Arthur Jerome Eddy

“ The attitude of the “portrait-painter” may be likened unto that of the “poet laureate,” whose verse is at the command of conditions he does not{245} control; who may, by accident, write a good thing,—but the rule is otherwise, with even the best.
To rightly place a human being on canvas, or in stone, or in marble, or in poetry, is the noblest achievement of art. On the technical side it exhausts the resources of the art; on the spiritual side it exhausts the genius of the artist. But “portrait-painting” as a profession, as an industrial and a commercial proposition, is a degradation of art. ”

“ A picture is painted in a certain environment of light, color, and tone,—and to Whistler this environment was a vital consideration. For the time being the canvas is the one conspicuous thing in the studio, of even greater importance than subject or model. From this environment of creation, and with which it is in perfect harmony, it is violently forced into conjunction with great squares of atrocious gilt frames and expanses of clashing canvases.
A gallery of pictures is the slaughter-house of art; annual exhibitions are the shambles of beauty. ”

“ And should not the brush-worker at home be given his meed of protection against the pauper brush-workers of Europe—even against Rembrandt and Velasquez and all the glorious Italians?
Beethoven and Mendelssohn and Mozart, Shakespeare and Milton,—their works, even their original manuscripts, if in existence, though costly beyond many paintings, come in without let or hinderance; but the work of the painter, the original manuscript of the poet in line, of the composer of harmonies in color, may not cross the border without tribute.
A symphony in sound is welcomed; a symphony in color is rejected. ”

“ Who could have predicted the triumphs of Napoleon from a study of his Corsican forbears, or the strange genius of Lincoln from his illiterate progenitors and humble surroundings, or the elemental force of Walt Whitman from his ancestry and American conditions?
No one; and yet there is the profound conviction that each of these men, like every great man,—prophet, king, statesman warrior, poet, or painter,—appeared, not miraculously, but as the inevitable result of irresistible forces; that the brilliant man is, after all, the son of his parents and the child of his times. ”

“ It is a great portrait, one of his very best, a haunting likeness of a woman; not such a photographic likeness as friends and relatives demand, but just the likeness that posterity demands: a woman, a type, with all the charm, all the refinement, all the real, the true, the elusive qualities of a woman,—in short, those qualities of mind and body which reappear in descendants of the third and fourth generation and demonstrate the faithfulness of the portrait.
There is no portrait by Rembrandt or Velasquez which at all resembles Whistler’s portrait of his mother. ”

“ The playwright cannot address the audience save through the play, the poet speaks only through his poetry, the painter through his pictures, the sculptor through the forms of his creation. Seldom is an artist gifted with more than one tongue, and that tongue is his art. How, then, can artists interpret the work of artists? How can the painter, who is dumb save with his brush, or the sculptor, who is mute save with his clay and chisel, tell the world anything about the work of others? ”

“ It is the custom to call every man who paints in high key or uses brilliant colors a colorist, as Ruskin called Turner and Rubens colorists; but it is not the mere use of color that makes a man a colorist, but the use he makes of it, the object he has in mind in using it.
The mechanical draughtsman and the architect may use on their plans and designs all the known colors, but no one would think of calling either a colorist.
In painting still-life a man may exhaust the palette and yet be no colorist. ”

“ One can imagine Whistler and Carlyle—painter and philosopher, two masters, each in his vocation—in the studio, and the growing portrait, a thing of beauty there, a bond of union between two men so divergent, and one can imagine how beautiful the portrait would be anywhere if by itself amidst harmonious surroundings, whether used as the chief ornament of a dignified hall or placed in a more neutral atmosphere for study and appreciation. ”

“ But it is, nevertheless, a degradation,—for wherein does the shop-like atelier of the professional “portrait-painter” differ from the emporium and the bazaar of commerce? And wherein do the methods of the shrewd and successful painter differ from those of the successful merchant? Are not the doors of the studio open to every comer with a purse? Are not the prices fixed at so much per square yard of canvas? Is not the patronage of celebrities sought, regardless of artistic possibilities, for the prestige it gives? ”

“ That a great nation should deliberately discourage the importation of beautiful things, should wallow in the mire of ugliness and refuse to be cleansed by art, was to him a mystery,—for what difference does it make whether painting, poetry, and music come out of the East or out of the West, so long as they add to the happiness of a people? And why should painting and sculpture find the gate closed when poetry and music are admitted? ”

“ As children and men we enjoy the color-effects of fireworks against the blackness of night, and we enjoy the darkness and the shadows about us, the sudden light upon expectant faces, the dark-moving figures in the intervals. All this is delight in color,—color without sentiment, color without story, color without other thought or reflection than pure sensuous enjoyment; and we even feel the tawdry cheapness of the attempt when by set arrangement the features of some local or national celebrity are presented. ”

“ Whistler, in susceptibility to color and fleeting line, in love for abstract, almost ethereal beauty, was akin to the choice spirits of the far East. He found more that appealed to him and affected him in the blue-and-white porcelain of China than in any painting from Madrid. Velasquez might give him many valuable hints as to the use of color, as to the practice of his art, but no suggestions whatsoever as to ends and aims. ”

“ It is, indeed, by this that the works of Turner are peculiarly distinguished from those of all other colorists,—by the dazzling intensity, namely, of the light which he sheds through every hue, and which, far more than their brilliant color, is the real source of their overpowering effect upon the eye, an effect so reasonably made the subject of perpetual animadversion, as if the sun which they represent were a quiet, and subdued, and gentle, and manageable luminary, and never dazzled anybody, under any circumstances whatsoever. ”

“ But when an artist who sees such a night-scene and paints it in such manner that the color-scheme is preserved and its beauty enhanced in translation, we demand something more. We demand, as did Burne-Jones, “detail and composition,”—in short, we demand the features of our local celebrity.
Until we learn to love color, as we love music, for its own sake, there will never be any decorations of homes and public buildings that will be worth while. ”

“ In poetry even the casual reader does not confound men of opposite temperaments, though both use the medium of verse to express their thoughts; but in painting, people habitually confuse men who have absolutely nothing in common except the medium they use. And yet for every poet there is somewhere a painter of like moods and temperament. Men do not differ, though some use poetry, some music, some sculpture, some painting to express their fancies and convictions. ”

“ In days long gone by, in Italy during the Renaissance and before, in Greece during the Golden Age, color was enjoyed for the sake of color, regardless of the dictates of nature. If an Italian felt like making a background of blue or gold, he did so; if a Greek felt like painting and gilding his sculpture,{199} he did so, until the Parthenon and its contents must have been gorgeous with color, laid on, not after the precepts of nature, but for the most part arbitrarily, to please the eye.
All decoration begins with nature and ends in convention. ”

“ One of the finest indications of Whistler’s greatness was this reserve in the exhibition of new work, this ability to do fine things and quietly put them away out of sight, until with lapse of time they could be looked over dispassionately, repainted if necessary, and either banished forever or exhibited in all their glory.
Most artists delight in seeing exhibited immediately—often prematurely—the things they do, and the delight is not unnatural. ”

“ Great as certain of our American artists residing abroad undoubtedly are, good as many of these surely are, creditable on the whole as all are to American art, there is not one whose work does not betray the influences of his environment; there is not one who has not sacrificed something of his originality, something of his strength, something of his native force and character on strange altars, saving and excepting, always, Whistler. ”

“ It is well nigh impossible to sift the true from the false,—a thing Whistler himself did not attempt,—though it is possible to sift the wheat from the chaff, the inane, insipid, and pointless from the bright and crisp.
Any man can vouch for a story, but who can vouch for a good story? The story-teller? Heaven forbid! By all the rules of evidence the testimony of so interested a witness is inadmissible. The better the story, the more doubtful its authenticity,—its formal, its literal authenticity. The better the teller, the more daring his liberties with prosaic details. ”

“ Is there another man in London with such vitality as Whistler has,—I care not what his age,—another so dainty, another so sprightly in wit? Do you see that dapper gentleman coming along Cheyne Walk, silk hat with very tall crown and very straight brim; habit apparently broadcloth (frock coat) , fitting to perfection a supple figure; feet small as a girl’s,—an American girl’s; hands delicately gloved in yellow; in the right hand a lithe, slim wand, twice as long as a walking stick; glass in eye; black moustache and slight ‘imperial;’ black hair with wavy threads of gray here and there? ”

“ His great portraits might have come from the studio of a Covenanter, but never from a typical Paris atelier.
The Puritan element which is to be found in every American achievement, whether in war, in art, or in literature, though often deeply hidden, is conspicuous in Whistler’s work, though he himself would probably have been the first to deny it; and it is this element of sobriety, of steadfastness, of undeviating adherence to convictions and ideals that constitutes the firm foundation of his art, of his many brilliant and beautiful superstructures of fancy. ”

“ The stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from the boughs above; the bushes receive grays and yellows from the ground; every hairbreadth of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue sky or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the local color; this local color, changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and modified by the hue of the light or quenched in the gray of the shadow ”

“ What justifiable reason is there for the commercial schedule of so much for a head, so much for a half-length, so much for a full-length portrait?
The one may, but does by no means necessarily, take a little more time; but, then, a painter does not value his work by the day.
A perfect thing is a perfect thing, whether large or small, Whistler would frequently say. ”

“ The sculptor is only too glad if his bronze effigies are hidden in leafy thickets, in parks, and out-of-the-way places. He has not learned the commercial value of exhibitions. He does not every few months place on view a lot of marbles and bronzes, the work of as many weeks. He has not caught from the shop-keeper the trick of displaying his wares in a window. But the “portrait-painter”——!
“Portrait-painting” pays,—that is the worst of it all. It is the one branch of the art of painting that can be followed as methodically as the making of clothes. ”

“ Whistler has said:
“The imitator is a poor kind of creature. If the man who paints only the tree or flower or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait-painting to put on canvas something more{205} than the face the model wears for that one day,—to paint the man, in short, as well as his features; in arrangement of colors to treat a flower as his key, not as his model.” ”

“ The run of a play is not determined by the criticisms. The opinion of the Critic is often foreseen and defied; but neither writer, manager, nor actor can foretell the verdict of the “Voice,”—favorable often when least expected; adverse often when least deserved.
But in art the “Voice”—stentorian in literature and the drama—sinks to a whisper so diffident that it cannot be heard amidst the trumpetings of the Critics. ”