DOI Heft:
No.127 (October, 1903)
DOI Artikel:Sickert, Oswald: The oil painting of James McNeill Whistler
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19880#0020
James McNeill Whistler
Where ancient painting stated first the gradations
of light and shade in an object, and then, in a
second operation, passed a transparent rub of
uniform colour over the whole, the modern painter
matches by mixture upon his palette a series of
values and places them side by side upon the
canvas. Apart from the fact that the rub of
transparent paint over an underpainting does in
itself make for pleasant quality, the very circum-
stance that he had two operations to perform,
neither of which in itself represented what he saw,
must have tended to keep the old painter in mind
of the fact that his medium was a material with
properties of its own, where the modern, mixing on
his palette to obtain by a single touch upon the
canvas a match for an observed value, inclines to
look upon oil paint as if it were a disembodied, an
absolute, colouring agent, uncharacterised by any
material qualities. To the spectator the truth that
oil paint is a material, and not a colouring agent,
reveals itself even more clearly in modern than in
ancient painting, because the method of rendering
the aspect of things by a series of touches makes
the actual marks left by the brush upon the canvas
a matter of such patent importance. Yet, so
overpowering is the pre-occupation of realising
aspect at first hand, and without analysis, that even
the recognition of this technical difficulty, the
acknowledgment that something must be done
about these meaningless brush marks of thick and
obtrusive paint, is not sufficient to stay the modern
painter and send him back on his course. So we
have seen a whole school of painters follow one
another in regularising their patch-work according
to a mechanical system of squares, and proceed
doggedly with their realism as if the regular
squareness of the brush marks solved the problem.
It must be confessed that Whistler's solutions of
the problems in the technique of modern painting
were hardly such as to provide a complete equip-
ment for a new tradition, for they were the solutions
of genius, and the telling fluency of his touch was
an invention of a hand the most searching and
sensitive that has ever left a record. The past
scarcely affords a parallel to the sensibility of a
hand which could find its own different and equally
happy ways with the point of a needle, the point of
a pencil, with the pastel stick, with the brush
dipped in water-colour and the brush which carried
oil. His work reveals no divorce between the
aspect of nature which it was his intention to
render, and the character of the medium which he
held in his hand. His technique is as original as
his vision. Both have for us the poignancy of an
invention, a fresh intimacy of appeal that could
scarcely maintain itself in any period when hand-
"A STREET SCENE" BY J. MCNEILL WHISTLER
(By permission of J. J. Cowan, Esq.)
4
Where ancient painting stated first the gradations
of light and shade in an object, and then, in a
second operation, passed a transparent rub of
uniform colour over the whole, the modern painter
matches by mixture upon his palette a series of
values and places them side by side upon the
canvas. Apart from the fact that the rub of
transparent paint over an underpainting does in
itself make for pleasant quality, the very circum-
stance that he had two operations to perform,
neither of which in itself represented what he saw,
must have tended to keep the old painter in mind
of the fact that his medium was a material with
properties of its own, where the modern, mixing on
his palette to obtain by a single touch upon the
canvas a match for an observed value, inclines to
look upon oil paint as if it were a disembodied, an
absolute, colouring agent, uncharacterised by any
material qualities. To the spectator the truth that
oil paint is a material, and not a colouring agent,
reveals itself even more clearly in modern than in
ancient painting, because the method of rendering
the aspect of things by a series of touches makes
the actual marks left by the brush upon the canvas
a matter of such patent importance. Yet, so
overpowering is the pre-occupation of realising
aspect at first hand, and without analysis, that even
the recognition of this technical difficulty, the
acknowledgment that something must be done
about these meaningless brush marks of thick and
obtrusive paint, is not sufficient to stay the modern
painter and send him back on his course. So we
have seen a whole school of painters follow one
another in regularising their patch-work according
to a mechanical system of squares, and proceed
doggedly with their realism as if the regular
squareness of the brush marks solved the problem.
It must be confessed that Whistler's solutions of
the problems in the technique of modern painting
were hardly such as to provide a complete equip-
ment for a new tradition, for they were the solutions
of genius, and the telling fluency of his touch was
an invention of a hand the most searching and
sensitive that has ever left a record. The past
scarcely affords a parallel to the sensibility of a
hand which could find its own different and equally
happy ways with the point of a needle, the point of
a pencil, with the pastel stick, with the brush
dipped in water-colour and the brush which carried
oil. His work reveals no divorce between the
aspect of nature which it was his intention to
render, and the character of the medium which he
held in his hand. His technique is as original as
his vision. Both have for us the poignancy of an
invention, a fresh intimacy of appeal that could
scarcely maintain itself in any period when hand-
"A STREET SCENE" BY J. MCNEILL WHISTLER
(By permission of J. J. Cowan, Esq.)
4