DOI issue:
No. 134 (May, 1904)
DOI article:Studio-talk
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19881#0380
Studio- Talk
OSTON. —The exhibition ot Whistler's
works held in Boston during February
and March was the best kind of a
memorial the master could have re-
ceived. And it was fitting and proper that it should
have been in America; not far, in fact, from the
artist's birthplace. The Copley Society could not
obtain the portrait of the painter's mother, nor that
of Carlyle, but among the eighty-two paintings in
oil which they did gather together, were to be
found The White Girl, The Little White Girl, La
Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, Le Comte Robert
de Montesquiou-Fezensac, Pablo Sarasate, The Fur
Jacket, and The Music Room, and the exhibition
was therefore a representative one. With the addi-
tional exhibits of two hundred and thirty etchings
and drypoints, eighty lithographs, thirty-nine water-
colours, thirty-six pastels, and forty-five drawings,
the value of the exhibition was greatly increased,
for we were thus able to study and compare the
results obtained with all of the various media of artis-
tic expression in which Whistler experimented and
studied, which he mastered, and in which he
discovered new possibilities.
As a matter of fact, the array of pictures was
really overwhelming as it was, and one thought of
the very slender offerings which Whistler himself
arranged, exhibitions in which a dozen etchings or
pastels were given all the glory of a room to them-
selves, and a room especially decorated to receive
them. However, one should not criticise the
exhibition on this score, for, after all, it was
only a matter of having sufficient time at one's
disposal.
The paintings—with the frames which the artist
designed for them, of dull gold, for the most part
plain, except moulding in parallel lines, and some-
times decorated with a pattern in paint—were all
shown in the same gallery, a long room draped
in an admirable grey material, with several golden
butterflies appearing in the frieze. At one end
was hung, in the place of honour, The White Girl,
certainly one of Whistler's very greatest achieve-
ments ; at the other, Rose and Silver, La Princesse
du Pays de la Porcelaine, one of his most ambitious
pictures, both as regards quality and size, but not
one of his most beautiful and harmonious arrange-
ments of colours. Other notable portrait and
360
OSTON. —The exhibition ot Whistler's
works held in Boston during February
and March was the best kind of a
memorial the master could have re-
ceived. And it was fitting and proper that it should
have been in America; not far, in fact, from the
artist's birthplace. The Copley Society could not
obtain the portrait of the painter's mother, nor that
of Carlyle, but among the eighty-two paintings in
oil which they did gather together, were to be
found The White Girl, The Little White Girl, La
Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, Le Comte Robert
de Montesquiou-Fezensac, Pablo Sarasate, The Fur
Jacket, and The Music Room, and the exhibition
was therefore a representative one. With the addi-
tional exhibits of two hundred and thirty etchings
and drypoints, eighty lithographs, thirty-nine water-
colours, thirty-six pastels, and forty-five drawings,
the value of the exhibition was greatly increased,
for we were thus able to study and compare the
results obtained with all of the various media of artis-
tic expression in which Whistler experimented and
studied, which he mastered, and in which he
discovered new possibilities.
As a matter of fact, the array of pictures was
really overwhelming as it was, and one thought of
the very slender offerings which Whistler himself
arranged, exhibitions in which a dozen etchings or
pastels were given all the glory of a room to them-
selves, and a room especially decorated to receive
them. However, one should not criticise the
exhibition on this score, for, after all, it was
only a matter of having sufficient time at one's
disposal.
The paintings—with the frames which the artist
designed for them, of dull gold, for the most part
plain, except moulding in parallel lines, and some-
times decorated with a pattern in paint—were all
shown in the same gallery, a long room draped
in an admirable grey material, with several golden
butterflies appearing in the frieze. At one end
was hung, in the place of honour, The White Girl,
certainly one of Whistler's very greatest achieve-
ments ; at the other, Rose and Silver, La Princesse
du Pays de la Porcelaine, one of his most ambitious
pictures, both as regards quality and size, but not
one of his most beautiful and harmonious arrange-
ments of colours. Other notable portrait and
360