DOI issue:
No. 81 (November, 1903)
DOI article:Sickert, Oswald: The oil painting of James McNeill Whistler
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26230#0015
THE STUD!0
HE OIL PAINTING OF JAMES
McNEILL WHISTLER. EY
OSWALD SICKERT.
WHISTLER Stands alone in the history of modern
painting in England as the one painter whose
execution in oil paint was consistently the beauti-
ful expioitation of the qualities of this medium.
He was the one modern among us who had a tech-
nique. By no less comprehensive a Statement can
one describe his supreme position, and if the
description calls for certain reservations, they
are not such as seriously detract from its
truth. Whistler's painting is a solution of
the elementary problem inherent in the
material set out upon the palette, and his is
the only complete solution which we have
seen in England since the tradition of a
technique in oil painting ceased to exist.
We have accustomed ourselves to argue,
perhaps with more convenience than exact-
ness, that there was indeed a time when
the manipulation of oil paint, in a manner
consistent with its qualities, was taught
and could be learned by every Student.
Certainly there is no tradition now, nor
was there ever during the period in which
Whistler painted. Conveniently, also, we
take the exaltation of the Pre-Raphaelite
purpose to have been the 8nal extinguisher
of whatever tradition still remained. Cer-
tainly quality is scarcely to be found in any
subsequent painting but Whistler's. One
must except Watts, who carried over some
tradition from the past, and exercised that
skill until he came to paint abstractions
which apparently he feit to belong too much
to the present to permit of any traditional
skill in handling. It is, indeed, customary
to speak of Millais as one who relaxed from
the strenuousness of the Pre-Raphaelite
purpose in favour of pre-occupations more
exclusively painter-like; but judged by any
less restricted criterion even his best work
of the seventies is wanting in dignity and
repose, there is a shortness in his touch which
is a little blunt and not quite fully gracious,
where Whistler's is suave at once and acute,
XXI. No. Sl.—NOVEMBER, 1903.
so that one calls it in the same breath both swift
and lingering.
The traditional manipulation of oil paint
depended no doubt to a great extent upon
the analysis to which the old painters subjected
the aspect of things, an analysis which distin-
guished between tone and colour, and in virtue of
which, as Mr. MacColl has so well set forth,
ancient painting achieved in two operations upon
the canvas what the modern would achieve in one.
" A BUSY CORNER " BY J. MCNEILL WHISTLER
3
HE OIL PAINTING OF JAMES
McNEILL WHISTLER. EY
OSWALD SICKERT.
WHISTLER Stands alone in the history of modern
painting in England as the one painter whose
execution in oil paint was consistently the beauti-
ful expioitation of the qualities of this medium.
He was the one modern among us who had a tech-
nique. By no less comprehensive a Statement can
one describe his supreme position, and if the
description calls for certain reservations, they
are not such as seriously detract from its
truth. Whistler's painting is a solution of
the elementary problem inherent in the
material set out upon the palette, and his is
the only complete solution which we have
seen in England since the tradition of a
technique in oil painting ceased to exist.
We have accustomed ourselves to argue,
perhaps with more convenience than exact-
ness, that there was indeed a time when
the manipulation of oil paint, in a manner
consistent with its qualities, was taught
and could be learned by every Student.
Certainly there is no tradition now, nor
was there ever during the period in which
Whistler painted. Conveniently, also, we
take the exaltation of the Pre-Raphaelite
purpose to have been the 8nal extinguisher
of whatever tradition still remained. Cer-
tainly quality is scarcely to be found in any
subsequent painting but Whistler's. One
must except Watts, who carried over some
tradition from the past, and exercised that
skill until he came to paint abstractions
which apparently he feit to belong too much
to the present to permit of any traditional
skill in handling. It is, indeed, customary
to speak of Millais as one who relaxed from
the strenuousness of the Pre-Raphaelite
purpose in favour of pre-occupations more
exclusively painter-like; but judged by any
less restricted criterion even his best work
of the seventies is wanting in dignity and
repose, there is a shortness in his touch which
is a little blunt and not quite fully gracious,
where Whistler's is suave at once and acute,
XXI. No. Sl.—NOVEMBER, 1903.
so that one calls it in the same breath both swift
and lingering.
The traditional manipulation of oil paint
depended no doubt to a great extent upon
the analysis to which the old painters subjected
the aspect of things, an analysis which distin-
guished between tone and colour, and in virtue of
which, as Mr. MacColl has so well set forth,
ancient painting achieved in two operations upon
the canvas what the modern would achieve in one.
" A BUSY CORNER " BY J. MCNEILL WHISTLER
3