Modern Painting | Page 7

beard, and hair must, however, be admitted to be beautiful,
although they are not so full of charm as the greys in the portrait of
Miss Alexander.
But if Mr. Whistler had only failed in these matters, he might have still
produced a masterpiece. But there is a graver criticism to be urged
against the picture. A portrait is an exact reflection of the painter's state
of soul at the moment of sitting down to paint. We read in the picture
what he really desired; for what he really desired is in the picture, and
his hesitations tell us what he only desired feebly. Every passing
distraction, every weariness, every loss of interest in the model, all is
written upon the canvas. Above all, he tells us most plainly what he
thought about his model--whether he was moved by love or contempt;
whether his moods were critical or reverential. And what the canvas
under consideration tells most plainly is that Mr. Whistler never forgot
his own personality in that of the ancient philosopher. He came into the
room as chirpy and anecdotal as usual, in no way discountenanced or
put about by the presence of his venerable and illustrious sitter. He had
heard that the Chelsea sage wrote histories which were no doubt very
learned, but he felt no particular interest in the matter. Of reverence,
respect, or intimate knowledge of Carlyle there is no trace on the
canvas; and looked at from this side the picture may be said to be the
most American of all Mr. Whistler's works. "I am quite as big a man as
you", to put it bluntly, was Mr. Whistler's attitude of mind while
painting Carlyle. I do not contest the truth of the opinion. I merely
submit that that is not the frame of mind in which great portraiture is
done.
The drawing is large, ample, and vigorous, beautifully understood, but
not very profound or intimate: the picture seems to have been

accomplished easily, and in excellent health and spirits. The painting is
in Mr. Whistler's later and most characteristic manner. For many
years--for certainly twenty years--his manner has hardly varied at all.
He uses his colour very thin, so thinly that it often hardly amounts to
more than a glaze, and painting is laid over painting, like skin upon
skin. Regarded merely as brushwork, the face of the sage could hardly
be surpassed; the modelling is that beautiful flat modelling, of which
none except Mr. Whistler possesses the secrets. What the painter saw
he rendered with incomparable skill. The vision of the rugged
pensiveness of the old philosophers is as beautiful and as shallow as a
page of De Quincey. We are carried away in a flow of exquisite
eloquence, but the painter has not told us one significant fact about his
model, his nationality, his temperament, his rank, his manner of life.
We learn in a general way that he was a thinker; but it would have been
impossible to draw the head at all and conceal so salient a characteristic.
Mr. Whistler's portrait reveals certain general observations of life; but
has he given one single touch intimately characteristic of his model?
But if the portrait of Carlyle, when looked at from a certain side, must
be admitted to be not wholly satisfactory, what shall be said of the
portrait of Lady Meux? The dress is a luminous and harmonious piece
of colouring, the material has its weight and its texture and its character
of fold; but of the face it is difficult to say more than that it keeps its
place in the picture. Very often the faces in Mr. Whistler's portraits are
the least interesting part of the picture; his sitter's face does not seem to
interest him more than the cuffs, the carpet, the butterfly, which hovers
about the screen. After this admission, it will seem to many that it is
waste of time to consider further Mr. Whistler's claim to portraiture.
This is not so. Mr. Whistler is a great portrait painter, though he cannot
take measurements or follow an outline like Holbein.
Like most great painters, he has known how to introduce harmonious
variation into his style by taking from others just as much of their sense
of beauty as his own nature might successfully assimilate. I have
spoken of his assimilation and combination of the art of Velasquez, and
the entire art of Japan, but a still more striking instance of the power of
assimilation, which, strange as it may seem, only the most original
natures possess, is to hand in the early but extremely beautiful picture,
La femme en blanc. In the Chelsea period of his life Mr. Whistler saw a

great deal of that singular man, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Intensely Italian,
though he had never