The Gentle Art of Making Enemies Part 46

_Lent by the Corporation of Glasgow._

"The purpose of this picture is a form of hero-worship which would certainly not have received the approbation of Carlyle.

"... This very doubtful masterpiece--unhappy ratepayers of Glasgow."--_Dundee Advertiser._

"... and to have recorded on a doleful canvas the head and figure of Carlyle...."--_F. Wedmore._

"... The rugged simplicity of Mr. Carlyle ... to have painted these things alone--however strange their mannerism or incomplete their technique."

_Nineteenth Century._

"The portentous purchase by the civic authorities of Mr. Whistler's senile Carlyle renders it necessary for that section of the community who are not enamoured of Impressionism to watch with some vigilance the next steps taken by that body towards the formation of the permanent collection.

"A portrait which omits entirely to bring out the individuality of the sitter, stands but little chance of recognition even from immediate posterity."

_Letter to "Glasgow Herald," March 4, 1892._

"We cannot forget his encounter some years ago with Mr. Ruskin, nor the contemptuous terms in which that foremost of art critics denounced his work. It has been left to Glasgow to rectify Mr. Ruskin's blunder in this matter, and it vindicates the merits of the American artist over whose artistic vagaries--his nocturnes and harmonies in blue and gold--the _whole press of Britain_ made merry."

_Dundee Advertiser._

"There is, among portraits of great writers, Mr. Whistler's portrait of Carlyle. It is a picture whose story is complete, whose honours have been gathered abroad--in Paris, in Brussels, in Munich. Its destiny has been accomplished; it belongs to the City of Glasgow, and from the corporation of that city was borrowed for the Victorian Exhibition. The corporation lent it in good faith; the borrowers have treated it with all the indignity it is in their power to bestow on it.

"Could there be a better epitome of the recent history of art in England? One work of Mr. Whistler's is received with high honour in the Luxembourg on its way to the Louvre; and at that very moment another work of his, worthy to rank with the first, is hoist with equally high disrespect to the ceiling of a gallery in London."--_N.

Y. Tribune, Jan. 17, 1892._

43.--HARMONY IN PINK AND GREY.

PORTRAIT OF LADY MEUX.

_Lent by Sir Henry Meux._

"Portrait of Mrs. Meux, in which it was not so much the face as the figure and the movement that came to be deftly suggested, if hardly elaborately expressed."--_F. Wedmore._

"All Mr. Whistler's work is unfinished. It is sketchy. He no doubt possesses artistic qualities, and he has got appreciation of qualities of tone; but he is not complete, and all his works are in the nature of sketching."

_The Art Critic of the "Times,"

Evidence at Westminster, Nov. 16, 1878._

44.--ARRANGEMENT IN GREY AND BLACK.

PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER'S MOTHER.

_Photograph of Picture._

"This canvas is large and much of it vacant.

"A dim, cold light fills the room, where the flat, grey wall is only broken by a solitary picture in black and white; a piece of foldless, creaseless, Oriental flowered c.r.a.pe hangs from the cornice.

And here, in this solemn chamber, sits the lady in mournful garb. The picture has found few admirers among the thousands who seek to while away the hours at Burlington House, and for this result the painter has only to thank himself."--_Times._

"'Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother,' is another of Mr. Whistler's experiments.

"It is not a picture, and we fail to discover any _object_ that the artist can have in view in restricting himself almost entirely to black and grey."--_Examiner._

"The 'arrangement' is stiff and ugly enough to repel many."--_Hour._

"Before such pictures as the full-length portraits by Mr. Whistler, critic and spectator are alike puzzled. Criticism and admiration seem alike impossible, and the mind vacillates between a feeling that the artist is playing a practical joke upon the spectator, or that the painter is suffering from some peculiar optical delusion. After all, there are certain accepted canons about what const.i.tutes good drawing, good colour, and good painting, and when an artist deliberately sets himself to ignore or violate all of these, it is desirable that his work should not be cla.s.sed with that of ordinary artists."--_Times._

"He that telleth a tale to ... Carlyle's majority speaketh to one in a slumber: when he hath told his tale he will say, What is the matter?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_ReSUMe._

"It is impossible to take Mr. Whistler seriously."

_Advertiser._

"A combination of circ.u.mstances has, within the last year or two, brought the name and work of Mr. Whistler into special publicity....

"At the Grosvenor Gallery the less desirable of his designs aroused the inconsiderate ire of a man of genius and splendid authority.

"If it be Mr. Whistler's theory that that which all the world of greatest artists (?) has mistaken for mere means has been in very seriousness the end, then the aim of Art is immeasurably lowered!...

"If there be anything to the point, it is to implore us to take a stone for bread, and the grammar of a language in place of its literature.

"Mr. Whistler has a.s.sumed that it is only the painter who is occupied with art.... Unless he is a very exceptional man.... If he is not of the school of Fulham, he is of the school of Holland Park, or of the Grove End Road.

"Has he, like Mr. Ruskin, devoted thirty years of a poet's life to the Galleries of Europe?

"Has he, like Diderot, inquired curiously into the meaning and message of this thing and that? And _appreciating Greuze_, been able to _appreciate Chardin_?(!!)"

_Mr. Wedmore, "Nineteenth Century."_