Whistler in the dark
Richard Luckett
Whistler Stanley Weintraub (Collins £4.95)
It is said that a visitor to Beau Brummell encountered the valet on the stairs, his arm draped with crumpled cravats. He responded to the visitor's enquiring glance with the Words: "These are our failures." A starched cravat — and the starching of cravats was one of Brummell's great contributions to . civilisation — could not be tied
tw. ice; the man of fashion had s.IMPly to go on trying, each time with a new tie, until the right set, at once negligent and Perfect, had been achieved. The process might take up to an hour. According to James McNeill Whistler: "A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared. To say of a picture, as is Often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to-say that it is incomplete and unfit for view." If a day's work at a portrait had not proved satisfactory — if, that is, he thought that he could still do better — the Wtping-out rag was ruthlessly applied. Sitters might be required to come as many as forty nines; if the result continued to fall short of Whistler's expectations they might never see it, and if they had paid it was even less likely that they would see their money back. The canvas might remain in Whistler's studio until he either convinced himself that it was acceptable or thought of some means of jmproving it; it might equally be slashed on its stretcher. Brummell's cravats could at least be sent to the laundry.
The comparison is not frivolous, any more Regency their common attitude is frivolous. A Aegency song containing the lines I would be a butterfly, Born in a bower, Christened in a tea-pot And dead in an hour
Was widely attributed to Brummell, who had acquired the sobriquet 'butterfly,' for obvious reasons. Whistler, having been told by Rossetti that his bold signature militated against the studied simplicities of his painting, took to using a semi-monogram JMW which he eventually evolved into a butterfly ideogram, consonant with his predilection for things Ja.Panese, and simultaneously expressive of his carefully maintained social 'front.' If he needed any theoretical justification for his attitude in either the artistic or the social SPhere, then he had it to hand. In the late 50's Whistler, who was working in France, "lough crossing to England at frequent in!servals to seek refuge and a breathing-space or financial recovery in his brother-in-law's London home, had become familiar with the Writings of Baudelaire, and it was one of 8audelaire's principal achievements to have seen the relation between the dandy and the artist, and in so doing to have redefined the terms of the imitation of nature prescribed by Aristotle, so that the artist now made art out of nature. In part his thinking derived from his study of a countryman of Whistler's, Edgar Allen Poe, and Whistler was himself, and independently, an admirer of Poe.
Whistler raised publicity to the level of art, a fact which his enemies were quick to point out, and he as quick to acknowledge. Yet his best observations were often carefully prepared, and in his published accounts of his various battles he polished the dialogue as much as he reasonably could. He was no less painstaking, in the end, with his wit as with his art, though he was much less easily satisfied.with a picture than an epigram. Sickert, a disciple who rebelled, wrote that: "A master is a craftsman who knows how to begin, how to continue, how to end. That is just what Whistler did not." But for Whistler this would have described the activities of an artisan, not an artist; the dandy had to achieve perfection but not to be seen to achieve perfection. The amount of sheer hard work which this view involved for Whistler is staggering, the more so since it obliged him to be almost as assiduous a diner-out as Henry James. And when the work of art also involved a manner of life then life itself fell into the pattern of ironies. In the case of the famous Peacock room at 49 Prince's Gate, Whistler was called in to improve a decorative scheme that had failed to come off, and ended by redecorating the entire room on a scale and at an expense that can justly be called fabulous. He invited the critics to a private view, assuring the owner of the house that: "These people are coming not to see you or your house: they are coming to see the work of the Master, and you, being a sensitive man, may naturally feel a little out in the cold." The original decorator, on viewing the result, ran mad and ended up gilding the floor of his bedroom whilst raving about peacocks and flowers. The irate owner broke off relations with Whistler, and the whole episode materially contributed to the painter's bankruptcy.
All this is clearly a gift to the biographer. Stanley Weintraub has had access to a certain number of oew sources, and this makes his book more comprehensive than its excellent predecessors, by James Laver and Hesketh Pearson respectively. But his loose method of referencing will not lighten the task of the serious student, and the presentation and style indicate that Mr Weintraub has had the general reader in mind. It is here that he is so fortunate in his subject matter, for Whistler, to his eternal credit, is slightly more interesting than Mr Weintraub is boring.
The objection to Mr Weintraub is not so much that he is apt to refer to Hampstead Heath as "rugged," or to write that "Whistler was done in by the Victorian middle-class taste for exact workmanship," or even that he is hopelessly vulgar about Swinburne and Ruskin. No doubt there are readers willing to tolerate constructions such as "The veiled concept. It was a mutual aim," just as there are others who will forgive him his uncomprehending account of The Last Day in the Old Home. But it is hard to excuse an account of Whistler, of all people, that contains repetitions and pointless detail. Mr Weinbtraub possesses some enthusiasm for his subject; to maintain a journalistic style for four hundred pages must be as taxing for the writer as the reader, and Mr Weintraub has accomplished the feat. But enthusiasm is not necessarily inclusive of comprehension. Mr Weintraub possesses some enthusiasm for description of Whistler's paintings, and a faithful reporter in the matter of Whistler's wit. Beyond this it is apparent that he would rather pull on a roll-neck sweater than wear a cravat, whatever the circumstances. The effect is a little odd and a little gruesome; readers of The Dunciad can best imagine it as a case of Theobald annotating Pope.
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