CHAPTER XXVII: THE STUDIO IN THE FULHAM ROAD. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN

EIGHTY-FIVE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN.

In 1885 Whistler moved from Tite Street to 454 Fulham Road. A shabby gate opened on a shabby lane leading to studios, one of which was his. Here Lady Archibald Campbell's and M. Duret's portraits were finished. Whistler was living at the time with Maud in a little house close by, since pulled down, which he called the "Pink Palace," having painted it himself. He was again hard up, and M. Duret, coming to dinner, would buy a good part of it on the way down and arrive, his pockets bulging with bottles and fruit and cake. Before long Whistler left the "Pink Palace" for the Vale, Chelsea--"an amazing place, you might be in the heart of the country, and there, two steps away, is the King's Road." It was the first house on the right beyond the iron gates, now demolished. But the whole place has gone.

In the _Court and Society Review_ (July 1, 1886) Mr. Malcolm C. Salaman described the Fulham Road studio and the work in progress:

"The whitewashed walls, the wooden rafters, which partly form a loft for the stowing away of canvases, the vast space unencumbered by furniture, and the large table-palette, all give the appearance of the working place.... Mr. Whistler is not so feeble as to aim at theatrical effects in his costume. In the black clothes of ordinary wear, straight from the street, he stands at his easel. To those accustomed to studios the completeness of the arrangement ... in accordance with the scheme of the picture that is in progress is striking, as striking indeed as the personality of the artist. His whole body seems instinct with energy and enthusiasm, his face lit up with flashes of quick and strong thought, as that of a man who sees with his brains as well as with his eyes....

"A word, by the way, about Mr. Whistler's palette. As I saw it the other day, the colours were arranged almost with the appearance of a picture. In the centre was white and on one side were the various reds leading up to black, while on the other side were the yellows leading up to blue....

"And now a few words about some of the pictures which the master had almost ready for exhibition: A full-length figure of a girl in out-door black dress, with a fur cape and a hat trimmed with flowers. She stands against a dark background, and she _lives_ in her frame. A full-length portrait of Mr. Walter Sickert, a favourite pupil of Mr. Whistler's and one of his cleverest disciples. He is in evening dress, and stands against a dark wall. This is a picture that Velasquez himself would have delighted in. [It has vanished.] A full-length portrait of a man with a Spanish-looking head, painted in a manner that is surely of the greatest. [Perhaps the portrait of Chase or of Eldon; both have disappeared.]... A superb portrait of Mrs. Godwin will rank among Mr. Whistler's _chefs d'oeuvre_. The lady stands in an ample red cloak over a black dress, against red draperies, and in her bonnet is a red plume. Her hands rest on her hips, and her attitude is singularly vivacious. This picture has been painted in artificial light, as has also another of a lady seated in a graceful attitude, with one hand leaning over the back of a chair, while the other holds a fan. She wears a white evening dress, and is seen against a light background. [A picture we cannot identify.] Besides these Mr. Whistler showed me sketches of various groups of several girls on the seashore ... [_The Six Projects_] and a sketch of _Venus_, lovely in colour and design, the nude figure standing close to the sea, with delicate gauze draperies lightly lifted by the breeze. The studio is full of canvases and pictures in more or less advanced stages, and on one of the walls hang a number of pastel studies of nude and partially draped female figures. A portrait-sketch in black chalk of Mr. Whistler by M. Rajon also hangs on the wall."

The _Further Proposition_, which was quoted by Mr. Salaman, can be read in _The Gentle Art_. It is Whistler's statement that a figure should keep well within the frame, and that flesh should be painted according to the light in which it is seen: the answer to the objection often made to his portraits because the "flesh was low in tone." A year later it was reprinted in the _Art Journal_ (April 1887) by Mr. Walter Dowdeswell, whose article was the first appreciation of Whistler in an important English magazine. Whistler, knowing the value of what he wrote, meant that his writings should be preserved, and he gave to Mr. Dowdeswell for publication the reply which he had made twenty years earlier to Hamerton's criticism of the _Symphony in White, No. III._, but which was not then printed because the _Saturday Review_, where the criticism appeared, did not publish correspondence. Mr. Dowdeswell, describing the studio, adds a few details omitted by Mr. Salaman: "The _soupçon_ of yellow in the rugs and matting; a table covered with old Nankin china; a crowd of canvases at the further end, and, pinned upon the wall on the right, a number of exquisite little notes of colour, and drawings of figures from life, in pastels, on brown paper."

Mr. E. J. Horniman, who had a studio near by, tells us that he often saw on the roof of the omnibus stable, just behind it, pictures put out to dry.

Many who visited the studio were surprised to find Whistler working in white. He sometimes wore a white jacket; sometimes took off his coat and waistcoat. He was as fastidious with his work as with his dress. He could not endure a slovenly palette, or brushes and colours in disorder, though the palette had a raised edge to keep the colour off his sleeve. Unfortunately, after his wife's death he ruined the two portraits of himself in the white painting jacket, which he never exhibited, by changing the white jacket to a black coat.

Other reminiscences of Fulham Road we have from William M. Chase, who came to London in 1885, with a suggestion that he and Whistler should paint each other; also, that Whistler should go back to America and open a school. "Well, you know, that anyway will be all right, Colonel," as Whistler called Chase. "Of course, everybody will receive me; tug-boats will come down the Bay; it will be perfect!" He thought so seriously of going, that he hesitated to send to the London galleries work he would want for America.

The two portraits were begun. Whistler painted a full-length of Chase, in frock-coat and top-hat, a cane held jauntily across his legs. As he wrote afterwards, in a letter included in _The Gentle Art_, "I, who was charming, made him beautiful on canvas, the Masher of the Avenues." Whistler was delighted with what he had done:

"Look at this, Colonel! Look at this; did you ever see anything finer?"

"It's meek or modest, they'll have to put on your tombstone!"

"Say 'and' not 'or'--meek and modest! H'm!--well, you know, splendid, Chase!"

Chase remembers an evening when they were to dine out, and Whistler had to go home to dress, and it was almost the hour before he ventured to remind him. Then Whistler was astonished:

"What, Chase, you can think of dinner and time when we are doing such beautiful things? Stay where you are, and they will be glad to see me whenever I come."

Everybody who has been with him in the studio knows how difficult it was for him to stop when he was absorbed in his work. Mr. Pennington says: "Whistler's habit of painting long after the hour when anybody could distinguish gradations of light and colour was the cause of much unnecessary repainting and many disappointments, for after leaving a canvas that seemed exquisite in the dusk of the falling night, he would return to it in the glare of the next morning and find unexpected effects that had been concealed by the twilight. Whistler never learned to hold his hand when daylight waned. The fascination of _seeming_ to have caught the values led him far into the deceiving shades of night with often disastrous results."

Whistler's portrait of Chase has vanished with many another. Chase painted Whistler also in frock-coat, without a hat, holding the long cane, against a yellow wall, and his portrait remains. Chase intended stopping a short time in London as he passed on to Madrid. But he found Whistler so delightful that his visit to Spain was put off. He has told many incidents of these months spent with Whistler in a lecture delivered in the United States, and in an article in the _Century_. A lecturer, no doubt, must adapt himself to his audience, and Chase has dwelt principally on Whistler, the man--Whistler, the dandy; Whistler, the fantastic, designing, for the tour in America, a white hansom with yellow reins and a white and yellow livery for the nigger driver; Whistler, the traveller. They went together to Belgium and Holland. They stopped at Antwerp and saw the International Exhibition. Whistler said to us once that he could never be ill-natured, only wicked, and this was one of the occasions when he was wicked. In the gallery he refused to look at any pictures except those that told stories, asking Chase if the mouse would really scare the cat or the baby swallow the mustard-pot. The first interest he showed was in the work of Alfred Stevens. Before it he stood long; at last, with his little finger pointing to a passage in the small canvas, "H'm, Colonel! you know one would not mind having painted that!" Chase grew nervous as they approached the wall devoted to Bastien-Lepage, whom he admired, and he decided to leave Whistler. But Whistler would not hear of it. "I'll say only one word, Chase," he promised. Then they came to the Bastiens, "H'm, h'm, Colonel, the one word--School!" On the journey from Antwerp to Amsterdam two Germans were in the train: "Well, you know, Colonel, if the Almighty ever made a mistake it was when he created the German!" Whistler said at the end of a few minutes. Chase told him that if he could speak German he might understand their interesting talk. Whistler answered in fluent German and talked nothing else, until, at Haarlem, Chase could endure it no longer and left. Whistler leaned out of the window as the train started, "Think it over, Chase, and to-morrow morning you will come on to Amsterdam, and you'll tell me that I'm right about the Germans!"

One incident not told in print by Chase is that while in London he was the owner of the _Mother_. An American had given him money to buy pictures, and when he found that the _Mother_ was to be had from Mr. Graves for one hundred pounds he bought it, but first was referred to Whistler by Mr. Graves. Whistler, delighted to learn that he could control the pictures deposited with the Pall Mall firm, agreed to everything, but the agreement, was settled the day before starting for Antwerp, and when Chase got the money from his bankers and hurried to the Graves Gallery it was closed, and he gave the cheque to Whistler. The picture was his, but only during the time of Whistler's absence from London, for on his return Whistler could not bear to part with it and promptly sent the cheque back to Chase--or it may be that the trip with Chase helped him to change his mind.

All this is characteristic, but it would be interesting to hear less of his play and more of his work from Chase, who gives only a glimpse of Whistler the artist, and then in lighter moods. He tells of one occasion when an American wanted to buy some etchings, and they were to lunch with him in the City to arrange the matter. Taking a hansom, late of course, they passed a grocer's where Whistler stopped the driver: "Well, Chase, what do you think? If I get him to move the box of oranges? What?" And then, still later, they drove on. Another time, Chase expressed surprise at Whistler's refusing to deliver a picture to the lady who had bought it. But Whistler explained:

"You know, Chase, the people don't really want anything beautiful. They fill a room by chance with beautiful things, and some little trumpery something over the mantelpiece gives the whole damned show away. And if they pay a hundred pounds or so for a picture, they think it belongs to them. Well--why--it should only be theirs for a while; hung on their walls that they may rejoice in it and then returned." Once, it is said, a lady drove up to the studio and told him: "I have bought one of your pictures, it is beautiful, but as it is always at exhibitions I never see it. But I'm told you have it." "Dear lady," said Whistler, "you have been misinformed, it is not here." And she drove away. Later he found it: "H'm, she was right about one thing, it is beautiful. But because she's paid hundreds of pounds for it, she thinks she ought to have it all the time. She's lucky if she gets it now and then."

It must be admitted that it is not easy from any standpoint to write of Whistler during the years that followed his return from Venice. The decade between 1880 and 1890 is the fullest of his full life. It was during these ten years that he opened his "one man" shows amidst jeers, and closed them with success. It was during these ten years that he conquered society, though society never realised it. It was during these ten years that, to make himself known, he became in the streets of London the observed of all observers, developing extraordinary costumes, attracting to himself the attention he wanted to attract. It was during these ten years that he began to wrap himself in mystery, as Degas said of him, and then go off and get photographed, when, as Degas also said, he acted as if he had no genius: but mystery and pose were part of the armour he put on to protect himself from, and draw to himself, a foolish public. It was during these ten years that he invented the Followers--and got rid of them; that he flitted from house to house, from studio to studio, and through England, France, Belgium, and Holland, until it is impossible to keep pace with him; that he captured the Press, though it is still unconscious of its capture; that he concentrated the interest of England, of the whole world upon him, with one object in view--that is, to make England, the whole world, look at his work. For, as he said, if he had not made people look at it they never would have done so. They never understood it, they hated it. They do not understand it to-day, and they hate it the more because he has succeeded and they have failed in their endeavours to ignore or ruin him. Even now that it is too late, they are crawling from their graves and spitting at him, flinging mud at his memory.

In these crowded years two events stand out with special prominence, his _Ten O'Clock_ and his invasion of the British Artists. One states definitely his views on art; the other shows as definitely the position he had attained among artists.