, is soless that the hand does not deterht hand, which are non-existent; after a dozen atteloved hand, only an approximate result was obtained Look at the ear, and say that the painter's nerves did not give wayonce or twice