The Influence Of The Far East

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Whistler also painted a ‘Symphony in White No.III’; in this two girls, one in cream, one in white, recline on a white sofa, while a fan on the floor and the flowers of an azalea in a corner repeat the dominant whites. The motive of the artist in choosing these color schemes and calling the pictures ‘symphonies’ was at this time beyond the comprehension of even professional art critics, and one of them wrote of this picture in the Saturday Review:

In the ‘Symphony in White No.III’ by Mr Whistler there are many dainty varieties of tint, but it is not precisely a symphony in white. One lady has a yellowish dress and brown hair and a bit of blue ribbon, the other has a red fan, and there are flowers and green leaves. There is a girl in white on white sofa, but even this girl has reddish hair; and of course there is the flesh color of the complexions.

To this Whistler promply retorted:

Bon Dieu! Did this wise person expect white hair and chalked faces? And does he then, in his astounding consequence, believe that a symphony in F contains no other note, but shall be a continued repetition of F,F,F?....Fool!

This was one of the earliest of Whistler’s critical encounters, taking place when the picture was exhibited at the Academy in 1867, and the critics were soon to learn that here was a painter who could hit back with interest.

As the successive exhibition of Whistler’s pictures enabled the tendencies and peculiarities of his work to be more clearly seen, the public, the critics, and the Royal Academy itself became more and more hostile to him, and finally took up an attitude of undisguised ill-will. In 1872 his painting of his mother, now universally recognized to be one of the great portraits of the century, was narrowly rejected by the Academy, and its final acceptance was only due to the staunch championship of the veteran Sir William Boxall, R.A., who threatened to resign from the Council if the pictures were not hung. Doubtless Whistler’s habit of giving his works titles borrowed from musical terms prejudiced the public agianst them. An extremist far more in his titles than in his actual manner of painting, Whistler went so far as to call his picture of mother, ‘Arrangement in Grey and Black.’ He defended this title by saying:

That is what it is. To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?

In his desire to emphasize the importance of decorative design adn color in painting, Whistler became a little inhuman. As one of his younger critics pertinently observed, we can find an ‘arrangement of grey and black’ in a coal-scuttle; we find far more in Whistler’s ‘Mother’, we find reverence for age, character, tenderness, and affection. It has become one of the great pictures of the world, not only because it is a pleasing pattern of colors, but because it is a true work of deep emotion tenderly expressed.

No longer welcome at the Royal Academy, Whistler was fortunate in soon securing a new exhibition center. Sir Coutts Lindsay, a rich banker and amateur painter who patronized the arts, had the Grosvenor Gallery built in Bond Street, and at the first exhibition opened there in May 1877 Whistler was represented by seven pictures. These included the portrait of Carlyle, now at Glasgow, a painting similar in style to the artist’s ‘Mother’, described as ‘An Arrangement in Brown,’ a full-length of Irving as Philip II of Spain, described as ‘Arrangement in Black No.III,’ and four nocturnes, two in blue and silver, one in blue and gold, and one in black and gold. Whistler had not confined his studies of the Thames in mid-London to his etched work; he had used these subjects for paintings in the sixties, among them being ‘Old Battersea Bridge’ and ‘Chelsea in Ice,’ but in this new series of evening effects by the riverside he shocked the conventions of the day more than he had yet done by his ‘symphonies.’

The Influence Of The Far East (continued)