James Abbott McNeill Whistler- Arrangement in Grey: Portrait of the Painter, c.1872
One of the most popular posts published on this blog is one I created 8 years ago about American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), and his adaptation of abstracted signature butterfly motifs which he used to sign his paintings (here). It appears to be constantly searched on Google and never drops out of my weekly top ten searched posts. Whistler took the idea from Japanese prints and blue and white porcelain that he collected in the fashion for everything Japanese at the time. In fact, 'My own dear butterfly' is the very endearing term with which his own mother would refer to the artist. The curators of the exhibition here use Whistler's butterfly motif signatures as a playful way to engage children, guiding them around the exhibition in a game of hide and seek. Butterfly signature aside, Whistler appears to have been an exceptionally fine draughtsman and painter of atmospheric, tonal harmonies appearing on these pages previously here, here, and to a lesser extent here. He could be argued to be among the first modernists in art, rejecting Victorian sentimentalism and creating his series of Nocturnes which verged on the abstract. "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", he stated. At the same time however evidence proves Whistler to have been a most disagreeable, tempestuous personality driven by a raging ego, notoriously using his charm to make mutually agreeable friendships which would then end in bitterness and acrimony. As well as being an inveterate snob, Whistler could also be racist and violent. He beat a man just for being black, assaulted fellow painters and pushed his brother-in-law through a plate-glass window during a row, which disturbed and disappointed me greatly to discover whilst researching this post. This retrospective is the first major exhibition of Whistler’s work in 30 years – bringing together some of the artist’s world-famous paintings alongside rarely, or never seen, works. Whistler was influenced by the work of Courbet and Manet, and became one of the leading members of the Aesthetic Movement, a group which dared to assert that art has no responsibility to depict real life or serve a moral purpose, and an important exponent of Japonisme. This exhibition opens with some of these artifacts which Whistler collected for context. Whistler increasingly adopted non-specific and often musical titles for his work, which emphasised his interest in the manipulation of colour and mood for their own sake rather than for the conventional depiction of a subject. The 1850s saw the young artist complete his education and cultivate his infamous rebellious streak. Expelled from the West Point military academy in 1854, he left the US for Paris in 1855 in search of the bohemian life. After enrolling at the École des Beaux-Arts, he began to gather a circle of artist friends. Along with Alphonse Legros and Henri Fantin-Latour in 1858, they founded the artist's group the Societé des Trois. The trio made names for themselves at the notorious Salon des Refusés of that year. Set up by Emperor Napoleon III to placate contemporary artists whose styles did not please the official jury, the Salon de Refusés effectively created a platform for the avant-garde. In a short time, it was more popular than the stuffy official Salon, as growing interest in Realism, Impressionism, and other new genres began to capture the public imagination. Whistler exhibited Symphony in White, No. 1 (1862), depicting his lover, the artist and model Joanna Hiffernan. Whistler then fell out with his circle of artist friends and relocated to London where he found inspiration in life along the river, completing several paintings including his masterpiece Wapping (1860-64), on display here, and a set of etchings entitled the Thames Set which he published in 1871. 1871 was also the year in which Whistler painted Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, best known under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother or Portrait of the Artist's Mother, which dominates the third room of the exhibition on loan from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. It was also around this time that Whistler began designing exquisite decorative schemes for interiors, the most famous being Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, for the Kensington house of shipping magnate Frederick Leyland. The original commission was to create the decorative scheme for the entrance hall and five-story staircase at 49, Prince's Gate. Whistler vastly exceeded the original budget going overboard with opulent materials for The Peacock Room, a dining room lavishly painted in blue and gold and decorated with peacocks at the address, which led to another spectacularly bitter fall out between the quarrelsome artist and his patron. At the same time in the 1870s Whistler began painting his famous Nocturnes which depicted a mistier and more atmospheric view of the city at night. Never have so many of this series of paintings been assembled together previously, and they are a beautifully atmospheric suite. Initially calling them 'moonlights', he was the first to apply the term nocturne to painting and printmaking, taking it from the music world where it describes 'a quiet melodic composition with a tendency for gloominess'. The Grosvenor Gallery in Bond Street, opened in 1877, providing exhibition opportunities for Whistler's experimental new paintings and a home for the Aesthetic Movement more widely. This sensual 'Art for Art’s Sake' crowd in London had been excluded from exhibiting at the conservative Royal Academy, echoing the ostracization of artists from the modern schools in Paris. The Grosvenor Gallery gave the movement exhibition space and was also the backdrop for one of the most famous legal battles the art world has ever seen after the noted art critic John Ruskin published a pamphlet accusing Whistler of "ill-educated conceit…for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face" after viewing one of the Nocturne paintings. Ruskin believed the painters from the modern schools should not be encouraged, adding "their eccentricities are almost always in some degree forced and their imperfections gratuitously if not impertinently indulged". Whistler subsequently brought a libel case against Ruskin and won, however he only received a farthing in damages. His finances and reputation were left in tatters and his relationship with Frederick Leyland ended in a most bitter quarrel. In the same year Leyland refused to pay up following the Peacock Room's swollen budget, and Whistler blamed Leyland as the chief culprit in his bankruptcy. Their feud inspired Whistler to paint a vengeful caricature of Leyland, The Gold Scab: Eruption in Frilthy Lucre, 1879, depicting his former friend and patron as a hideous, money-hungry peacock. The Peacock Room is represented here unsatisfactorily in my opinion in this exhibition by a photographic reproduction in one space. It just feels like a flat, pale imitation compared to the richness of the original. Following his bankruptcy Whistler published The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, 1890, part of which was a transcript of the libel trial, and also The "Ten O'Clock" Lecture in which he expounds on the meaning and purpose of art. There followed a period of exile from London in which Whistler travelled throughout Europe settling in Venice and then Amsterdam where he produced renowned suites of etchings commissioned by the Fine Art Society and small watercolours which are showcased in the final rooms of this exhibition along with some full length portrait commissions. These rooms do seem like a bit of an anti-climax to the show given the power of the Nocturnes and Symphony in White paintings which preceded them. There is no denying the talents of Whistler as a painter and his vision as one of the first modernists in art, but one can only hope that his straitened financial circumstances pricked his ego and brought about a chastening in his attitudes and behaviour towards others. This might very well possibly have been the case given the wistful expressions on his face in the late self-portraits.
James McNeill Whistler
until 27th September
Tate Britain
Millbank
London
SW1P
