Madame Pickwick Art Blog Art and media blog of the unexpected

James Whistler: Grey and Black and Dandy All Over

Who Am I?  What artist , period of painting and paintings best reflects myself? Five women and five men will be posthumously featured over the next several months. A five dollar gift certificate will be mailed to each participant who responds by making a choice and explaining why. There will be an as yet undisclosed Grand Prize following the final installment.

Arrangement in Grey and Black

JAMES McNEIL WHISTLER. His collection of essays and letters was entitled ”The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”.  Whistler had a chip on his shoulder. He was vengeful, combative and carried grudges ’till death did him part. He lived and painted against the social and artistic conventions of Victorian England  and the Parisian art establishment. Whistler was an iconoclastic artist , unassociated with a specific style  or school. The lack of definitive categorization delayed  Whistler  receiving  his just due.

At the Piano 1859

James McNeil Whistler  left the United States for Europe at the age of 21 and never looked back. He lived primarily in London and Paris . Whistler is most famous for ”Whistler’s Mother” painted in oil and completed in 1871. The official title is ”Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist’s Mother” . The painting was initially rejected by the  104 th Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art in 1872, then accepted at the 11 th hour. It was considered unsuitable  by the  Royal Academy because of Whistler’s inversion of the  accepted norms of portrait  painting in favor of  a broader arrangement.

Harmony in Yellow and Gold 1873

Nonetheless, Grey and Black displays masterful portraiture technique through the representation of his Mother Anna’s  strength of character as well as a deep sensitivity visible in the face, lace cap, hands and lace hankerchief. The portrait elements however remained only a parallel thesis to the painting taken as a whole. Against Whistler’s intentions, Grey and Black over time became appropriated in popular culture as an icon of American Motherhood.

Whistler’s talent was to convey and link elements of intimacy between a formal structure and the subject. Themes of estrangement  and isolation abound. McNeil understood the notion of ”Art for Arts Sake” which even in Gaie Paris of LaPigale notoriety  was considered  in poor taste. His first brush with rejection in Paris was for ”Wapping” which was re-worked over four years to  remove all narrative and moral overtones  on the subject of  common warfside prostitution.

Wapping

Whistler was one of the first western painters to be influenced by the artistic traditions of Japan,which maintained that the distinction between fine art and decorative art were part of the same aesthetic within Japanese culture.

Whistler was egocentric, witty, charming,  and abrasive. He was also a dandy a gadfly and a devil. Whistler  cultivated his image as a man emancipated from conventionality through his eccentricity of pose and dress and repudiation of most social conventions. Whistler burned through his commissions; he womanized, he pawned.  Arrangement in Grey and Black  was sold to stave off creditors but Whistler nonetheless declared bankruptcy in 1879, 

James McNeil Whistler

 He was a pioneer in the modern style and presentation of art galleries  and exhibits as we know them. Prior to Whistler, art galleries resembled collections of knick-knacks akin to a warehouse lifted from Dicken’s Old Curiosity Shop. He designed a house, furniture, and is viewed as a pioneer in modern interior decoration for his ”Peacock Room”.

Whistler triumphed in pastel, oil, watercolor and lithography.He is considered a master among masters in the art  of etching ,without peer with the exception of Van Dyck and Rembrandt.

Etching:Gretchen at Heidelberg 1858

On Mother’s Day 1897, Madame Pickwick interviewed James Whistler on the 25 th anniversary of ”Arrangement in Grey and Black” Here are some excerpts:

Madame Pickwick: ”What is your relation today with the art consuming public and the critics?”

James Whistler: ”Two and two continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five”.

Madame Pickwick:”Is artistic genius hereditary?”

James Whistler: ”I can’t tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring”.

Madame Pickwick: ”How would you sum up your career?”

James Whistler: ”An artist’s career always begins tomorrow”.

Madame Pickwick: ”If you had one phrase to describe yourself and your work what would that be?”

James Whistler: ”Art thats’ fine and dandy!’

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Genius, tasteful, high strung; A supremely confident personality, outspoken, with an  appreciation of life’s finer things . Is this you?

Next: Florine Stettheimer