The Gentle Art of Making Enemies Part 21

I care nothing for the past, present, or future of the black figure, placed there because the black was wanted at that spot. All that I know is that my combination of grey and gold is the basis of the picture. Now this is precisely what my friends cannot grasp.

They say, "Why not call it 'Trotty Veck,' and sell it for a round harmony of golden guineas?"--navely acknowledging that, without baptism, there is no ... market!

But even commercially this stocking of your shop with the goods of another would be indecent--custom alone has made it dignified. Not even the popularity of d.i.c.kens should be invoked to lend an advent.i.tious aid to art of another kind from his. I should hold it a vulgar and meretricious trick to excite people about Trotty Veck when, if they really could care for pictorial art at all, they would know that the picture should have its own merit, and not depend upon dramatic, or legendary, or local interest.

As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour.

The great musicians knew this. Beethoven and the rest wrote music--simply music; symphony in this key, concerto or sonata in that.

On F or G they constructed celestial harmonies--as harmonies--as combinations, evolved from the chords of F or G and their minor correlatives.

This is pure music as distinguished from airs--commonplace and vulgar in themselves, but interesting from their a.s.sociations, as, for instance, "Yankee Doodle," or "Partant pour la Syrie."

Art should be independent of all clap-trap--should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works "arrangements" and "harmonies."

Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as an "Arrangement in Grey and Black." Now 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 ident.i.ty of the portrait?

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 than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features; in arrangement of colours to treat a flower as his key, not as his model.

This is now understood indifferently well--at least by dressmakers. In every costume you see attention is paid to the key-note of colour which runs through the composition, as the chant of the Anabaptists through the _Prophete_, or the Huguenots' hymn in the opera of that name.

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_A Rebuke_

[Sidenote: _The World_, Dec. 9, 1885.]

No Birmingham election, no Chamberlain speech, no _Reynolds_ or _Dispatch_ article, could bring the aristocracy more strongly into ridicule and contempt than does the coa.r.s.ely coloured cartoon of "Newmarket" accompanying the winter number of _Vanity Fair_. From it one learns that the Dukes, d.u.c.h.esses, and turf persons generally, frequenting the Heath, are a set of blob-headed stumpy dwarfs....

ATLAS.

_"Les points sur les i"_

[Sidenote: _The World_, Dec. 16, 1885.]

I agree with you, O Atlas of ages, that completeness is a reason for ceasing to exist; but even indignation might be less vague than is your righteous anger at _Vanity's_ Christmas cartoon. Surely you might have helped the people, who scarcely distinguish between the original and impudent imitation, to know that this faded leaf is not from the book of Carlo Pellegrini, the master who has taught them all--that they can never learn?

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_MR. WHISTLER'S_

"_TEN O'CLOCK_"

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_London_, 1888

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_Delivered in London_ Feb. 20, 1885

_At Cambridge_ March 24

_At Oxford_ April 30

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

It is with great hesitation and much misgiving that I appear before you, in the character of The Preacher.

If timidity be at all allied to the virtue modesty, and can find favour in your eyes, I pray you, for the sake of that virtue, accord me your utmost indulgence.

I would plead for my want of habit, did it not seem preposterous, judging from precedent, that aught save the most efficient effrontery could be ever expected in connection with my subject--for I will not conceal from you that I mean to talk about Art. Yes, Art--that has of late become, as far as much discussion and writing can make it, a sort of common topic for the tea-table.

Art is upon the Town!--to be chucked under the chin by the pa.s.sing gallant--to be enticed within the gates of the householder--to be coaxed into company, as a proof of culture and refinement.

If familiarity can breed contempt, certainly Art--or what is currently taken for it--has been brought to its lowest stage of intimacy.

The people have been hara.s.sed with Art in every guise, and vexed with many methods as to its endurance. They have been told how they shall love Art, and live with it. Their homes have been invaded, their walls covered with paper, their very dress taken to task--until, roused at last, bewildered and filled with the doubts and discomforts of senseless suggestion, they resent such intrusion, and cast forth the false prophets, who have brought the very name of the beautiful into disrepute, and derision upon themselves.

Alas! ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned. She has naught in common with such practices. She is a G.o.ddess of dainty thought--reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others.

She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection only--having no desire to teach--seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times, as did her high priest Rembrandt, when he saw picturesque grandeur and n.o.ble dignity in the Jews'

quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks.

As did Tintoret and Paul Veronese, among the Venetians, while not halting to change the brocaded silks for the cla.s.sic draperies of Athens.

As did, at the Court of Philip, Velasquez, whose Infantas, clad in inaesthetic hoops, are, as works of Art, of the same quality as the Elgin marbles.