James McNeill Whistler

“ That an artist will find beauty in ugliness, le beau dans l’horrible, is now a commonplace of the schools, the argot of the atelier, but I strongly deny that charming people should be condemned to live with magenta ottomans and Albert blue curtains in their rooms in order that some painter may observe the side lights on the one and the values of the other. Nor do I accept the dictum that only a painter is a judge of painting. I say that only an artist is a judge of art ”

“ In all humility, therefore, I admit that the outcome of my “silly vanity and incompetent mediocrity,” must be the incarnation: “Oscar Wilde.”
J. A. McN. WHISTLER.
[19]
Mea culpa! the Gods may perhaps forgive and forget.
To you, Truth—champion of the truth—I leave the brave task of proclaiming again that the story of the lecture to the students of the Royal Academy was, as I told it to you, no fiction.
In the presence of Mr Waldo Story did Oscar make his prayer for preparation; and at his table was he entrusted with the materials for his crime. ”

“ Then there were some arrows, barbed and brilliant, shot off, with all the speed and splendour of fireworks at the archaeologists, who spend their lives in verifying the birth-places of nobodies, and estimate the value of a work of art by its date or decay; at the art critics who always treat a picture as if it were a novel, and try and find out the plot ”

“ OSCAR—I have read your exquisite article in the Pall Mall.
Nothing is more delicate, in the flattery of “the Poet” to “the Painter,” than the naïveté of “the Poet” in the choice of his Painters—Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche!
You have pointed out that “the Painter’s” mission is to find “le beau dans l’horrible,” and have left to “the Poet” the discovery of “l’horrible” dans “le beau!”
J. A. McN. WHISTLER.
CHELSEA.
[11]
TO THE PAINTER:
The World. ”

“ GENTLEMEN—I am naturally interested in any effort made among painters to prove that they are alive—but when I find, thrust in the van of your leaders, the body of my dead ’Arry, I know that putrefaction alone can result. When following ’Arry, there comes on Oscar, you finish in farce, and bring upon yourselves the scorn and ridicule of your confrères in Europe. ”

“ Finally, after making a strong protest against anybody but a painter judging of painting, and a pathetic appeal to the [8] audience not to be lured by the aesthetic movement into having beautiful things about them, Mr Whistler concluded his lecture with a pretty passage about Fusiyama on a fan, and made his bow to an audience which he had succeeded in completely fascinating by his wit, his brilliant paradoxes, and at times, his real eloquence. ”