DOI issue:
No. 58 (December, 1901)
DOI article:Sickert, Oswald: The International Society
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22772#0155
The International Society
offered masterpieces to his eye he naturally did not
peer round and ask himself where the painters of
the different and better pictures were to come from.
He may now for the first time begin to see what
distinctly, and freed from all illusions, was the
material available for the formation of the new
Society, and what was the significance of Mr-
Whistler’s presidency, If Mr. Whistler in the
past has stood apart, and protested against the
painting of contemporaries whom he kept at arm’s
length, such work as he shows this year remains,
for those who care to listen, a protest against the
painting of the successors who crowd in under
his presidency. The protest is all the more sig-
nificant since the fights that he fought—fights
connected with the appreciation of his own superb
work—have been won long ago.
Mr. Whistler’s contributions (the two pastel
drawings, the Gold and Orange, and the Purple
and Gold, The Great Sea) hang as a protest alike
against the stupidity that is satisfied to continue
with the first best clumsiness that comes to the
brush, and the cleverness that cultivates such
clumsiness into a style; they protest against
unreasonable simplification, and all else that tends
to exonerate the painter from his attitude of
devotion before Nature and to slacken the hand
from striving to approach her appearance; they
protest against spots and squares, against streaks
and rockiness and chalkiness. They are nervous
and acute amidst insensibility and bluntness. The
artist, it is curious to remark, who has the really
great name among all that exhibit here, has also,
in his painting, the least parade and self-importance.
So many among the rest, whose reputations, one
would imagine, hardly matter, seem to have
worked with but half their thoughts and eyes upon
the absorbing race that had to be run with paints
and Nature, thinking all the while of the public
who should see the exhibited canvas, a public
before whom they must make as presentable and
imposing a fall as possible.
“NIGHT ON THE CLYDE”
BY J. WHITELAW HAMILTON
offered masterpieces to his eye he naturally did not
peer round and ask himself where the painters of
the different and better pictures were to come from.
He may now for the first time begin to see what
distinctly, and freed from all illusions, was the
material available for the formation of the new
Society, and what was the significance of Mr-
Whistler’s presidency, If Mr. Whistler in the
past has stood apart, and protested against the
painting of contemporaries whom he kept at arm’s
length, such work as he shows this year remains,
for those who care to listen, a protest against the
painting of the successors who crowd in under
his presidency. The protest is all the more sig-
nificant since the fights that he fought—fights
connected with the appreciation of his own superb
work—have been won long ago.
Mr. Whistler’s contributions (the two pastel
drawings, the Gold and Orange, and the Purple
and Gold, The Great Sea) hang as a protest alike
against the stupidity that is satisfied to continue
with the first best clumsiness that comes to the
brush, and the cleverness that cultivates such
clumsiness into a style; they protest against
unreasonable simplification, and all else that tends
to exonerate the painter from his attitude of
devotion before Nature and to slacken the hand
from striving to approach her appearance; they
protest against spots and squares, against streaks
and rockiness and chalkiness. They are nervous
and acute amidst insensibility and bluntness. The
artist, it is curious to remark, who has the really
great name among all that exhibit here, has also,
in his painting, the least parade and self-importance.
So many among the rest, whose reputations, one
would imagine, hardly matter, seem to have
worked with but half their thoughts and eyes upon
the absorbing race that had to be run with paints
and Nature, thinking all the while of the public
who should see the exhibited canvas, a public
before whom they must make as presentable and
imposing a fall as possible.
“NIGHT ON THE CLYDE”
BY J. WHITELAW HAMILTON