CHAPTER XXII: VENICE. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-NINE AND EIGHTEEN

EIGHTY CONTINUED.

Nothing in Whistler's life is more astonishing than the praise and blame raised by the Venetian pastels on their exhibition in London. Artists fought over them. To some, they were original, they gave the character of Venice; to others, they were cheap, anybody could do them. Both were wrong, as both always were. "Anybody" cannot do them; he had been making pastels: the subject, not the method, was new. Had some of the combatants visited the Academy at Venice, they might have discovered his inspiration in the drawings of the Old Masters, where he had found it years before at the Louvre. He was only carrying on tradition.

Whistler used coloured paper for the pastels because it gave him, without any work, the foundation of his colour-scheme in the simplest manner, and because he could work straight away on it, and not ruin the surface and tire himself getting the tone. Bacher describes him in his gondola laden with pastels. But his materials were so few that he could wander on foot in the narrow streets, the best way to work as everyone who has worked in Venice knows. For it is difficult to find again a place, and impossible to see again the effect, that fascinated you. He carried only a little portfolio or drawing-board, some sheets of tinted paper, black chalk, half a dozen pastels, and varnished or silver-coated paper to cover the drawing when finished. Once he found what he wanted, he made a sketch in black chalk and then with pastel hinted the colour of the walls, the shutters, the spots of the women's dresses, putting in the colour as in mosaic or stained glass between the black lines, never painting, but noting the right touch in the right place, keeping the colour pure. It looked so easy, "only the doing it was the difficulty," he would say. When he finished the drawings he showed them. Mr. Scott recalls that "the latest pastels used to be brought out for inspection. Whistler would always show his sketches in his own way or not at all. In the absence of a proper easel and a proper light, they were usually laid on the floor."

The "painter fellows" were startled by their brilliancy, Whistler told his mother, and he thought rather well of them himself.

The pastels have been praised with the inconsequence characteristic of so much praise of his work. The drawing often is either not good in itself or so slight as to be of little importance. The beauty is in the suggestion of colour or the arrangement of line. Though he passed the spring, summer, winter, and part of two autumns in the city there is no attempt, save in a few sunsets, to give atmospheric effect, or the season, or the time of year. What he saw that pastel would do, what he made it do, was to record certain lines and to suggest certain colours. Critics and artists, having never studied pastel, were unaware of what had been done with it. The revival did not come for some years after Whistler showed his Venetian series, when there was a "boom" all over the world, and pastel societies were started, most of which have since collapsed.

The "boom" in etching commenced years before Whistler went to Venice. There were standards: Whistler had already accomplished great things, after a formula laid down by Dürer, Rembrandt, and Hollar. Therefore, when he made etchings which struck the uncritical, and even those who cared, as something new, the uncritical were shocked because their preconceived notions were upset, and those who cared were astonished. The difference between the Venetian and the London plates was so great that the two series might be attributed to two men. This was due partly to the difference between London and Venice seen by an artist sensitive to the character of places, but more to the difference of technique between the earlier and the later plates. Not so many years ago, talking to him about this subject, we said that the Venetian plates seemed to be done in a new way. It so happened that the _Adam and Eve--Old Chelsea_ and _The Traghetto_ were, as they are now, hanging almost side by side on our walls. In five minutes he proved that one was the outgrowth of the other, and that there was a natural development from the beginning of his work. Until the London Memorial Exhibition it was impossible to trace this, because the prints had never been hung together chronologically, not even at the Grolier Club, in New York, where, for want of space, two separate shows were made. Before Whistler exhibited his Venetian plates most people knew nothing but the French Set and the Thames Set. The intermediate stages had not been followed, and the Venetian plates seemed a new thing. But the difference between them and the Thames series is one of development. Whistler always spoke of the _Black Lion Wharf_ as boyish, though it is impossible to conceive of anything of its kind more complete. His estimate has been accepted by many. Mr. Bernhard Sickert, in writing of it, thinks it misleading to say that every tile, every beam has been drawn. "These details are merely filled in with a certain number of strokes of a certain shape, accepted as indicating the materials of which they are constructed." When an etching is in pure line and owes little to the printer, as in this case, it is the wonderful arrangement of lines, the wonderful lines themselves, which make you feel that everything, every beam and every tile, has been drawn; that every detail actually has been drawn we did not suppose anybody would be so absurd as to imagine. The character of the lines gives you this impression, which is exactly what the artist wanted, and this is what proved Whistler an impressionist. Another critic has said that Whistler exhausted all his blacks on the houses. He did nothing of the sort. He concentrated them there, and did not take away from the interest of the wharf he was drawing by an equal elaboration in the boats, the barges, and the figures. As he learned more he gave up his literal, definite method. Instead of drawing the panes of a window in firm outline, he suggested them by drawing the shadows and the reflected lights with short strokes, and scarcely any outline. In the London plates he got the effect on his buildings by different bitings. In Venice he suggested the shadows. In both, the figures in movement are nearly the same, but there is a great advance in the drawing in the Venice plates, where they give the feeling of life. In the _Millbank_ and the _Lagoon_, the subjects, or the dominating lines in the subjects, are the same, a series of posts carrying the eye from the foreground to the extreme distance, but their treatment in the Venetian plate, as well as the drawing of the figures, is more expressive. Simplicity of expression has never been carried further. Probably the finest plate, in its simplicity and directness, is _The Bridge_. Whistler now obtained the quality of richness by suggesting detail, and also by printing. In _The Traghetto_ there is the same scheme as in _The Miser_ and _The Kitchen_, but the Venice plate is more painter-like. Without taking away from the etched line he has given a fullness of tone which makes the background of _The Burgomaster Six_ weak in comparison. And he knew this.

He was doing his own printing for the first time to any extent. There were a hundred prints of the first Venice Set. All were not pulled by him, and the difference between his printing and Goulding's, done after his death, is unmistakable. In the hand of any professional printer plates like _The Traghetto_ and _The Beggars_ would be a mass of scratches, though scratches of interest to the artist; it required Whistler's printing to bring out what he wanted. And it is the more surprising that he could print in Venice, so primitive was the press. Bacher had a portable press, but most was done on the old press. Whistler protested against the professional printer, his pot of treacle and his couches of ink. But no great artist ever carried the printing of etchings so far or made such use of printer's ink as he did in these plates. Without the wash of ink, they would be ghosts, and he was justified in printing as he wanted to get what he wished. And he used ink in all sorts of ways on the same plate, he tried endless experiments with ever-varying results, even to cover up the weak lines of an indifferent design, as in _Nocturne--Palaces_, prized highly by collectors, but one of his poorest Venice plates. It, and _The Garden_, _Nocturne--Shipping_, and one or two besides are by no means equal to the others in line, though some of his prints of these are superb. But there are no such perfect plates in the world as _The Beggars_, _The Traghetto_, the two _Rivas_, _The Bridge_, and _Rialto_.

While printing Whistler continually worked on his plates, and instead of there being--as the authorities say--half a dozen states there are a hundred; only the authorities cannot see. A curious fact about _The Traghetto_ is that there were two plates. He was displeased with the first and etched it again. Bacher writes that _The Traghetto_ "troubled him very much." He pulled one fine proof and then overworked the plate so that he had to make a second. He got copper of the same size and thickness made by the Venetian from whom they had their plates. When this was ready, the first plate was inked with white paint instead of black ink. This was placed on the second varnished plate, and they were then run through the press. The result was "a replica in white upon the black etching ground." Bacher says that on the new plate Whistler worked for days and weeks with the first proof before him, that he might find and etch only the original lines. When the second was printed Whistler placed the two proofs side by side and minutely compared them. And he was pleased, for the examination ended in the one song he allowed himself in Venice:

"_We don't want to fight, But, by jingo! if we do, We've got the ships, We've got the men, And got the money too-oo-oo!_"

The early proofs of others plates were unsatisfactory. Each proof was a trial, and, as each was pulled, he worked upon the plate, not generally taking out large slabs or putting in new passages to make a new state of it, but strengthening lines or lightening them, giving richness to a shadow or modelling to a little figure. It would be impossible, if the hundred proofs of each of these Venetian plates were not shown together, to say how much he did or what he did to each, but the first proof is quite different from the last and no two are alike. Some of them, from ghosts, became solid facts.

In his Venice etchings Whistler also developed what he called the Japanese method of drawing, Bacher calls his secret, and Mr. Menpes the secret of drawing. Whistler always spoke frankly about it to us, from the first time J. saw him etching, and he followed the same method in his lithographs. In etching or lithography it is difficult to make corrections, the surface of the plate or the stone should not be disturbed, it is not easy, by the ordinary manner in which drawing is taught, to put a complicated design on the plate without elaborate spacing, tracing, or a preliminary sketch. Frequently, when the design is half made in the usual fashion, the artist finds that the point of greatest interest, the subject of his picture, will not come on the plate where he wants it. The Japanese always seem to get the design in their colour-prints in the right place, and yet their technique adds to the difficulty of changing or altering a design, especially in their wood blocks. But whether this is because they have the method of drawing Whistler attributed to them, whether he got his idea from their completed prints or evolved it, we do not know. We do know that the idea was his long before he painted the Japanese pictures. You can see the beginning of it in the _Isle de la Cité_. The system, scientific as all his systems were, is to select the exact spot on the canvas, the lithographic stone, the copper plate, or the piece of paper, where the focus of interest is to be, and to draw this part of the subject first. It might be near the side of a plate, though he insisted that the composition should be placed well within the frame or on the plate, contrary as such treatment is to Japanese methods and his early practice. In the early paintings, sprays of flowers or branches of trees run into the picture to give the impression that it is carried beyond the frame, as the Japanese do. But his theory, perfected before the Venetian period and adhered to as long as he lived, was that everything should be well within the frame or plate mark, as far within as the subject was from him. Having selected the point of interest, he drew that, and drew it completely, and there, on his canvas, plate, or stone, was a picture. It might be a distant view of palaces or shipping beneath a bridge; in London, a shop window; in Paris, a dark doorway; in portraits, the sitter's head. Once he put it down, he drew in the objects next in importance, all the while carrying out the work completely and making one harmonious whole. The result was that the picture was finished--"finished from the beginning"--and there was on the plate, paper, or stone a space which he could fill with less important details or leave as he chose. With his painting it was a different problem. When the subject was arranged, it grew together all over, at the same time. In some of the earlier pictures, _Old Battersea Bridge_ for example, a piece of canvas seems to have been added, though he maintained that the artist should confine himself to the size of the canvas he selected, and not get over his blunders, as many do, by adding to or taking from the canvas. All this requires the greatest care in just what Whistler considered most important, the placing of the subject. Working in this manner, always with the completed picture in his mind, he could return again, add further work if he thought it was needed, knowing he had his subject drawn. It sounds simple, so simple that one day, when he had been explaining it to Mr. E. A. Walton, and the latter said, "But there is no secret!" Whistler's answer was, "Yes, the secret is in doing it." It is just this, "in doing it," that the excellence of his work lies. As a matter of fact the difficulty is restraint in drawing the heart of a subject, while in painting still more restraint is necessary, the restraint imposed by colour and the medium.

Besides etchings and pastels Whistler made water-colours in Venice, but as they were never shown together it is impossible to say how many. There were also a few oils. The most important is _Nocturne, Blue and Gold, St. Mark's_. Bacher speaks of one from the windows of the Casa Jankovitz, "the Salute and a great deal of sky and water, with the buildings very small," and of a scene at night from a _café_ near the Royal Gardens. Then there is the upright sunset from the Riva referred to by Mr. Pennington, and two others painted from Mr. Ross Turner's terrace, one looking down the Riva to San Biagio, the other up to San Marco, both full of little figures, and with boats and a suggestion of the Lagoon, in the background; studies left hanging in sunlight after he had done one day's work until he came to do the next. Mr. Forbes recalls a _Nocturne of the Giudecca_, with shipping, on a panel, which Whistler gave to Jobbins, who, as he told us, thought so little of it that he painted a sketch on the back and then sold it to Forbes, who still has it. Canfield was said to have another of S. Giorgio. Doubtless there are more, but we know of none that were exhibited.