DOI Heft:
No. 79 (September 1903)
DOI Artikel:American studio-talk
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26229#0311
^773 ^7^73373 5*/33<^3<7 7333^
BORN AT LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS, 1834
DIED AT CHELSEA, JULY !7, 1903
^ ^ T HISTLER, the man, dead ! The
\ / haughty perturbation of his spirit
%/ %/ quieted ; the varied briitiance of its
genius quenched; the iovabieness,
that his intimates knew in the man and others
may discover in his works, remaining as a tender
memory.
Among the loveliest of his works is the
beionging to the collection of one of
the closest friends he had, Mr. Charles L. Freer,
of Detroit. It represents the slumber of sky and
ocean in a summer night.
The picture comes to my mind as I think of the
sleep of the artist.
Sea and sky are clasped in a mutuai embrace ;
passion and heat absorbed into perfect quietude,
stirred only by the breath of the sleeping eiements;
shadowy forms of trawiers loom out of the misty
bitle, and two figures stand in the edge of siivered
rippie. A tremuious luminosity pervades the scene ;
it is fiiied with tender mystery, with that exquisite,
sweet melancholy which is one with excessive joy.
Such to my fancy seems the sleep of Whistler,
the artist; the man's conflict of world and spirit
hushed ; only the spirit of him breathing still in his
works and in his influence upon others; only the
artist of him left.
What a mystery of suggestion in his work ! For
any like of it in portraiture we may have to go
back to Leonardo's female heads, and then to find
how great a difference ! Eager, enquiring spirits,
both, of most refined subtlety ; but in him of the
fifteenth century a minute regard of facts, a keen
recognition of the external world, characteristic
of a younger age. Whistler, on the contrary, was
a messiah of art in an older age, in one that was
touched with weariness, burdened with larger ex-
periences. Its tendency was to escape from the
of facts and to gather all manner of sensations
from diverse sources. These symptoms of the
Time-Spirit Whistler translated into terms of art.
His art was the product of most delicate selec-
tion ; a hybrid derived from the intermingling of
many strains — Velasquez, Rossetti, the Impression-
ists, and Japanese — with his own rarely gifted per-
sonality, itself a curious mingling of aristocratic
and spiritual sensibility.
From Velasquez he learned the value of the grand
line, and of the variously defined and vanishing out-
lines ; the placing of the figure in cool real atmos-
phere, and the dignity and refinement of tones of
black and gray ; from Rossetti, the fascination of
his woman with " the star-like sorrows of immortal
eyes"; from the Impressionists, the renunciation
of form as such by means of lines, and the render-
ing of its effect by chromatic values of color, har-
monized in the medium of natural light, instead
of the golden atmospheres created by the older
masters. And by the Japanese he was inspired to
more ravishing harmonies of tone, harmonies of
sumptuous sobriety, of tender or sparkling sprightli-
ness, and was taught the secret of their composition,
the fantastic balancing of irregular forms and spaces,
with continual surprise of detail, and the arbitrary
choice of a point of view, such as looking at the
scene from below or from a point higher up than
the spot from which one would normally expect to
view it.
These various strands of motive he wove into
the warp of his own creation, and the result was a
fabric which had the faded splendor of old Gobelin
tapestry.
But, after all, it is the character of the warp, the
personal expression of himself, that is the element
of salient interest in his art. He was ^%7* TCvoV/^77<r<7
a " painter " ; one, that is to say, who did not view
nature as a collection of forms to be delineated by
lines and filled in afterwards with color, but as an
accord of colored masses. By means of these
colored masses he rendered the of form. He
mocked at the uncompromising reproduction of the
model, as he did at the idea that nature is always
beautiful.
"Nature indeed," he wrote, "contains the ele-
ments in color and form of all pictures, as the key-
board. contains the notes of all music. But the
artist is born to pick and choose and group with
science these elements, that the result may be beauti-
ful — as the musician gathers his notes and forms
chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious
harmonies." Again he wrote: " And when the
cliii
BORN AT LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS, 1834
DIED AT CHELSEA, JULY !7, 1903
^ ^ T HISTLER, the man, dead ! The
\ / haughty perturbation of his spirit
%/ %/ quieted ; the varied briitiance of its
genius quenched; the iovabieness,
that his intimates knew in the man and others
may discover in his works, remaining as a tender
memory.
Among the loveliest of his works is the
beionging to the collection of one of
the closest friends he had, Mr. Charles L. Freer,
of Detroit. It represents the slumber of sky and
ocean in a summer night.
The picture comes to my mind as I think of the
sleep of the artist.
Sea and sky are clasped in a mutuai embrace ;
passion and heat absorbed into perfect quietude,
stirred only by the breath of the sleeping eiements;
shadowy forms of trawiers loom out of the misty
bitle, and two figures stand in the edge of siivered
rippie. A tremuious luminosity pervades the scene ;
it is fiiied with tender mystery, with that exquisite,
sweet melancholy which is one with excessive joy.
Such to my fancy seems the sleep of Whistler,
the artist; the man's conflict of world and spirit
hushed ; only the spirit of him breathing still in his
works and in his influence upon others; only the
artist of him left.
What a mystery of suggestion in his work ! For
any like of it in portraiture we may have to go
back to Leonardo's female heads, and then to find
how great a difference ! Eager, enquiring spirits,
both, of most refined subtlety ; but in him of the
fifteenth century a minute regard of facts, a keen
recognition of the external world, characteristic
of a younger age. Whistler, on the contrary, was
a messiah of art in an older age, in one that was
touched with weariness, burdened with larger ex-
periences. Its tendency was to escape from the
of facts and to gather all manner of sensations
from diverse sources. These symptoms of the
Time-Spirit Whistler translated into terms of art.
His art was the product of most delicate selec-
tion ; a hybrid derived from the intermingling of
many strains — Velasquez, Rossetti, the Impression-
ists, and Japanese — with his own rarely gifted per-
sonality, itself a curious mingling of aristocratic
and spiritual sensibility.
From Velasquez he learned the value of the grand
line, and of the variously defined and vanishing out-
lines ; the placing of the figure in cool real atmos-
phere, and the dignity and refinement of tones of
black and gray ; from Rossetti, the fascination of
his woman with " the star-like sorrows of immortal
eyes"; from the Impressionists, the renunciation
of form as such by means of lines, and the render-
ing of its effect by chromatic values of color, har-
monized in the medium of natural light, instead
of the golden atmospheres created by the older
masters. And by the Japanese he was inspired to
more ravishing harmonies of tone, harmonies of
sumptuous sobriety, of tender or sparkling sprightli-
ness, and was taught the secret of their composition,
the fantastic balancing of irregular forms and spaces,
with continual surprise of detail, and the arbitrary
choice of a point of view, such as looking at the
scene from below or from a point higher up than
the spot from which one would normally expect to
view it.
These various strands of motive he wove into
the warp of his own creation, and the result was a
fabric which had the faded splendor of old Gobelin
tapestry.
But, after all, it is the character of the warp, the
personal expression of himself, that is the element
of salient interest in his art. He was ^%7* TCvoV/^77<r<7
a " painter " ; one, that is to say, who did not view
nature as a collection of forms to be delineated by
lines and filled in afterwards with color, but as an
accord of colored masses. By means of these
colored masses he rendered the of form. He
mocked at the uncompromising reproduction of the
model, as he did at the idea that nature is always
beautiful.
"Nature indeed," he wrote, "contains the ele-
ments in color and form of all pictures, as the key-
board. contains the notes of all music. But the
artist is born to pick and choose and group with
science these elements, that the result may be beauti-
ful — as the musician gathers his notes and forms
chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious
harmonies." Again he wrote: " And when the
cliii