VENICE.: Second Series f. MCNEILL WHISTLER. TiU Street y Chelsea. ^ V-1 CiT^ ETCHINGS & DRY POINTS. VENICE. Second Series. J. MCNEILL WHISTLER, Tite Street, Chelsea. Sixth Edition, T. WAY, 21, WEI.I.INGTON STREKT, S I P.AKD, MR. WHISTLER AND HIS CRITICS. ‘ Out of their own mouths shall ye judge them.’ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Getty Research Institute https://archive.org/details/etchingsdrypointOOwhis “ Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel ? His pictures form a dangerous precedent.” — VENICE. “Another crop of Mr. Whistler’s little jokes.” Truth, • I.— MURANO— GLASS FURNACE. “ Criticism is powerless here.” — Knowledge. 2.— DOORWAY AND VINE. “ He must not attempt to palm off his de- ficiencies upon us as manifestations of power.” — Daily Telegraph. 3.~WHEELWRIGHT. “ Their charm depends not at ail upon the technical qualities so striking in his earlier 'tvork.” St. James's Gazette. o 4.— SAN lUAGIO. “ So far removed from any accepted canons of art as to be beyond the understanding of an ordinary mortal.”— 5.— BEAD STRINGERS. • “Etvoiii comme on Ecfit I’hlstoire." “ ‘ Impressionistes,’ ” and of these the various schools are vepvesented by Mr. Whistler, Mr. Spencer Stan- hope, Mr. Walter Crane, and Mr. Strudwick.” * 6.— FISH SHOF. “ Those who feel painfully the absence in these works of any feeling for the past glories of Venice.” VDry” ill the Spectator. “ Whistler is eminently vulgar .” — Glasgow Herald. 7.— I'URKEVS. “ They say very little to the mind.” — F. Wedmore. “ It is the artist’s y^leasure to have them there, and we can’t help it .” — Edinburgh Courant. . 8.— N0CTURN1-: RIVA. “ The Nocturne is intended to convey an impres- sion of night.” — P. G. 1 Inuierton. “ The subject did not admit of any drawing.” P. G. Hamerton. “We have seen a great juany representations of Venetian skies, but never saw one before con- sisting of brown smokr- with clots of ink in diagonal lines.” — 7 9 . — FRUIT STALL. “ The historical or poetical associations of cities have little charm for Mr. Whistler and no place in his art.” — 10. — SAN GIORGIO. “ An artist of incomplete performance.” — F, Wedmore. II.— THE DYER. “ By having as little to do as possible with tone and light and shade, Mr. Whistler evades great difficulties.” — P. G, Hamevton. “ All those theoretical principles of the art, of which we have heard so much from Messrs. Haden, Hamerton (?) * and Lalauze, are aban- doned.” — St. yames's Gazette. *“ Calling' me ‘ a Mr. Hamerton’ — does me no harm — but it is a breach of ordinary good man- ners in speaking of a well-known writer.” Yours obediently. P. G. HAMERTON. Sept. 39, r88o. T o the Editor of the Ne7u York Tribune 12 .— NOCTURNE PALACES. “ Pictures in darkness are contradictions in term s . ’ ’ — L iter ary World. 13.— THE DOORWAY. “ There is seldom in his Etchings any large arrangement of light and shade.” — P. G. Hamerton. “ Short, scratchy lines.” — St. James's Gazette. “ The architectural ornaments and the inter- lacing bars of the gratings are suggested rather than drawn,” — St. James' Gazette. “ Amateur prodige.” — Saturday Review. * Mr. Wedmore is the lucky dis- coverer of the fol- lowing — "Vigour and exqui- siteness are denied —are they not ?— even to a Velas- quez.” f 8 14.— LONG LAGOON. “We think that London fogs and the muddy- old Thames supply Mr. Whistler’s needle with subjects more congenial than do the Venetian palaces and lagoons.” — Daily News. 15.— TEMPLE. “ The work does not feel much.” — Times. 16.— LITTLE SALUTE.— (Dry Point.) “ As for the lucubrations of Mr. Whistler, they come like shadows and will so depart, and it is tinnecessary to disquiet one's self about them ." — 17.— THE BRIDGE. “ These works have been done with a swiftness and dash that precludes anything like care and finish.” — “ These Etchings of Mr. Whistler’s are nothing like so satisfactory as his earlier Chelsea ones ; they neither convey the idea of space nor have they the delicacy of handling and treatment which we see in those.” — “ Pie looked at Venice never in detail.” — F. Wedmore. 18.— WOOL CARDERS. “ They have a merit of their own, and I do not wish to understand it.” * — F. Wedmore. 19.— UPRIGHT VENICE. “ Little to recommend them save the eccen- tricity of their titles.” — 9 20. — LITTLE VENICE. “ The Little Venice is one of the slightest of the series.” — St. James' Gazette. “ In the Little Venice and Little Lagoon Mr. Whistler has attempted to convey impres- sions by lines far too few for his purpose.” — Daily News. “ Our river is naturally full of effects in black and white and bistre. Venetian skies and marbles have colour you cannot suggest with a point and some printer’s ink.” — Daily News. “ It is not the Venice of a maiden's fancies.” — “ 'Arry." 21. — LITTLE COURT. “ Merely technical triumphs.” — Standard, 22.— REGENT’S QUADRANT. “ There may be a few who find genius in insanity.” — 23.— LOBSTER POLS. “ So little in them.” — P. G. Hamevton. 24.— RIVA No. 2. “ In all his former Etchings he was careful to give a strong foundation of firm drawing. In these plates, however, he has cast aside this painstaking method.” — St. James's Gazette. 25.— ISLANDS. “ An artist who has never mastered the subtle- ties of accurate form.” — F. Wedmore. * The same Critic holds : “ The Thames is beautiful from Maidenhead to Kew, but not from Battersea to Sheerness.” * Elsewhere Mr. Wedmore is in spired to say — “ The true col- lector must gradically and painfully acquire the eye to judq-e of the impression.” This is possibly the process throng;!! which the preacher is passing. lO 26.— THE LITTLE LAGOON. “ Well, little new came of it, in etching; nothing new that was beautiful.” — F. Wedmore. “ Amazing 1 ’’ 27.— NOCTURNE SHIPPING. This Archimago of the iconographic aoraton, or graphiology of the Hidden.” — Daily Telegraph. “ Popularity is the only insult that has not yet been offered to Mr. Whistler.” — Oscar Wilde. • I.ike Eno’s Fruit Salt or the “Anti-mal-de-Mer.” 28.--TWO DOORWAYS. “ It is trying to any sketch without tone to be hung upon a wall as these have been.” — P. G. Hamerton. 29.— OLD WOMEN. “ He is never literary.” — P. G. Hamerion. 30.— RIVA. “ He took from London to Venice his happy fashion of suggesting lapping water.” — F. Wedmore. “ Even such a well-worn subject as the Riva degli Schiavoni is made original (?) by being taken from a high point of view, and looked at length- wise, instead of from the canal.” — 31.— DRURY LANE. “ In Mr. Whistler’s productions one might safely say that there is no culture.” — Athenannn. 32.— THE BALCONY. “ His colour is subversive.’’ — Russian Press. 33.— ALDERNEY STREET. “ The best art may be produced with trouble.” F. Wed more.''' 34.— THE SMITHY. “ They produce a disappointing impression.” — “ His Etchings seem weak when framed.” — P. G. Hamerfon. 35.— STABLES. “ An unpleasing thing, and framed in Mr. Whistler’s odd fashion.” — City Press. 36.— THE MAST. “ The Mast and the Little Mast are dependent for much of their interest on the drawing of festoons of cord hanging from unequal heights.’ P. G. Hamerton. 37.— TRAGHETTO. “ The artist’s present principles seem to deny him any effective chiaroscuro.” — P. G . Hamerton. “ Mr. Whistler’s figure drawing, generally defective and always incomplete.” * — 38. — FISHING BOAT. “ Subjects unimportant in themselves.” — P. G. PI a inert on. 39. — PONTE PIOVAN. “ Want of variety in the handling.” — St. James s Gazette. * “ I am not a Mede nor a Per- sian.”— /=■. fVedmorr * Mr. Hamerton does also say : “ Indifference to beauty is howrever compatible with splendid success in etching, as the career ofRembrandt proved .” — Etching and Etchers. * At the service of critics of unequal sizes. • “ Sometimes generally always." 12 40.— GARDEN. “ An art ’which is happier in the gloom of a doorway than • in the glow of the sunshine, and turns with a pleasant; blindness from what- soever in Nature or Man is of perfect beauty or noble thought.”^ — “ ' Arvy'" 41.— THE RIALTO. “ Mr. Whistler has etched too much for his . reputation.” — F. Wedmore. sau?1l?Sade “ Scampering caprico.” — 5. ColvinA^ “.Mr. Whistler’s drawing, which is sometimes that of a very slovenly master.” — • 42.— LONG VENICE. “ After all, there are certain accepted canons about what constitutes 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 classed Avith that of ordinary artists.” — “ 'ArvyF 43.— NOCTURNE SALUTE. • ? “ The utter absence, as far as my eye may be trusted, of gradation.” — F. Wedmore. “ There are many things in a painter’s art which even a photographer cannot understand.” — Laudatory notice in Provincial Press. 44.— FURNACE NOCTURNE. “ There is no moral element in his chiaroscuro.” Richmond Eagle. 13 45-— PIAZETTA. • ’ “ Whistler does not take much pains with his work.” — New York Paper. “ A sort of transatlantic impudence in his cleverness.” — “ His pictures do not claim to be accurate.” — 46.— THE LITTLE MAST. • “ Form and line are of little account to him.” — 47.— QUIET CANAL. “ Herr Whistler stellt ganz wunderbare Pro- ductionen aus, die auf Gesetze der Form und der Farbe gegriindet scheinen, die dem Uneinge- weihten unverstandlich sind.” — Wiener Presse. “ This new manner of Mr. Whistler’s is no improvement upon that which helped him to win his fame in this field of art.” — 48.— PALACES. “ The absence, seemingly, of any power of drawing the forms of water.” — F. Wedmore. “ Fie has never, so far as we know, attempted to transfer to copper any of the more ambitious works of the architect.” — Pall Mall Gazette. “ He has been content to show us what his eyes can see, and not what his hand can do.” — St. James's Gazette. 49.— SALUTE DAWN. “ Too sensational.” — Athenceiim. “ Pushing a single artistic principle to the verge of affectation.” — Sidney Colvin. * The quid of sweet and bitter fancy ? * The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them because he knoweth not how to go to the City. 50.— BEGGARS. “ In the character of humanity he has not time to be — Standard, “ General absence of tone.” — P. G, Hamevton. 51.— LAGOON : NOON. “ Years ago James Whistler was a person of high promise.” — F. Wedmore. “ What the art of Mr. Whistler yields is a ter- tium quid.”'" — Sidney Colvin. “ All of which gems, I am sincerely thankful to say, I cannot appreciate.” — “ As we have hinted, the series does not repre- sent any Venice that we much care to remember; for who wants to remember the degradation of what has been noble, the foulness of what has been fair ?” — “ 'Arry ” in the Times. “ Disastrous failures.” — F. Wedmore. “ Failures that are complete and failures that are partial.” — F. Wedmore. “ A publicity rarely bestowed upon failures at all.” — F. Wedmore i Nineteenth Century. “ VoiD ce que Ton dit de moi Dans la Gazette de Hollande.” “ Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us. We wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.” “We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes ; we stumble at noonday as in the night.” “ We roar all like bears.” CAVIARE TO THE CRITICS. Although the age we live in is one of criticism rather than of construction, when handbooks grow apace, and origi- nal writing is well-nigh a lost art, it cannot be said that the self-appointed sitters in judgment on other men’s work are credited with complete infallibility, nor are their complacent utterances hailed with unchallenged reverence. The departed leader of the political party, in whose ranks, since his removal, it has been announced by those who have the right to know^ that literar}^ talent is dormant, enunciated in his penultimate pamphlet (popularly esteemed a romance) the proposition, which has passed into an aphorism, that the critics are those who have failed in literature and art. Indeed, it would seem to be not inappropriate to gird at them in words addressed to the great strategist and his colleagues by a less volatile statesman, ‘‘ My lords, you are beginning to be found out,” seeing that these latter days have wdt- nessed the sight of one of the critical brotherhood turning “approver” in a manner familiar in Irish tri- bunals, and revealing the singularly material methods in vogue of suborning the testimony of our arbiters of taste. Although all human error and incapacity is to be deplored, yet there is no great reason why eccentric or disingenuous criticism should be cause for unhap- piness ; still less should encouragement be given to the invocation of the law as a truth-compelling machine. P'or all honest exponents of literature or art whose work is misrepresented or misunderstood, there is a more excellent way. Let them not fear the fate of him who, more than half a century ago, was “ slain by a review,” but rather take to heart Mr. Whistler’s new method with critics. The personality of the genial cosmopolitan who has made his home in our midst is too familiar to need de- scription ; and all the world knows how it was bidden last week to the private view of his “ etchings and dry points.” The throng that pressed into the modest cham- ber, prepared as “ an arrangement in white and yellow,” represented all sections of London society that may be gathered together in the first days of a parliamentary Session, including the most illustrious amateurs in the land ; and the device of the yellow butterfly, worn by not a few of the fairest of those present, has already become famous ; while the catalogue will ever be remem- bered as the most remarkable compilation in contempo- rary artistic literature. “ Out of their own mouths shall yejudgethem,”isthemotto on the title-page; and beneath the names of each of the half hundred studies exhibited is printed a quotation from one or more of Mr. Whistler’s critics in time past. “ Another crop of Mr. Whistler’s little jokes,” is one of the earliest excerpts, and this was thought by many to supply the keynote to the whole. Doubtless this dictionnaire de Vignovance critique appeals to one’s sense of humour, but it is at the expense of the reviewers that the laugh is raised. The quotation appended to No. i of the catalogue is the portentous sentiment that “ criticism is powerless here,” and this oracular remark is adopted, with grim irony, in a sense that the superior mind that planned the sentence never entertained. It is needless to reveal all the treasures that are contained within the brown-paper covering that is in every one’s hands to-day ; it only remains to sa3That, with a touch as delicate as the wings of the butterfly of his fancy, Mr. Whistler, by an infinitely skilful choice of their own words, exposes the pedantry of one, the pompous superficiality of another, and the vulgarity of a third of his assailants. Years ago he wrote in repudiation of the pretensions of certain writers upon art that “ a life passed among pictures makes not a painter — else the policeman at the National Gallery might assert him- self,” and the wit, the wisdom, and the truth of his position here stand proved. The newspapers are this week full of descriptions of the posthumous honours paid to a long-despised master of the sister art ; but Mr. Whistler, in his generous vitality, will not wait until funeral garlands are twined for him, still less have the diminutive successors of the Quarterly Reviewers of a past generation an^^ reason for hoping that he will succumb to their shafts as did the poet whose name was writ in water. The sturdy Puritan stock from which Mr. Whistler comes, though not lacking sensibility, is far from fragile in its traditions — traditions that give its descendants an unfailing resource wherewith to gainsay their adversaries in the vigorous Saxon version of the Hebrew prophet, with whose words he fitly concludes : “ Therefore is judgment far from us. We grope for the wall, like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes ; w'c stumble at noonday as in the night. We roar all like bears.” The World, Feb. 21, 1883. Allas, — There are those, they tell me, who have the approval of the people — and live ! For them the succes d'estime ; for me, O Atlas, the sticces d'cxecration — the only tribute possible from the Mob to the Master! This I have now nobly achieved. Glissojis / In the hour of my triumph let me not neglect my ambulance. Mr. Frederick Wedmore — a critic — one of the wounded — complains that by dexterously substituting “ understand ” for “ understate,” I have dealt unfairly by him, and wrongly rendered his writing. Let me hasten to acknowledge the error, and apologise. My carelessness is culpable, and the misprint without excuse ; for naturally I have all along known, and the typographer should have been duly warned, that with Mr. Wedmore, as with his brethren, it is always a matter of understating, and not at all one of understanding. Quant aux aiitres — well, with the exception of “ ’Arry,” who really is dead, they will recover. Scalped and disfigured, they are not mortally hurt ; and — would you believe it ? — possessed with an infinite capacity for continuing, they have already returned, nothing doubting, to their limited literature, of which I have exhausted the stock. — Yours, en passant, J. M’Neill Whistler. Tite Street, Chelsea. The World, Feb. 28, 1S83. 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