The Gentle Art of Making Enemies Part 45

35.--GREY AND SILVER.

CHELSEA WHARF.

_Lent by Gerald Potter, Esq._

36.--GREY AND SILVER.

OLD BATTERSEA REACH.

_Lent by Madame Coronio._

37.--BLUE AND SILVER.

"He has no atmosphere and no light. Instead of air he studies various kinds of fog--and his 'values' are the relative powers of darkness, not of light. He never paints a sky."--_Merrie England._

38.--NOCTURNE.

_BLUE AND GOLD--ST. MARK'S, VENICE._

_Lent by Monsieur Gallimard._

"The mannerism of Ca.n.a.letto is the most degraded that I know in the whole range of art....

"... It gives no one single architectural ornament, however near--so much form as might enable us even to guess at its actual one; and this I say not rashly, for I shall prove it by placing portions of detail accurately copied from Ca.n.a.letto side by side with engravings from the daguerreotype.

"... There is _no_ stone drawing, _no_ vitality of architecture like Prout's."--_Prof. Ruskin, Art Teacher._

[Sidenote: [Ill.u.s.tration]]

"In Mr. Whistler's productions one might safely say that there is no culture."--_Athenaeum._

"Imagine a man of genius following in the wake of Whistler!"--_Oracle._

"The measure of originality has at times been overrated through the innocent error of the budding amateur, who in the earlier stage of his enlightenment confuses the beginning with the end, accepts the intention for the adequate fulfilment, and exalts an adroit sketch into the rank of a permanent picture."

_F. Wedmore, "Four Masters of Etching."_

39.--CREPUSCULE IN OPAL.

_Lent by Fred. Jameson, Esq._

"Mr. Whistler is eminently an 'Impressionist.' The final business of art is not with 'impressions.' We want not 'impressionists' but 'expressionists,' men who can say what they mean because they know what they have heard. [_Sic!_]

"We want not always the blotches and misty suggestions of the impressionist, _&c._"--_Artist._

40.--HARMONY IN FLESH COLOUR AND GREEN.

THE BALCONY.

_Lent by John Cavafy, Esq., M.D._

"It is perhaps a little difficult for any critic to be quite absolutely just to Mr. Whistler at present, on account of his eccentricities and his apparent determination to make us forget the qualities of the artist in our amus.e.m.e.nt at the freaks and fancies of the man."--_P. G. Hamerton, in the "Academy."_

"_A Variation in Flesh Colour and Green._ The damsels--they were not altogether meritorious. The draughtsmans.h.i.+p displayed in them was anything but 'searching.'"--_F. Wedmore._

"At about the same time the artist exhibited other sketches (we ask indulgence for the word) of a like character, notes of impressions of white dresses, furniture, balconies, and incidental faces and figures."

_Merrie England._

"The 'evolution principle' has been visibly in operation for a dozen years or so in the successive Whistlers put before the public during that time. First of all we remember pictures of ladies pale and attenuate poring with tender interest over vermilion scarfs. The taint of realism was on them, but even in them were hints of the pensive humour that was to fetch mankind in the well-known 'arrangements' at a later time. A good deal was left to the spectator's imagination even in them."--_London._

"We note his predilections for dinginess and dirt."

_Weekly Press._

41.--ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK.

LA DAME AU BRODEQUIN JAUNE.

"All these pictures strike us alike.

"They seem like half-materialised ghosts at a spiritualistic _seance_.

I cannot help wondering when they will gain substance and appear more clearly out of their environing fog, or when they will melt altogether from my attentive gaze."--_Echo._

"He has placed one of his portraits on an asphalte floor and against a coal-black background, the whole apparently representing a dressy woman in an _inferno_ of the worldly."--_Merrie England._

"Mr. Whistler has a capricious rendering of a lady dressed in black, in a black recess, on a dark green floor. She is turning affectedly half-round towards the spectator as she b.u.t.tons the _gant de suede_ upon her left hand, _&c._ _&c._ Its obvious affectations render the work displeasing."--_Morning Advertiser._

42.--ARRANGEMENT IN GREY AND BLACK.

THOMAS CARLYLE.