CHAPTER XXX: THE BRITISH ARTISTS. THE FALL. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN

EIGHTY-SIX TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT.

According to the constitution of the British Artists the President, though elected in June, does not take office until December. Whistler presided for the first time on December 10, 1886, and from that day he was supported devotedly by one faction and opposed fiercely by the other.

For the Winter Exhibition (1886-87) he decorated the galleries with the same care as his own shows. He put up a velarium, he covered the walls with muslin. The muslin gave out, leaving a bare space under the ceiling. "But what matter?" he said, "the battens are well placed, they make good lines," and they became part of the decoration. He would allow no crowding, the walls were to be the background of good pictures well spaced, well arranged. He urged the virtue of rejection. Mr. Starr says, "He was oblivious to every interest but the quality of the work shown." He told Mr. Menpes, one of the Hanging Committee, "If you are uncertain for a moment, say 'Out.' We want clean spaces round our pictures. We want them to be seen. The British Artists' must cease to be a shop."

This was resented. The modern exhibition is a shop, and as long as most painters have their way a shop it will remain. He exhibited _Nocturne in Brown and Gold_ (afterwards _Blue and Gold_), _St. Mark's, Venice_--he told the members on varnishing day that it was his best; _Harmony in Red: Lamplight_, Mrs. Godwin, and _Harmony in White and Ivory_, Lady Colin Campbell, a beautiful portrait of a beautiful woman, one of many that have disappeared. It was not finished when Whistler sent it in, an excuse for dissatisfied members to propose its removal. The question was not put to the meeting when the matter came up, but a proposition to define the rights of the President and the President-elect was carried.

One of Whistler's first acts was to offer to loan the Society five hundred pounds to pay its debts. Mr. Starr describes him, "during this time of fluctuating finances, pawning his large gold _Salon_ medal one day, lending five hundred pounds to the British Artists the next. He often found 'a long face and a short account at the Bank,' he said one day."

He did everything he could to increase the prestige of the Society. All that was charming was to be encouraged, all that was tedious was to be done away with. He got distinguished artists to join: Charles Keene, Alfred Stevens, and the more promising younger men. He allowed several to call themselves in the catalogue "pupils of Whistler," and to make drawings of the gallery and his pictures for the illustrated papers. The sketches of _Sarasate_ in the _Pall Mall's Pictures of 1885_, and of _Harmony in Blue and Gold_, and his exhibition at Dowdeswell's gallery in _Pictures of 1886_ are by him. But after this Mr. Theodore Roussel, Mr. Walter Sickert, Mr. Sidney Starr made the drawings for reproduction. He gave the Art Union, organised by the Society, a plate, _The Fish Shop--Busy Chelsea_, one year, and another, a painting done at St. Ives. In the March meeting (1887) he proposed a limit of size for exhibits, he contributed twenty pounds towards a scheme of decoration, and he presented four velvet curtains for the doorways in the large room. There is a drawing, showing curtains and velarium, by Mr. Roussel in the _Pall Mall's Pictures of 1887_. Whistler's early _Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Valparaiso Bay_; _Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Gardens_ (Cremorne); _Harmony in Grey, Chelsea in Ice_, were hung, and with them his latest, _Arrangement in Violet and Pink, Portrait of Mrs. Walter Sickert_. This is the first of the two portraits he painted of Mrs. Sickert, and from her we learned that it was destroyed.

Most of the members regarded the President's innovations as an interference with their rights. He might pay their debts, that was one thing; it was another to make their gallery beautiful by chucking their pictures. Their resentment increased on the occasion of a visit from the Prince of Wales. Whistler stayed late the day before to finish the decoration. When the members came, doors and dados were painted yellow. Whistler, with whom great fault was found, refused to have anything further to do with the decorations, though they were unfinished. There was fright carried that evening to a smoking-concert at the Hogarth Club, where everybody was talking of the arrangement in yellow. He was telegraphed for. "So discreet of you all at the Hogarth" was his answer, and he did not appear until it was time to meet the Prince, though in the meantime members tried to tone down the yellow. Whistler told us:

"I went downstairs to meet the Prince. As we were walking up, I a little in front with the Princess, the Prince, who always liked to be well informed in these matters, asked what the Society was--Was it an old institution? What was its history? 'Sir, it has none, its history dates from to-day!' I said."

But the old members say that when the Prince went downstairs with one of them his remark was: "Who is that funny little man we have been talking to?"

The dissatisfaction was brought before a meeting, when a proposition was made and passed "that the experiment of hanging pictures in an isolated manner be discontinued," and that, in future, enough works be accepted to cover the vacant space above and below the line--in fact, that the gallery be hung as before. It is said that some members made an estimate of the amount of wall-space left bare, and calculated the loss in pounds, shillings and pence.

We saw this exhibition, though we did not see Whistler. We remember the quiet, well-spaced walls, and the portrait of Mrs. Sickert, also works by Dannat and William Stott. It should not be forgotten that the British Artists' was arranged and hung by Whistler years before there was any idea of artistic hanging in German Secessions--we believe, before there were any Secessions. Whistler had applied to his own shows the same method of spacing and hanging, and decorating the walls with an appropriate colour-scheme. It had occurred to no one before him that beautiful things should be shown beautifully, and it is not too much to say that the attention given to-day to the artistic arrangement of picture exhibitions is due entirely to Whistler. The resurrection of the velarium, designed, made, and hung after his scheme, has revolutionised the lighting of picture galleries, though in very few is his scheme intelligently followed.

1887 was Queen Victoria's Jubilee, and every society of artists prepared addresses to Her Majesty; Whistler could not permit his Society to appear less ceremoniously loyal. His account to us was:

"Well, you know, I found that the Academy and the Institute and the rest of them were preparing addresses to the Queen, and so I went to work too, and I prepared a most wonderful address. Instead of the illuminated performances for such occasions, I took a dozen folio sheets of my old Dutch paper. I had them bound by Zaehnsdorf. First came the beautiful binding in yellow morocco and the inscription to Her Majesty, every word just in the right place--most wonderful. You opened it, and on the first page you found a beautiful little drawing of the royal arms that I made myself; the second page, an etching of Windsor, as though 'there's where you live!' On the third page the address began. I made decorations all round the text in water-colour, at the top the towers of Windsor, down one side a great battleship plunging through the waves, and below, the sun that never sets on the British Empire--What? The following pages were not decorated, just the most wonderful address, explaining the age and dignity of the Society, its devotion to Her Glorious, Gracious Majesty, and suggesting the honour it would be if this could be recognised by a title that would show the Society to belong specially to Her. Then, the last page; you turned, and there was a little etching of my house at Chelsea--'And now, here's where I live!' And then you closed it, and at the back of the cover was the Butterfly. This was all done and well on its way and not a word was said to the Society, when the Committee wrote and asked me if I would come to a meeting as they wished to consult me. It was about an address to Her Majesty--all the other Societies were sending them--and they thought they should too. I asked what they proposed spending--they were aghast when I suggested that the guinea they mentioned might not meet a twentieth of the cost. But, all the time, my beautiful address was on its way to Windsor, and finally came the Queen's acknowledgment and command that the Society should be called Royal--I carried this to a meeting and it was stormy. One member got up and protested against one thing and another, and declared his intention of resigning. 'You had better make a note of it, Mr. Secretary,' I said. And then I got up with great solemnity, and I announced the honour conferred upon them by Her Gracious Majesty, and they jumped up and they rushed towards me with outstretched hands. But I waved them all off, and I continued with the ceremonial to which they objected. For the ceremonial was one of their grievances. They were accustomed to meet in shirt-sleeves--free-and-easy fashion which I would not stand. Nor would I consent to what was the rule and tradition of the Society. I would not, when I spoke, step down from the chair and stand up in the body of the meeting, but I remained always where I was. But, the meeting over, then I sent for champagne."

Whistler, as President of the British Artists, was invited to the Jubilee ceremonies in Westminster Abbey, and in Mr. Lorimer's painting he may be seen on one side of the triforium, Leighton on the other. _Jubilee in the Abbey_, an etching, gives his impressions. He was asked also to the State garden-party at Buckingham Palace, and to the Naval Review off Spithead, when he made the _Naval Review_ series of plates and at least one water-colour in a day. Naturally, when the Royal Academy neglected to invite him to their _soirée_, though hitherto they had always invited the President of the British Artists, he resented it as an insult not only to himself, but to the Society. "It really was a pretty little recognition of my own personality beneath the cloak of office," he wrote in an often-quoted letter to Leighton, then President of the Royal Academy.

The year before, Mr. Ayerst Ingram had proposed that the Society should give a show of the President's work to precede their Summer Exhibition of 1887. This had met with so many objections that though the motion was not withdrawn as Whistler wanted, it was dropped. After the new honours were obtained by him for the Society, and while he was travelling in Belgium and Holland, an effort was made to revive the scheme. Mr. Ingram did what he could. Mr. Walter Dowdeswell acted as honorary secretary, guarantors were found, owners of pictures were written to. February and March 1888 was the time appointed, but Whistler doubted the sincerity of the Society and would not risk anything less than an "absolute triumph of perfection" for an undertaking made in the name of the British Artists or his own. To him no success was worse than failure. At the end of September nothing definite had been arranged, and Whistler told Mr. Ingram that his "solitary evidence of active interest could hardly bring about a result sufficient to excuse such an eleventh-hour effort."

He was right. The opposition in the Society was strong, and many members were in open warfare with their President. They refused to support him in his proposition that no member of the Society should be, or should remain, a member of any other Society, and when he followed this with the proposition that no member of the Royal Society of British Artists who was a member of any other Society should serve on the Selecting or Hanging Committee, they again defeated him. Nor did they persuade him to reconsider the formal withdrawal, on November 18, of his permission to show his works. He sent, however, several water-colours and the twelve etchings of the _Naval Review_ to the Winter Exhibition (1887-88), and four lithographs from the _Art Notes_ published that autumn by the Goupils. They were described in the _Magazine of Art_ (December 1887) as mere lead pencil "notes reproduced in marvellous _facsimile_," which gave Whistler his chance for a courteous reminder in the _World_ to "the bewildered one." The critic might inquire, he said; "the safe and well-conducted one informs himself." Within the Society he had once more to contend against the opposition to his hanging and spacing, and a fresh grievance was that space was filled with the work of Monet, as yet hardly known in England. One of the older members, when he looked at Whistler's _Red Note_, declared, "If he can do that, I'll forgive him--he can do anything." But few could forgive so easily. They objected that "Whistler would have his way, and didn't mind if he made enemies in getting it," and they began to whisper that in the matter of the memorial he had been dictatorial. The situation is best described in the words of Mr. Holmes to us: "With a little more of Disraeli and a little less of Oliver Cromwell, Whistler would have triumphed."

The crisis came in April 1888, before the Summer Exhibition. It was suggested that the Council communicate with the President as to the removal of temporary decorations which he had designed and they had paid for. One decoration the Society did not object to was a velarium, since it meant no loss of wall-space, and when Whistler removed this they ordered a new one. Whistler, through his secretary, explained to the Committee that the velarium was his patent--"a patent taken out by the Greeks and Romans" is Mr. Ingram's comment. Whistler got out an injunction; when the Committee, with their order for the velarium, hurried to Hampton's shop, his secretary was at their heels in a hansom with the injunction; the secretary arrived with them at Liberty's, but somehow they managed, in the end, to evade him. A velarium was made and put up, and they proceeded to get rid of their President. At a meeting on May 7 a letter, signed by eight members whose names do not appear in the minutes, was read, asking President Whistler to call a meeting to request Mr. James A. McNeill Whistler to resign his membership in the Society, and he called the meeting and signed the minutes. The President made a speech, in which he claimed that his action in the matter of the velarium was not inimical to the welfare of the Society, but the speech was not recorded. He permitted no one to speak in opposition, and the subject was dropped. At the special meeting called by him the same month there was an exhaustive discussion. Whistler declared his position. His opponents presented an array of lawyer's letters, which they said showed that Whistler had threatened injunctions, had greatly impeded the Executive in the decoration of the galleries, and had influenced many distinguished people to keep away from the private view. A vote was taken for his expulsion, though Mr. Ingram proposed a vote of censure in its place. Whistler refused at first to put the motion to expel himself, but finally was compelled to do so. There were eighteen votes for, nineteen against it, and nine members did not vote. The votes, Whistler said, when he addressed the meeting after the ballot, showed that the Society approved of his action. Mr. Francis James at once proposed a vote of censure on those who had signed the letter, but this was not carried. On June 4, at the annual election, when a whip had been sent round to all members, Wyke Bayliss was elected President, and Whistler resigned from the Society, congratulating the members on the election: "Now, at last, you must be satisfied. You can no longer say you have the right man in the wrong place!"

Mr. Starr recalls his saying: "Now I understand the feelings of all those who, since the world began, have tried to save their fellow men."

The minority resigned, as Mr. Menpes, foreseeing the inevitable, had a month earlier, which led to Whistler's comment on "the early rat who leaves the sinking ship." All who had joined the Society with him left it with him, and he said "the Artists came out and the British remained."

Mr. Menpes describes a supper of the Artists after the meeting at the Hogarth Club. He says he was taken back into favour, and joined the party. "What are you going to do with them all?" he asked. "Lose them," said Whistler. But he did not lose them all. One or two stayed by him to the end.

Whistler, according to the constitution, held office till December, and till December he retained his post. During this time there were meetings. At one he addressed Bayliss as Baily--to his disgust--but, on this occasion at least, Bayliss had an idea and replied, "Yes, Mr. Whistle!" At a meeting on November 28 Whistler made a statement of his relations with the Society, and his objects and aims concerning it, only referred to in the minutes, and he gave up the chair to Wyke Bayliss. He had been President two years, a member four. After November 28, 1888, his name appears in the official records only twice: first on January 4, 1889, in connection with a dispute over the notice board outside the gallery, and then on July 20, 1903, when Wyke Bayliss stated "that, acting on the feeling that it would be the wish of the Society, he had ordered a wreath to be sent in the name of the Society on the occasion of the funeral of Mr. Whistler."

The newspapers were not so shy of the President as the minute-books. The difference between Whistler and the Society found the publicity which he could never escape. He said to the men who resigned with him, "Come and make history for posterity," and, as usual, he saw that the record was accurate. He had hardly left the Society when the notice board, with the Butterfly and the lion which he had painted, was altered; he immediately wrote a letter to state the fact in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. Reporters and interviewers gave the British Artists' reasons for their late President's resignation and his successor's qualifications for the post. Whistler lost no time in explaining his position and giving his estimate of the new President. It cannot be said too often that his letters to the Press, criticised as trivial and undignified, were written deliberately that "history might be made." Many pages of _The Gentle Art_ are filled with his relations with the British Artists. The gaiety of his letters was mistaken for flippancy, because the more solemn and ponderous the "enemies" became, the more "joyous" he grew in disposing of them. He did not spare the British Artists. The _Pall Mall_ undertook to describe the disaster of the "Whistlerian policy" in Suffolk Street by statistics and to extol the strength of Wyke Bayliss:

"The sales of the Society during the year 1881 were under five thousand pounds; 1882, under six thousand; 1883, under seven thousand; 1884, under eight thousand; 1885 (the first year of Mr. Whistler's rule), they fell to under four thousand; 1885, under three thousand; 1887, under two thousand; and the present year, 1888, under one thousand.... The new President ... is ... the hero of three Bond Street 'one-man exhibitions,' a board-school chairman, a lecturer, champion chess-player of Surrey, a member of the Rochester Diocesan Council, a Shakespearean student, a Fellow of the Society of Cyclists, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians, and public orator of Noviomagus."

Whistler's answer, serious in intention, gay in wording, pointed out "the, for once, not unamusing 'fact' that the disastrous and simple Painter Whistler only took in hand the reins of government at least a year after the former driver had been pitched from his box and half the money-bags had been already lost! From eight thousand to four thousand at one fatal swoop! and the beginning of the end had set in!... 'Four thousand pounds!' down it went; three thousand pounds, two thousand pounds--the figures are Wyke's--and this season, the ignominious 'one thousand pounds or under' is none of my booking! And when last I saw the mad machine it was still cycling down the hill."

Whistler was disappointed, though he did not show it. He was seldom invited to join anything, nor did he rush to accept the rare invitation. He would take no part in the Art Congress started in the eighties, despite an effort to entangle him; he would do no more than "bestow his benison" upon the movement in 1886 to organise a National Art Exhibition, led by Walter Crane, Holman Hunt, and George Clausen. But to the British Artists he had given his time and energy during four years, he had dragged the Society out of the slough in which it was floundering and made its exhibitions the most distinguished and most talked-about in London. Wyke Bayliss, who never understood him, wrote: "Whistler's purpose was to make the British Artists a small, esoteric set; mine was to make it a great guild of the working artists of this country."

Whistler said: "I wanted to make the British Artists an art centre; they wanted to remain a shop."

Wyke Bayliss and his successor were knighted, as Presidents of Royal Societies usually are; Whistler, who obtained the title and charter of the Society, was ignored.

Ten years later, as President of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers, he not only recommended, but carried out his schemes and theories: the decoration of the galleries, the refusal of bad work no matter who sent it, the proper hanging of the pictures accepted, the making of the exhibitions into artistic events, the interesting of the public in them, the insistence that each artist should only support his own Society's exhibitions and should belong to no other Society. He was dictatorial, but without a dictator nothing can be done, and at the British Artists each British Artist wanted to lead. His Presidency began in mistrust and ended in discord. For Whistler it had an advantage, especially abroad, where artists began to regard him with deference.