WILDE V WHISTLER BEING AN ACRIMONIOUS CORRESPONDENCE ON ART BETWEEN OSCAR WILDE AND JAMES A McNeill whistler LONDON privately PRINTED MCMVI 4- Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/wildevwhistlerbeOOwhis WILDE V WHISTLER Four hundi-ed copies on small quarto paper, and one hundred large paper copies on demy octavo paper, have been printed of this brochure. WILDE V WHISTLER BEING AN ACRIMONIOUS CORRESPONDENCE ON ART BETWEEN OSCAR WILDE AND JAMES A McNeill WHISTLER London privatfxy printed mcmvi Mr WHISTLER'S TEN O'CLOCK, BY MR OSCAR WILDE. RENGAINES ! Pall Mall Gazette, Feb. 2ist, 1885, AST night at Prince's Hall, Mr. Whistler made his first public appearance as a lecturer on Art, and spoke for more than an hour with really marvellous eloquence on the absolute uselessness of all lectures of the kind. Mr. Whistler began his lecture with a very pretty aria on pre-historic history, describing how in earlier times hunter and warrior would go forth to chase and foray, while the artist sat at home making cup and bowl for their service. Rude imitations of nature they were first, like the gourd bottle, till the sense of beauty and form developed, and, in all its exquisite proportions, the first vase was fashioned. Then came a higher civilisation of Architecture and Arm-chairs, and with exquisite design, and dainty diaper, the useful things of Life were made lovely : and the hunter and the warrior lay on the couch when they were tired, and, v»'hen they were thirsty, drank from the bowl, and 5 never cared to lose the exquisite proportions of the one, or the dehghtful ornament of the other : and this attitude of the primi- tive anthropophagous Phihstine formed the text of the lecture, and was the attitude which Mr Whistler entreated his audience to adopt towards Art. Remembering, no doubt, many charm- ing invitations to wonderful private views, this fashionable assemblage seemed somewhat aghast, and not a little amused, at being told that the slightest appearance among a civilized people of any joy in beautiful things is a grave impertinence to all painters ; but Mr. Whistler was relentless, and with charm- ing ease, and much grace of manner, explained to the public that the only thing they should cultivate was ugliness, and that on their permanent stupidity rested all the hopes of art in the future. The scene was in every way delightful ; he stood there, a mini- ature Mephistopheles mocking the majority ! he was like a brill- iant surgeon lecturing to a class composed of subjects destined ultimately for dissection, and solemnly assuring them how valuable to science their maladies were and how absolutely uninteresting the slightest symptoms of health on their part would be. In fairness to the audience, however, I must say that they seemed extremely gratified at being rid of the dreadful responsibility of admiring anything, and nothing could have exceeded their enthusiasm when they were told by Mr Whistler that no matter how vulgar their dresses were, or how hideous their surrounding? at home, still it v/as possible that a gre.at 6 painter, if there was such a thing, could, by contemplating them in the twilight, and half closing his eyes, see them under really picturesque conditions, and produce a picture which they were not to attempt to understand, much less dare to enjoy. Then there were some arrows, barbed and brilliant, shot off, with all the speed and splendour of fireworks at the archaeolo- gists, who spend their lives in verifying the birth-places of no- bodies, and estimate the value of a work of art by its date or decay ; at the art critics who always treat a picture as if it were a novel, and try and find out the plot ; at dilettanti in general, and amateurs in particular, and ( O mea culpa !) at dress re- formers most of all. "Did not Velasquez paint crinolines? What more do you want?" Having thus made a holocaust of humanity, Mr Whistler turned to Nature, and in a few minutes convicted her of the Crystal Palace, Bank Holidays, and a general overcrowding of detail, both in omnibuses and in landscapes ; and then, in a passage of singular beauty, not unlike one that occurs in Corot's letters, spoke of the artistic value of dim dawns and dusks, when the mean facts of life are lost in evanescent and exquisite effects, when common things are touched with mystery and transfigured with beauty : when the warehouses become as palaces, and the tall chimneys of the factory seem like cam- paniles in the silver air. Finally, after making a strong protest against anybody but a painter judging of painting, and a pathetic appeal to the 7 B audience not to be lured by the aesthetic movement into having beautiful things about them, Mr Whistler concluded his lecture with a pretty passage about Fusiyama on a fan, and made his bow to an audience which he had succeeded in completely fas- cinating by his wit, his brilliant paradoxes, and at times, his real eloquence. Of course, with regard to the value of beautiful surroundings I entirely differ from Mr. Whistler. An artist is not an isolated fact, he is the resultant of a certain milieu and a certain entourage, and can no more be born of a nation that is devoid of any sense of beauty than a fig can grow from a thorn or a rose blossom from a thistle. That an artist will find beauty in ugliness, le beau dans r horrible, is now a common- place of the schools, the argot of the atelier, but I strongly deny that charming people should be condemned to live with magenta ottomans and Albert blue curtains in their rooms in order that some painter may observe the side lights on the one and the values of the other. Nor do I accept the dictum that only a painter is a judge of painting. I say that only an artist is a judge of art ; there is a wide difference. As long as a painter is a painter merely, he should not be allowed to talk of any- thing but mediums and megilp, and on those subjects should be compelled to hold his tongue ; it is only when he becomes an artist that the secret laws of artistic creation are revealed to him. For there are not many arts but one art merely : poem, picture, and Parthenon, sonnet and statue—all are in their essence the same, and he who knows one, knows all. 8 But the poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts ; and so to the poet beyond all others are these mysteries known ; to Edgar Allan Poe and to Baude.. laire, not to Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche. However, I would not enjoy anybody else's lectures unless in a few points I disagreed with them, and Mr Whistler's lecture last night was, like everything that he does, a masterpiece. Not merely for its clever satire and amusing jests will it be remembered, but for the pure and perfect beauty of many of its passages — passages delivered with an earnestness which seemed to amaze those who had looked on Mr Whistler as a master of persiflage merely, and had not known him, as we do, as a master of painting also. For that he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting, is my opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr Whistler himself entirely concurs. OSCAR WILDK Reflection : It is not enough that our simple Sunflower flourisK on his "figs" — he has now grafted Edgar Poe on the "rose" tree of the early American Market in " a certain milieu" of dry goods and sympathy ; and " a certain entourage" of worship and wooden nutmegs. Born of a Nation, not absolutely "devoid of any sense of beauty" — Their idol— cherished, listened to, and understood ! — Foolish Baudelaire ! — Mistaken Mallarme I J. A. McN. W. TENDERNESS IN TITE STREET TO THE poet: The World. ^^SCAR — I have read your exquisite article in the Pall Mall. Nothing is more delicate, in the flattery of "the Poet" to " the Painter," than the ndiveti of " the Poet " in the choice of his Painters — Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche ! You have pointed out that " the Painter's " mission is to find "/