The Influence Of The Far East

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Strange that Ruskin did not remember that the selfsame phrase about ‘flinging a pot of paint’ had been used a generation earlier by a critic of one of Turner’s sunsets. Then Ruskin had been on the side of the artist, now he did not understand and stood with the Philistines. Time has avenged the insult to genius uncomprehended, and the ‘Nocturne—Blue and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge,’ which Ruskin in 1877 thought not worth two hundred guineas, was in 1905 eagerly purchased for two thousand guineas and presented to the nation.

Whistler’s exhibits brought him all the publicity any artist could desire—all London was taking of his nocturnes—but the hostility of the critics, and particularly the savage onslaught of Ruskin, scared away purchasers. When he exhibited for the second time at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878, Whistler found that Ruskin’s denunciation was stopping the sale of his pictures and, after some hesitation, he decided to bring a libel action against him.

The case was heard on the 25th and 26th of November 1878 before Mr Justice Huddlestone and a special jury. It created a great sensation, but Whistler was ill advised to bring the action, because artistic questions can never be satisfactorily settled in a court of law. Popular sympathy was with the critic, who had so often been right in the past, and Whistler’s brilliant repartees in the witness-box did him no good, for they only tended to confirm the opinion that he was an amusing jester who was not to be taken seriously. In cross-examination the opposing counsel elicited the fact the the ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold’ had been painted in two days, and then said, ‘The labor of two days, then, is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?’ ‘No,’ replied Whistler with dignity; ‘I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime.’

The point at issue really was whether the nocturnes were or were not works of art, and this was a matter obviously over the heads of the jury. Albert Moore, giving evidence for Whistler, praised his pictures highly and declared that they showed not ‘eccentricity’ but ‘originality’. William Rossetti also pronounced the nocturnes to be true works of art, but on the other side Frith declared they were not, and Burne-Jones agreed with him because, though he admitted that the nocturnes had ‘fine color and atmosphere,’ he considered that they lacked ‘complete finish’. Tom Taylor, the art critic of The Times, giving evidence for Ruskin, attempted to explain what Burne-Jones mean by finish, and for this purpose produced a picture of Titian. But when this was handed to the jury, one of them, mistaking it for a picture by Whistler, exclaimed, ‘Oh, come! We’ve had enough of these Whistlers,’ and they all refused to look at it!

In the end Whistler was awarded te contemptuous sum of one farthing damages. This meant that he had to pay his own law costs, and since nobody would buy his pictures now he was soon in money difficulties. He revenged himself by issuing a pamphlet, Art and Art Critics, in which his enemies were neatly and wittily put in their places, but this did not help him to live. To put an end to an untenable situation, early in 1879 he had to abandon his residence, ‘The White House,’ in Chelsea. He became a bankrupt and all his belongings were sold to satisfy his creditors.

The Influence Of The Far East (continued)