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Show "JIMMY" WHISTLER. James McNeill Whistler is dead, and the savor of,the salt is slighter in the world thereby. Whistler Whist-ler had, to be sOmewhat Irish, enough individuality for a score of men. He was an incarnate nexus of whims, the supremely artistic crank of his generation. gen-eration. The higher Bohemia rang for a generation genera-tion with his wit, his cynicism, his satire. Men who could contrive to enroll themselves in his roster of enemies ipso facto achieved immortality. Whistler might haye stepped forth from the pages of xn , Oscar Wilde comedy. He lived a succession succes-sion qt paradoxical epigrams. His life was a work ol arabesque art His mind had weird twists, and "his conduct was almost always an incomprehensible incompre-hensible "harlequinade with picturesque effects. His work as artist was full of witchery and mystery, mys-tery, and he was always an artistic law unto himself. him-self. There ran through his character a streak of freakish femininlsm, which made it inevitable that he should clash with Ruskin. who had the same tfait, blent with his omniscient oracularity. Whistler could write as well, or better, than he could paint 6r etch, but in both media of expression expres-sion he was like no other living human creature. He was an exquisite for his own satisfaction, a dandy who disdained the mob. "Why drag in Velasquez?" he inquired of one who said that Whistler and Velasquez were the greatest painters paint-ers in a certain style. He quarreled with everybody every-body with whom it was possible to quarrel, and he liked the quarrel more than he disliked his antagonists. an-tagonists. He was an American who hated America, Am-erica, but only because the country was not sympathetic sym-pathetic to his conceptions of art and life. Whistler Whist-ler loved to think of himself as a butterfly but was more of a wasp than anything else. There was much of his quality that indicated heartless-ness, heartless-ness, bub when ybu ga,zedupdn the work of his brush you saw in him the poet of something more than fantastic intellect. There is a feeling, involved in-volved in a sort of mistiness, in his pictures that none may resist. His conceptions of beauty seemed to come to him from strange regions beyond be-yond the real, and when he painted a woman, she appeared a weaving of wistful dreams, something some-thing ethereal, something subjective. Whistler was, in some respects, a woman-hater, but then, he played no favorites; he was as much misanthrope misan-thrope as a mysogynist. All artists loved him for one thing. He smashed, squashed and squelched, a critic. But in doing so he made that critic. But in doing so he made that critic the greater. Whistler made Ruskin, in no slight degree. de-gree. To the great multitude Whistler's work was as caviare as was his peculiar personality. Like the justice in 'the suit of Whistler vs. Ruskin, Rus-kin, the crowd never knew "which was Battersea bridge and which was the moonlight." Philistia thought Whistler was moonshine and monkey shine. The famous peacock decorations he did for a London house were revelative of himself. He was a peacock with an uncanny dash of genius. His seriousness was appalling. His egotism ego-tism was sublime. But he was thoroughly "onto the world," as we say, even if he never could convince the world that he was 'onto" himself. In his manner he was as irresponsible as a fairy, but at tho quiver of an eyelash he held everybody every-body responsible to him, and he was feared for his readiness to take to the law not less than for his stinging tongue and his mordant pen. He did little work as the woi'ld construes work nowadays, now-adays, but each piece he turned out was a gem. He painted exclusively for himself. He was an impressionist im-pressionist in essence. He was a wit without humor. hu-mor. His chameleonlsm was illimitable, and "what he would do next" was ever indeterminable. There was only one thing certain about Whistler, and that was that he would die. It is doubtful if there ever was a greater prig than he. He iiiLWipwHi).iiiiiwitiaiiiwiiiiiriiwiiiiTffliiiiwiiiw"iiTrnTnfiir" would have beena snob but for his diabolic Intel- B ligence. He was almost hypnotizing in his of- B fensiveness In every capacity, save that of artlBt. B His paintings and etchings revealed the soul that B was swathed in whims. Brush or graver in hand, B Whistler had insight and high vision. Then he had B control of the imp of the perverse that was bot- fl tied up in him. One envied him his illumination B as a painter, even more than one could envy his fl easy maintainance of the proposition that he was H unamenable to any laws or customs that did not chime with his mood. Whistler was the only man, except, possibly, Gerald de Nerval, who lived at will in "the fourth dimension," and could bring back from his sojourns in that region the vagueness vague-ness and vagaries there encountered and actualize them for us hopelessly sane folk cooped up and repressed by the hideous triangulation of length, breadth and thickness. Indeed, one has to be a little mad, a little moon-touched, to appreciate the work of Whistler. But it's a blessed thing to be a little mad, to see things in the mystifying, morbidly transmutatiorial corpse-light from the moon, to walk in haunted woods where you find "your footsteps meeting you," where all things may happen, even to a man bp' orought to bed with child, as in the old j 'Ancassin and Nicolete." From such a preternatural realm and atmosphere, Whistler seemed to draw his vitality and inspiration. The only wholly human thing he ever did, In the opinion of those competent to pass upon such" things, was his portrait of his mother. It revealed the one susceptibility of the man to the sway of love. All else with him was fancy, but a fancy as unearthly fine as those? which temper the more horrific visions in the curdled brains of those who dwell in Bedlam. St. Louis Mirror. |
