Studio: international art (34.1905)

Reminiscences of the Whistler Academy

I

Whistler's own valuation of instruction is ex- of things, not only in a quickening of the desire
pressed in his answer to the question whether art for a choicer, rarer vision of the world about us,
schools should be abolished : " Not at all. They do we gladly acknowledge his influence, but in
are harmless, and it is just as well, when the genius opening the door to a more intimate sympathy
appears, that he should find the fire alight and the with the masters of the past. Who of us can forget
room warm, easels close to his hand and the his intangible fleeting phrases which so suddenly
model sitting, though I make no doubt that he'll spiritualised the living model before us into the
immediately alter the pose." (From "The Gentle semblance of the art of Titian? Who of us has
Art.") not found the work of the old masters and the

I fancy that others of that student band have, as works of our master in some sort mutually ex-
I have, turned sometimes since to their first ways planatory? Mary Augusta Mullikin.

of painting ; to ways common among those under

the influence of modern French masters, whereby The Committee of the Milan Exhibition, to be
tones are produced rather by the interplay of held in 1906, taking into consideration the great
contrast colours — giving the chance often for influence of the Graphic Arts on the development
very lovely neutralisations — than by transitions of intellect and on the process of bringing nations
through tones of the same colour. And in this into closer contact with one another, has decided to
very return they have seen from experience that assign them a very prominent place in the exhibition.
Whistler's palette arrange-
ment is founded on an
appreciation, first and fore-
most, of modelling as
expressed by light and
dark; that the effect of
atmosphere is made para-
mount to surface colours.
All that delicate problem
of the colour of a shadow
is lost in the problem of
the value of the shadow.
And however in love one
might be with the flower-
bed brilliance of, say,
coloured sails on Venetian
lagoons, this phantom of
tone-valuation, as remem-
bered in the practice of
the Whistler studio, would
lay its softening touch on
the gaudy palette.

So, you see, it was
the palette, after all, that
preached the sermon.
Influences are so impon-
derable. That a teacher
should propose merely
to initiate us into some
purely technical matters of
our art, and should yet suc-
ceed—almost without his
or our volition—in trans-
forming our ways of seeing !
Not alone in a refining of

the actual physical sight 'apanese pavilion at the sr. louis exhibition

241