CHAPTER XXXV: THE TURN OF THE TIDE. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY-ONE AND

EIGHTEEN NINETY-TWO.

The world owed him a living, Whistler said, but it was not until 1891 that the world began to pay the debt with the purchase of the _Carlyle_ for Glasgow and the _Mother_ for the Luxembourg.

While the _Carlyle_ was at the Glasgow Institute in 1888, Mr. E. A. Walton and Sir James Guthrie made up their minds to try to keep it for the city. Since the attempt to secure it for Edinburgh, the Glasgow School had become a power, and as they proclaimed themselves followers of Whistler, it was only right they should do everything to retain the picture in Glasgow. A petition was presented to the Glasgow Corporation, signed by a long list of names of influential people, which greatly pleased Whistler, for they included Gilbert, Orchardson, Millais, Walton, Guthrie, and many others. The price asked by Whistler was a thousand guineas, and a deputation from the Corporation came to call on him in London. Whistler told us:

"I received them, well, you know, charmingly, of course. And one who spoke for the rest asked me if I did not think I was putting a large price on the picture--one thousand guineas. And I said, 'Yes, perhaps, if you will have it so!' And he said that it seemed to the Council excessive; why, the figure was not even life-size.' And I agreed. 'But, you know,' I said, 'few men are life-size.' And that was all. It was an official occasion, and I respected it. Then they asked me to think over the matter until the next day, and they would come again. And they came. And they said, 'Have you thought of the thousand guineas and what we said about it, Mr. Whistler?' And I said, 'Why, gentlemen, why--well, you know, how could I think of anything but the pleasure of seeing you again?' And, naturally, being gentlemen, they understood, and they gave me a cheque for the thousand guineas."

What Whistler meant by "life-size" he has explained. "No man alive is life-size except the recruit who is being measured as he enters the regiment, and then the only man who sees him life-size is the sergeant who measures him, and all that he sees of him is the end of his nose; when he is able to see his toes, the man ceases to be life-size."

Before the _Carlyle_ went to Glasgow Whistler wished to show it in London, where, except in Queen Square, it had not been seen since the Grosvenor Exhibition of 1877, and it was exhibited at the Goupil Gallery. Mr. D. Croal Thomson, then director of the Gallery, saw that the tide was turning, and suggested offering the _Mother_ to the Luxembourg. In Paris there was a sluggish sort of curiosity and the beginning of a sort of appreciation. During the last ten years Whistler had shown at the _Salon_ his _Lady Meux_, the _Mother_, _Carlyle_, _Miss Alexander_, _The Yellow Buskin_, _M. Duret_, _Sarasate_, and in 1891 his _Rosa Corder_ was in the new _Salon_; but save for the third-class medal awarded the _Mother_ in 1883 his pictures received no official recognition, and while several scarcely known Americans were made full members of the _Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts_ he was at first simply an Associate. Many of his smaller works had been seen at different times in the Petit Gallery. At Mr. Croal Thomson's suggestion the _Mother_ was sent to Messrs. Boussod Valadon in Paris, and subscriptions for the purchase were opened. Before any amount worth mentioning was subscribed the French Government, on the initiative of M. Georges Clémenceau and by the advice of M. Roger Marx, bought it for the nation. M. Bourgeois, the Minister of Fine Arts, had some doubt as to the possibility of offering for so fine a masterpiece the small price that the nation could afford. But Whistler set him at ease on this point, writing to him that it was for the _Mother_, of all his pictures, he would prefer so "solemn a consecration," and that he was proud of the honour France had shown him. The price paid was four thousand francs. Whistler told Mr. Cole, November 14, 1891, that his pleasure was in the fact of "his painting of his mother being 'unprecedentedly' chosen by the Minister of Beaux-Arts for the Luxembourg," and France that same year bestowed upon him an honour he valued higher than almost any he ever received, by making him Officer of the Legion of Honour. But the choice was not unprecedented, pictures of other American artists having already been purchased, while the honour had already been bestowed upon American artists now forgotten.

The event was celebrated by a reception at the Chelsea Arts Club on the evening of December 19, 1891. Whistler was presented with a parchment of greetings signed by a hundred members as "a record of their high appreciation of the distinguished honour that has come to him by the placing of his mother's portrait in the national collection of France."

Whistler said in reply that he was gratified by this token from his brother artists: "It is right at such a time of peace, after the struggle, to bury the hatchet--in the side of the enemy--and leave it there. The congratulations usher in the beginning of my career, for an artist's career always begins to-morrow."

He promised to remain for long one of the Chelsea artists, a promise Chelsea artists showed no desire to keep him to. He was a member of the Club until he went to Paris. When, later, Mr. (now Sir John) Lavery proposed him as an Honorary Member, there was not enough enthusiasm to carry the motion. And when, still later, it was further proposed that the Chelsea Arts Club should officially recognise the Whistler Memorial they refused, and the comment of one man was, "What had an English Club to do with a memorial by a Frenchman to a Yankee in London?"

Early in 1892 Mr. Croal Thomson arranged with Whistler for an exhibition of _Nocturnes, Marines, and Chevalet Pieces_ to be held at the Goupil Gallery in London, or, as Whistler called it, his "heroic kick in Bond Street." Mr. Croal Thomson says his first idea was to show the portraits only. But he soon found that Whistler wanted to include all the paintings and was going to take the matter in hand, and that he was "only like the fly on the wheel" once the machinery was set in motion.

One reason of the success of the exhibition, which surprised not only Mr. Croal Thomson but all London, was Whistler's care when selecting his pictures to secure variety. The collection was a magnificent refutation of everything that the critics had been saying about him for years. They dismissed his pictures as sketches, and he confronted them with _The Blue Waves_, _Brown and Silver--Old Battersea Bridge_, _The Music Room_, which had not been seen in London since the early sixties. They objected to his want of finish and slovenliness in detail, and his answer was the Japanese pictures, full of an elaboration the Pre-Raphaelites never equalled, and finished with an exquisiteness of surface they never attempted. He was told he could not draw, and he produced a group of his finest portraits. He was assured he had no poetic feeling, no imagination, and he displayed the Nocturnes, with the factories and chimneys transformed into a fairyland in the night. He was as careful in arranging the manner in which the pictures should be presented. His letters to Mr. Croal Thomson from Paris, where he spent the greater part of 1892, were minute in his directions for cleaning and varnishing the paintings, and putting them into new frames of his design. Indeed, the correspondence on the subject, which we have seen, is a miracle of thoughtfulness, energy, and method.

Mr. Croal Thomson tells us: "Mr. Whistler laboured almost night and day: he wrote letters to every one of the owners of his works in oil asking loans of the pictures. Some, like Mr. Alexander and all the Ionides connection, acceded at once, but others made delays, and even to the end several owners declined to lend. On the whole, however, the artist was well supported by his early patrons, and the result was a gathering together of the most complete collection of Mr. Whistler's best works--forty-three pictures in all.

"The arrangement of the pictures was entirely Mr. Whistler's, for although he wished several young artists to come to the Gallery the evening the works were to be hung, through some mischance they did not arrive, and I was therefore alone with Mr. Whistler and received a great lesson in the art of arranging a collection."

In the face of so complete a series, in such perfect condition, and so well hung, criticism was silenced. We remember the Press view, and the dismay of the older critics who hoped for another "crop of little jokes," and the triumph of the younger critics who knew that Whistler had won. The papers, daily, weekly, and monthly, almost unanimously admitted that the old game of ridicule was played out and praised the exhibition without reserve. The rest, headed by Sir Frederick Wedmore, have since been trying to swallow themselves. Mr. Croal Thomson recalls that:

"Mr. Whistler was not present at the private view. He knew that many people would expect to see him and talk enthusiastic nonsense, and he rightly decided he was better away, and I was left to receive the visitors. Some hundreds of cards of invitation were issued, and it seemed as if every recipient had accepted. Crowds thronged the galleries all day, and it is impossible to describe the excitement. I do not know how it fared with the artist and his wife during the day, but about five o'clock in the evening Mr. and Mrs. Whistler came in, though they would not enter the exhibition; they remained in a curtained-off portion of the Gallery near the entrance. One or two of their most intimate friends were informed by me of the presence of the painter, and a small reception was held, for a little while, but, of course, by that time the battle was won, and there were only congratulations to be rendered to the master."

J. was taken into the little curtained-off room, and later there was a triumphal procession to the Arts Club. Whistler declared that even Academicians had been seen prowling about the place lost in admiration, that it needed only to send a season ticket to Ruskin to make the situation perfect, and that, "Well, you know, they were always pearls I cast before them, and the people were always--well, the same people."

It is said Whistler first intended to print the catalogue without comment or quotation from the Press, but the chance to expose the critics was too good, and previous critical verdicts were placed under the titles of the pictures. Two hundred and fifty copies were printed by Thomas Way, and in a letter to Way's manager, Mr. Morgan, he calls the catalogue "perfect." But he also points out that there are errors, and insists that by no accident or disaster shall any of the first printed batch of two hundred and fifty copies get about, and he further says that he proposes to come to the printing office and destroy them. We know of only four copies, one our own--now in the Library of Congress--of this unbound first edition that have been preserved. The other editions, five in all, are in the usual brown paper covers. As an instance of his care, Mr. William Marchant, then with Goupils', remembers his spending an afternoon over the arrangement of the few words on the cover. In the second edition the word "by" disappeared from the title-page and "Kindly Lent Their Owners" was printed. This was not intentional on Whistler's part, for we possess a letter in which he asks that it may be put back at once, and also that the "Moral" at the end of the catalogue, "Modern _British_ (!) art will now be represented in the National Gallery of the Luxembourg by one of the finest paintings due to the brush of an _English artist_ (!)," should be credited not to him, but to the _Illustrated London News_. Before the edition was exhausted the "Kindly Lent Their Owners" had become famous, though it did not appear in subsequent editions. But it reappeared when the catalogue was reprinted in _The Gentle Art_. The extracts he quoted were cruel, but the critics had been cruel. The sub-title, "_The Voice of a People_" explains his object in publishing them. The catalogue ended with the quotation from the _Chronique des Beaux-Arts_:

"_Au musée du Luxembourg, vient d'être placé de M. Whistler, le splendide Portrait de Mme. Whistler mère, une oeuvre destinée à l'éternité des admirations, une oeuvre sur laquelle la consécration des siècles semble avoir mis la patine d'un Rembrandt, d'un Titien, où d'un Vélasquez._"

This, in later editions, was followed by the "Moral" duly credited to the _Illustrated London News_.

Before the show closed the pictures were photographed, and twenty-four were afterwards published in a portfolio called _Nocturnes, Marines, and Chevalet Pieces_, by Messrs. Goupil. Whistler designed the cover in brown. There were a hundred sets, each photograph signed by him, published at six guineas, and two hundred unsigned at four guineas.

An immediate result of the exhibition was that sitters came. One of the first was the Duke of Marlborough, who gave him a commission for a portrait and asked him and Mrs. Whistler to Blenheim for the autumn. Whistler wrote the Duke one of his "charming letters," then heard of his sudden death, and said:

"Now I shall never know whether my letter killed him, or whether he died before he got it. Well, they all want to be painted because of these pictures, but why wouldn't they be painted years ago when I wanted to paint them, and could have painted them just as well?"

And he was besieged by Americans, Whistler said, who were determined "to pour California into his lap," a determination to which he had no objection. His "pockets should always be full, or my golden eggs are addled." He thought it would be "amazing fun" to be rich. Once, driving with Mr. Starr, he said:

"Starr, I have not dined, as you know, so you need not think I say this in any but a cold and careful spirit: it is better to live on bread and cheese and paint beautiful things than to live like Dives and paint pot-boilers. But a painter really should not have to worry about 'various,' you know. Poverty may induce industry, but it does not produce the fine flower of painting. The test is not poverty, it's money. Give a painter money and see what he'll do; if he does not paint his work is well lost to the world. If I had had, say, three thousand pounds a year, what beautiful things I could have done."

No one could know better than Mr. Croal Thomson how complete was this success:

"I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that the exhibition marked a revolution in the public feeling towards Whistler. His artistic powers were hitherto disputed on every hand, but when it was possible for lovers of art to see for themselves what the painter had accomplished the whole position was changed. I will be pardoned, I hope, in stating that whereas up to that time the pictures of Mr. Whistler commanded only a small sum of money, after the exhibition a great number of connoisseurs desired to acquire his works, and therefore their money value immediately increased.

"In the Goupil collection all the pictures were contributed by private owners, and none were offered for sale. I may say in passing that, as a matter of fact, the crowds of visitors were so great that no transaction of any serious kind was carried through in the Gallery between the hanging of the pictures and their dispersal--that is, for nearly five weeks there was practically no record of business.

"But the exhibition altered all this, and it is revealing no secrets to say that within a year after the exhibition was closed I had aided in the transfer of more than one-half of the pictures from their first owners. Mr. Whistler, to whom I always referred before concluding any transaction, came to the conclusion that there was hardly a holder of his pictures in England but who would sell when tempted by a large price. It may be that these owners had become affected by the continual misunderstanding and abuse of Mr. Whistler's works, and that when they were offered double or three times the sum for which they had their pictures insured they thought they had better take advantage of the enthusiasm of the moment. They did not realise that this enthusiasm would continue to enlarge, and that what seemed to them as original purchasers of the pictures to be a great price is only about one-fourth of their present money value.

"It was the artist's wish that a similar exhibition should be held in Paris, but the project fell through, and from more recent experience it would appear as if the London public, sometimes so severely scoffed at by Mr. Whistler, was really more appreciative than the Parisian public, and, therefore, perhaps after all more intelligent."

Whistler sold _The Falling Rocket_ for eight hundred guineas, and wished that Ruskin could know that it had been valued at "four pots of paint." The Leyland sale, May 28, 1892, brought the _Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine_ and smaller works into the auction-room, and, though the _Princesse_ fetched only four hundred and twenty guineas, this was four times as much as Whistler received. What would he have said to the five thousand Mr. Freer paid for it within a year of his death? The sixty or eighty pounds Mr. Leathart paid Whistler for the _Lange Leizen_ increased to six or eight hundred when he sold it. Mr. Ionides had bought _Sea and Rain_ for twenty or thirty pounds, and now asked three hundred. Fifty pounds, the price of the _Blue Wave_ when Mr. Gerald Potter had it from Whistler, multiplied to a thousand when it was his turn to dispose of it. Fourteen hundred pounds was given by Arthur Studd for _The Little White Girl_ and a Nocturne, the two having cost Mr. Potter about one hundred and eighty pounds, and we have been told that Arthur Studd was recently offered six thousand pounds for _The Little White Girl_ alone. Whistler resented it when he found that fortunes were being made "at his expense" by so-called friends, and he complained that they were turning his reputation into pounds, shillings, and pence, travelling over Europe and holiday-making on the profits. The previous sentence was written when our book first appeared. During 1918 and 1919, there has been a fabulous increase in the selling price of Whistler's work. We do not know what amount was paid by Mr. Frick for the _Lady Meux_, the _Rosa Corder_, and the _Mrs. Leyland_ which he recently purchased. Some of the reports of prices are greatly exaggerated, no doubt. A few owners of Whistlers do appreciate them. But nearly all collectors in the United States regard art as they do stocks. They buy for a rise, and appreciate only the monetary value of the works they possess. One of the most striking cases is that of Mr. Howard Mansfield, whom Whistler, during many years, furnished with some of his most interesting prints, aided and directed in their collection, hoping, of course, that they would be left to a museum. But Mr. Mansfield sold his collection for an enormous price, altogether out of proportion to what Whistler received. Surprising statements have been circulated about the sale of pictures. The announcement of the price recently paid for the _Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine_ is as incorrect as the title given to the painting, which is simply a small slight sketch and different version of the important subject owned by Mr. Freer. The bigger the lie, the more impressive is such a statement concerning the prices asked and obtained--the merit of the work is of secondary importance. This is a fair specimen of American commercial art criticism.

Whistler, after the trade in his work began, suggested that a work of art, when sold, should still remain the artist's property; that it was only "lent its owner." It was now his frequent demand to owners and condition to purchasers that his pictures should be available for exhibition when and where and as often as he pleased. This is illustrated in the following letter which Mr. H. S. Theobald, K.C., writes us:

"... About 1870 I began to get such of his etchings as I could, and somewhere early in the eighties I became the fortunate possessor of some thirty or forty drawings and pastels through the Dowdeswells. Whistler became aware of my ownership of these, and they sometimes brought him to my house, which was then in Westbourne Square. The pictures, owing to stress of space, hung mostly on the staircase, and Whistler would stand in rapt admiration before them, with occasional ejaculations of 'how lovely,' 'how divine,' and so on. On one of these occasions he asked my wife if she had had her portrait taken. 'But of course not,' he added, 'as I have not painted you.'

"My intercourse with the Master was limited to occasions when he wanted to borrow the pictures. His manner of proceeding was somewhat abrupt. Some morning a person would appear in a four-wheel cab and present Whistler's card, on which was written, 'Please let bearer have fourteen of my pictures.' Sometimes, but not often, there was a preliminary warning from Whistler himself. But though the pictures went easily, it was a labour of Hercules to retrieve them. Once when I went to fetch them at his studio by appointment, after a previous effort, also by appointment, which was not kept, I found the studio locked, but after a search among the neighbours I got the key, and then I found some two or three hundred pictures stacked round the room buried in the dust of ages. Whistler loved his pictures but he certainly took no care of them. On that occasion I remember I took away by mistake in exchange for one of my pictures, a Nocturne that did not belong to me, though it was very like one of mine. You can imagine the Master's winged words when he found this out. I could only cry _mea culpa_ and bow my head before the storm. It was the risk to which I feared the pictures were exposed which made me harden my heart."

Whistler was as anxious to keep his pictures out of exhibitions when for some reason he did not care to have them shown. The large _Three Girls_ (_Three Figures, Pink and Grey_, in the London Memorial Exhibition) was at Messrs. Dowdeswell's in the summer of 1891. He had before this tried to get possession of it in order that he might destroy it, and he had offered to paint the portrait of the owner and his wife in exchange. His offer was refused, and while the picture was at Messrs. Dowdeswell's, he wrote a letter to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (July 28, 1891), to explain that it was a painting "thrown aside for destruction." An impudent answer from a critic led to a more explicit statement of his views on the subject:

"All along have I carefully destroyed plates, torn up proofs and burned canvases that the truth of the quoted word shall prevail, and that the future collector shall be spared the mortification of cataloguing his pet mistakes. To destroy, is to remain."

When this picture, with a number of studies for it, was sent to the London Memorial Exhibition, it was found very interesting and it was hung, and we think it fortunate that it was not destroyed. But had the Committee known it was the picture he wished destroyed it never would have been exhibited by the International Society.

In the summer of 1892, Whistler was invited by the Duke of Argyll to contribute to the British Section at the World's Columbian Exposition to be held in Chicago the following year, and the picture mentioned for the purpose was the _Carlyle_. The portrait had been skied in a corner the previous winter at the Victorian Exhibition in the New Gallery, of which Mr. J. W. Beck was Secretary, as he was now of the Fine Arts Committee for Chicago. Whistler wrote to Mr. Beck, sending his "distinguished consideration to the Duke and the President" (Leighton) with the assurance "that I have an undefined sense of something ominously flattering occurring, but that no previous desire on his part ever to deal with work of mine has prepared me with the proper form of acknowledgment. No, no, Mr. Beck! Once hung, twice shy!"

When the letter was sent to the papers and printers made "sky" of the "shy" Whistler was enchanted. Mr. Smalley told the story of the invitation in the _Times_, after Whistler's death, under the impression that he had been invited to show at Burlington House. That Whistler never was invited to show anything there we know, and we have the further testimony of Sir Fred Eaton, Secretary of the Academy, that "No such proposal as Mr. Smalley speaks of was ever made to Mr. Whistler, and it is difficult to understand on what grounds he made such a statement."

It is an amusing coincidence that this would seem to be confirmed by the fate of a letter addressed to Whistler, "The Academy, England," which, after having gone to the newspaper of that name, was next sent to Burlington House, and, finally, reached Whistler with "Not known at the R.A.," written on the cover. Here was one of the little incidents that Whistler called "the droll things of this pleasant life," and he sent the cover for reproduction to the _Daily Mail_ with the reflection:

"In these days of doubtful frequentation it is my rare good fortune to be able to send you an unsolicited official and final certificate of character."

Whistler did not depend upon the British Section at the Chicago Exposition. Americans made up for the official blunders of 1889. Professor Halsey C. Ives, chief of the Art Department, wrote letters that Whistler found most courteous, and everything was done to secure his pictures and prints. He was splendidly represented by The _Yellow Buskin_, the _Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine_, _The Fur Jacket_, among paintings, and by etchings of every period. The medal given him was the first official honour from his native land, where never before had so representative a collection of his work been seen.

Towards the end of 1892 the appreciation of America was expressed in another form. The new Boston Library was being built, and Messrs. McKim, Meade, and White were the architects. It was determined that the interior should be decorated by the most distinguished American artists. Mr. Sargent and Mr. Abbey were commissioned to do part of the work, and they joined with Mr. McKim and St. Gaudens in trying to induce Whistler to undertake the large panel at the top of the stairs. He made notes and suggestions for the design, which, he told us, was to be a great peacock ten feet high; but the work was put off, and, in the end, nothing came of the first opportunity given him for mural decoration since The Peacock Room.