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T would be foolish to deny that Whistler was an artist of great distinction. All experts are agreed that he is one of the master-etchers. He has left us many pictures of exquisite refinement and aristocratic elegance. To him we are indebted for one masterpiece which the world will never cease to cherish the portrait of his mother. All this is true, yet his limitations are such that he does not deserve the extravagant laudation that is now so common. His skill with the brush was marvelous; yet it was not so used as to produce the greatest or the most enduring effect. To him harmony of tone was the supreme merit. His pictures are generally arrangements in some color, white or yellow or green or blue. They are keyed to the tint selected as a musician keys his tone poem. To this no one can object. These delicately colored pictures, gliding from shade to shade of the same hue, are a joy to the eye.

They are immensely restful after the numerous works where one sees all the colors of the palette thrown onto the canvas without regard to harmony. To turn from those garish productions to a Whistler is like turning from a cacophony by Schoenberg to a Chopin nocturne.

Unhappily, as we are told, to insure this harmony of tone Whistler made it a rule never to touch his canvas without going over the whole surface at each sitting. This produced two unfortunate results. Of course, so summary a method of painting precluded details, so that his pictures remain essentially sketches in paint; often brilliant and often exquisite sketches, but sketches still. There is about these sketches nothing cheap or coarse or impressionistic. They are elegant, refined, distinguished, the work of an aristocrat to his finger tips.

Every artist has a right to work in his own way. Whistler preferred the brilliant sketch, sacrificing details to unity of tone and general effect. No one can blame him for this. Unhappily he has led many a commonplace artist who might have done good, conscientious work in the old way to imitate his style, with pitiful results. This is no fault of his. Michelangelo said sadly "My science will make many fools," and, sure enough, the incomparable works of the mighty Florentine were the ruin of art in central Italy for several generations. Such baneful results are inseparable from manifestations of unusual power or skill.

Pictures so broadly painted and so sketchy as most of Whistler's have one serious defect-they omit many details that would be seen in nature.

They are therefore unconvincing. We may not stop to analyze our sensations, but we know that the thing is not true. We do not see what we would see if the living person or the actual landscape were before us. It is all right to emphasize certain features. That is the privilege of the artist. Thus does he show us the essence of the man or the scene. This emphasis laid upon the matters of greatest importance is what distinguishes the inspired creator from the dull realist. But the artist should also reveal those things that every eye would see and the want of which is felt, though perhaps not understood.

Take, for example, Titian, Velasquez and Rembrandt. As they grew old failing eyesight, which the imperfect spectacles of the day could not wholly overcome, and perhaps trembling nerves, compelled them to paint in a broader and more impressionistic manner, so that to enjoy their later works we must stand at a greater distance. But no essential detail is sacrificed. When we place ourselves at the true point of sight, we see everything that we should see if the sitter were there before us-the texture of his garments, the ornaments upon it, the chair in which he sits. And because we see all that we should see if the man were there before us in the flesh, the picture is real and convincing. The skill of the artist draws our eyes irresistibly to the face; but when they wander away, as wander they will, all is true to nature, and enhances the general effect. Whistler and his followers, in slighting the remainder to concentrate attention on the countenance defeat their purpose. If we could rivet our eyes upon the face alone, all would be well. But we can not. The glance will wander over the surface of the canvas, and in so doing it perceives that the picture does not offer what would be seen were the man before us in fact; and so the sense of truth and reality is lost.

Only one artist has ever known how to produce a maximum of effect with a minimum of labor, and that was Rubens. The primitives and many later masters insert numerous details that can not be seen when we stand far enough away to take in the picture as a whole. This is a pleasing fault. These details do not distract our attention when we are at the proper distance, because they are unseen. Yet still they are there, and we can approach and study them at our leisure. For this reason we never grow tired of the primitives. Every time we approach them we find something

new; and so we return again and again, spying out little bits that had escaped our notice. On the other hand unless a sketchy picture is of very commanding power or of a very alluring fascination, it soon wearies us. At the first glance we see all that there is in it; and every time that we look at it our interest declines. Rubens alone knew exactly the amount of detail that must be inserted to produce the fullest effect. When at the proper distance to see the picture as a whole, we see everything that could be seen if the people painted were actually there before our eyes and at that distance. The sense of actuality is therefore perfect. But there is no wasted labor. If we think that by approaching we shall discover something additional, we are speedily undeceived. The supreme master has known exactly how much of detail he had to give to make his picture true to life. This he gives with amazing virtuosity, and not one iota more. Not a brush-stroke is thrown away; yet not one that is essential to the effect is omitted.

Of course, this does not apply to his innumerable sketches in paint. These he did not regard as pictures. Sometimes they are the beginnings of pictures that were never finished; oftener they are studies for pictures that he is to make. They are precious as showing how the great man worked; but he would have been the last to consider them pictures; and our modern artists who use them as models for compositions which they deem finished fail to comprehend the spirit in which the mighty Fleming worked.

One result of Whistler's practice of going all over his pictures at each sitting is going to prove disastrous to his fame. In order to accomplish this feat of celerity it was necessary to have his medium very fluid. He therefore mixed the paint with an excess of oil. The result is that the majority of his pictures are growing muddy and opaque, even cracking. The famous nocturnes, where the darkness was once suffused with so refined a light, are now mostly mere expanses of slaty blackness, with here and there a yellow spot that once was the flame of a lamp suffusing an exquisite glow. The people who rave over these nocturnes are merely repeating the exclamations of a past generation that saw them when they were in their pristine state. And it is not alone the nocturnes that are darkening and cracking. Nearly all his pictures have lost their lustre and have become leaden in hue; thus losing that exquisite harmony of tone which constituted their principal charm.

There is no excuse for this deterioration of Whistler's pictures. The chemical action of pigments and solvents on one another is thoroughly understood. A knowledge of such things is part of the equipment of every conscientious painter. It is true that Turner produced a pigment nearer the golden glory of the sunset than anything that was ever seen, and that this has now turned to a dirty brown. But this was an experiment—a secret which he fortunately never revealed to any one. The vast majority of his colors have held, and are true to-day. Whistler made no experiments of the kind. His colors were those in common use. Any chemist could have told him the danger of their disintegration if not properly used. Any of his colleagues could have enlightened him.

More than four hundred years ago in the "St. John the Baptist" Leonardo da Vinci showed us how luminous shadows could be made that time could never darken. Nearly three hundred years ago Rembrandt painted innumerable pictures whose mysterious darkness is still suffused with a light that will never perish; yet Whistler's nocturnes within a quarter of a century are mostly opaque and dull. His admirers say that many of the pictures of Leonardo have gone to pieces. This is true; but Leonardo was the great innovator. He found art primitive; he left it modern. Each picture was an effort to solve a new problem. Sometimes, as in the "St. John the Baptist," which opened the way that Correggio and Rembrandt were to follow to such triumphant conclusions, he was brilliantly successful. Sometimes, as when he painted the "Last Supper" on the plaster wall in tempera (not in oil, as Vasari asserts) the result was disastrous. With him almost everything was still to be discovered. Only the methods of painting in tempera and in fresco had been mastered. He was therefore justified in trying every new path.

With Whistler it was different. He was the heir of many ages of achievement. The effects upon one another of the various pigments and solvents that he employed were well known. It was as much his business as a painter to master these chemical relations as to learn to use the brush. Either he did not inform himself of facts which every painter should know, or he was indifferent to consequences. For neither could there be any excuse. He was a man of keen intelligence who could have mastered the chemistry of his craft without difficulty. It was his duty as an honest man to do so. The painter who sells to a patron a picture which in a few years will darken or fade is practically guilty of a fraud. He is like the merchant who sells shoddy goods that look well when sold and go to pieces in the use. This is what Whistler did in a great number of cases. He sold at enormous prices pictures which are now only ghosts of themselves-pictures that have lost the luminosity and the harmony of tone that constituted their principal merit. Men still rave over these pictures and pretend to see in them the charm which were once there; but in point of fact it has vanished; and people admire these dull, opaque works because they are told that they must do so, or be accounted behind the times. It is impossible now to explain this indifference of Whistler to the permanence of his creation. Apparently his enormous vanity would have led him to seek immortality above all things. But his equally amazing flippancy perhaps rendered him indifferent to all save contemporary applause, with the worldly success that it brings. His character was so enigmatic, so full of contradictions, that his motives are beyond our ken.

A grievous fault with Whistler is his aloofness. He seems to take no more interest in his sitters than if they were insects. He presents their outward semblance with an aristocratic indifference. To him the great heart of humanity that loves and suffers and is glad is a thing of no moment. People are of interest merely as they can be used in an

arrangement of lines and colors. His admirers justify this aloof attitude by the example of Velasquez. But Velasquez held aloof from his sitters because they were usually degenerates of the Spanish Court for whom he could feel only contempt. The less he penetrated into their souls, the less he revealed of their inner selves, the better. With scarce concealed scorn he presents their outward semblance, and stops there. But when he has a real gentleman like the sculptor Montañés or the Marquis of Spinola, there can be no more sympathetic brush. He paints them with a reverence and affection that are deserving of all praise. In such portraits he is worthy to stand beside Rembrandt, the greatest portrait painter of all time, who sympathizes with every sitter, who reads his inmost soul and presents it to us in forms that will never die. It is almost impossible not to love the men and women whom Rembrandt paints. He shows us their very hearts, and there is something lovable in every human heart if it is properly revealed. But it is impossible to love the people whom Whistler portrays. There is nothing lovable in his presentation. We must admire his dexterity; but beyond that we can not go.

Of course, there is one splendid exception in the portrait of his mother. Before the noble woman who had made so many sacrifices for him his flippancy and persiflage are forgotten; and his deep and genuine affection find an expression that will never die. Nothing nobler or sweeter can be conceived. Here there is no aloofness, no mere surface work. It is the supreme revelation of the sweet Christian woman who realizes that her task is nearly done and who looks forward with unquestioning faith to a blessed resurrection. The more we admire this splendid work the more we blame Whistler for his wasted talents. The man who painted this masterpiece should have given us many others animated by the same spirit. Instead, he allowed his flippancy and his contempt for humanity to lead him to treat his sitters only as parts of a pattern, as beings to whose hopes and fears, to whose joys and sorrows he is indifferent.

If Whistler had been content merely to do his work as an artist, we should feel for him only gratitude. We should regret that a false technique should have caused so many of his pictures to deteriorate and to lose their charm; but we should have delighted in those that remain. They are refined and aristocratic, with no trace of the coarseness and vulgarity now so common in art. Nothing that he has left us is degrading; much is worthy of praise; and the portrait of his mother suffices alone to ensure his immortality. As long as men reverence the ideal of Christian womanhood declining sweetly into the vale of years, that will be cherished. Unfortunately Whistler was not content to etch and to paint. He had his theory of art, and this he undertook to force upon the world. He was not content to say "This is my way of painting, and I think it is a good one." He proclaimed that his method was the only true one and that everything else was wrong. happily he was a man of such amazing self-assurance and of so pungent a wit that he has been able to lead the majority of the American school to accept his dictum as the solemn gospel of art.

And un

It is not necessary to review all his artistic

theories. Many of them are correct and have justly met with general acceptance. But unhappily he was the most flippant of men. A little flippancy does no harm. It lends a zest to conversation as a little tobasco sauce lends a zest to food. But if persisted in, nothing is so fatal to spiritual greatness. We all enjoy Bernard Shaw girding at Shakespeare. But if any man takes him seriously, God have mercy on his soul! for it is lost.

Nature is so irresistible in her power, so sublime in some of her aspects, so beautiful in others, that the only attitude of a reasonable man toward her is one of reverence. If he is an artist he will not copy her slavishly, as Ruskin enjoins. He will accentuate, he will eliminate, so as to present most forcibly that aspect of her which he is seeking to emphasize. But always he will respect her essential truth, and only endeavor to make us realize some part of it the more intensely.

Of all Nature's manifestations the sunset is the most glorious. Each day the miracle is repeated, and each day it is different. Even the magic brush of Turner can not reproduce its glory of color or its delicacy of tints. The normal man feels that in the presence of such splendor he should stand with bare head, as in the immediate presence of God. But after looking at a sunset where all the sky was aflame with crimson and gold, Whistler turned away with the sneering remark "What a perfectly silly sunset!" There is nothing sublime in such impudence as this, as there is in Henley's famous lines. It simply bespeaks an aridity of soul that is pitiable. It is far worse than his reply to the foolish admirer who said "There are only two great painters, you and Velasquez." "Why drag in Velasquez?"

It is true that this attitude of Whistler was

largely a pose. He was an incorrigible poseur. But unhappily we can not maintain any pose for a considerable length of time without becoming in some measure at least the thing that we pretend to be. If Whistler had been an ordinary poseur he might be ignored, but he was a man of a brilliant and cutting wit. Men delighted in his conversation, malignant and uncharitable though it often was. They still delight in his writings. And so he has forced his views upon the artistic world, particularly in America. He dominates American painting to-day; and his chief gospel, that art must never be "literary"; that it must never tell a story; that its appeal must be only to the eye, not to the heart and soul; that a picture should be only a pleasing arrangement of lines and colors in harmonious tones, has been generally accepted by our painters.

If you went to the Spring Academy you saw many beautiful pictures, lovely in color, perfect in drawing; but not one of them dealt with the great problems of life, not one stirred the mind or touched the heart. Our painters have made the great refusal. They have divorced art from life and in so doing they have sinned against humanity and the Holy Ghost. Nothing can be more contrary to the experience of mankind than the dictum, now generally accepted by our painters, that a picture must not tell a story. Half the great

pictures of the world tell the story of the Bible and of the lives of saints. Another large portion tell the stories of the Greek mythology.

This much is true: All stories are not fit to be told in paint. It should be a story that can be easily taken in by the eye, and it had best be one that is familiar to the beholder. But the mere fact that we have to glance at the title of a picture to understand it fully is no objection, provided that it is then comprehensible. The painters of the Whistler cult all take Velasquez as their god. Yet Velasquez's most popular picture, the "Lancers" or "Surrender of Breda," tells a story; and the central figures tell it surpassingly well. We see that one noble gentleman who has defended a city to the utmost is surrendering its key to another noble gentleman who receives it with a gracious courtesy that takes the sting from defeat. The story tells itself; yet we must look to the title to see that the city is Breda and the men Justin of Nassau and the Marquis of Spinola. If Whistler's doctrines are correct, this picture is a blot on Velasquez's fame. Yet the world loves it best of all his works, just because it tells a story, and a story that appeals to our love of noble manhood and chivalrous courtesy. The picture is marred by the fact that nobobdy in it is taking any interest in the great event transpiring, but all of them look out, indifferent to what is going on, merely posing for their portraits. Despite this defect, however, the picture will remain forever popular as no other work by the great Spaniard, because it alone among his finer works tells a story.

How the story should have been told is best shown by Rembrandt's "Lesson in Anatomy." With what intense interest each one of the attending physicians is watching the demonstration of Dr. Tulp; and the one whose attention has been momentarily diverted only lends to the scene the needed variety.

It is true that nothing can be more wearisome than the majority of the old historical pictures. In our own day Abbey has revived them, and even his impeccable draughtmanship, his splendid color and his skill in composition can barely make them acceptable. But there is a wide distance between these cumbersome historical machines and the meaningless "arrangements" of the Whistler school; and in this space there is room for an infinitude of works dealing with the great emotions that stir the heart or arouse the mind of humanity.

Our American painters complain that they are not appreciated by their countrymen; that their works remain unsold. The reason is that they do not offer the American people what they crave. We are a great people. Our hearts are sound, our minds are vigorous. We are not a lot of dilettante mandarins. What we demand is works of art that deal with the emotions, the thoughts of humanity. Vapid arrangements of lines and colors in harmonious tones do not alone satisfy us. We want the artist to think and to feel, and to put his thoughts and emotions on the canvas. The men who do this, Mr. Vedder, Mr. Blashfield, Mr. Cox and the like, are not neglected. If you will give us an art that pulsates with human feeling, that expresses human thought, there will be no want of patrons.

The nude is the life of art. Raphael drew his holiest Madonnas from the nude model. The human body is the most beautiful and the most expressive of God's creations. Whistler eschewed the nude, partly because his sketchy treatment could not reproduce the satiny sheen of living flesh, partly because he had nothing to express; and it is rather in obedience to his example than to the supposed Puritanism of America that our painters so neglect the nude. The great masters who have sought most persistently to reach the heights have generally been lovers of the nude. It was through the nude that Michelangelo strove to utter the loftiest messages of the Christian faith. It was through the nude that Giorgioné, Titian and Tintoretto tried to bring men back to a sense of the imperishable beauty of humanity, which is the same now as in the days of Greece, if we have but eyes to see. It was through the nude that Rubens gave us his supreme revelation of the beauty of flesh as flesh, and uttered his splendid appeals for peace and justice among men. In their neglect of the nude our artists greatly sin.

Of course, nothing can be more offensive to good taste or to sound morals than commonplace nakedness, such as we see in so many "studies" in foreign exhibitions. For these there is no excuse. The human body should be presented with the reverence due to a thing of beauty. The model chosen should be the most perfect that can be obtained, and even this should be idealized if necessary, omitting any defects and supplying any deficiencies. When this is done we have art in its purest and most expressive form. In America. we seem to have no adequate school of the nude. In the Spring Academy there was only one that was acceptable-the "Idyl" by Mr. Valliant, reproduced in the April issue of this magazine. Even that left much to be desired. Drawing and composition were perfect; but the color was cold and dead, with none of the glory of Giorgioné, none of the splendor of Rubens, none of the satiny sheen and lustrous tones of Mr. Fry's little masterpiece reproduced in the March number of THE ART WORLD. At the "Independent Exhibition" in the Grand Central Palace there were many nudes; but there usual characteristic was a crass ineptitude. The crying need of painting in America to-day is a proper study of the nude. When our artists have mastered that, they will have mastered the instrument to express their loftiest emotions, their profoundest thoughts. One of the most pernicious influences of Whistler has been this discouragement of the study of the nude.

Our artists, who complain so bitterly of popular neglect, should take a lesson from the Italian Renaissance. In that blessed day no worthy artist was without employment, so far as history records. Why? Because they gave the people what they wanted, not lifeless arrangements in pink and white, in brown and yellow, but pictures that portrayed the emotions of the age, that gripped the heart and aroused the mind. They were not afraid to tell a story in paint. Giotto was the greatest story-teller that ever wielded a brush, save only Raphael, the Prince of Painters. Telling stories and telling them well, so that they touched the emotions and awoke the intellect, was their daily business. And these story-telling pictures,

painted in flagrant contravention of ali Whistler's rules, are among our most precious possessions to-day. They pleased the men of their time and they have pleased the men of all succeeding ages; while the "symphonies" and "arrangements" of Whistler and his successors appeal only to a small coterie of mandarins.

The world is now passing through its most frightful crisis since Darius and Xerxes undertook to blot out the liberties of Greece. After forty years of preparation autocracy started out to enslave mankind. In Belgium its cruelties have made Philip II and Alva appear angels of mercy. Its crimes on the high seas have made the Barbary pirates seem gentlemen. It has sought to intimidate the world by a frightfulness without example. It foresaw everything save the unconquerable soul of man, which throughout all the nations has risen in revolt against the cruelty of Germany as it once rose against the cruelty of Spain. The conspiracy has failed; but in the effort autocracy has caused the shedding of more blood and tears, it has caused more anguish of soul and body than were ever before inflicted on humanity in the same period. In this hour of the world's supreme tragedy, when

Jesus of Nazareth is being crucified again in a thousand places every day, are our painters to do nothing but to make "arrangements" in blue and gold, in pink and silver? When the great heart of humanity is bleeding as it never bled before, when the soul of man is rising against tyranny with a nobility worthy of the days of Marathon, are our artists to be blind and deaf to all around them, and to paint for a handful of dilettantes? If so, they more than deserve the neglect of which they complain.

I do not mean that they should paint war pictures, like Horace Vernet or Detaille or de Neuville. That is the most unattractive form of art. But they should forget Whistler's foolish dictum that art should never be literary, that it should appeal only to the eye, not to the heart and soul. Art should be as broad as literature, as broad as life. It should give voice to our loftie t aspirations, to our deepest grief. No thought should be too profound for it to grapple with. It hould go hand in hand with literature and music, voicing in every tone the cry of the human heart. The Academy Exhibition shows that the cunning hand is not warting; but tl.e brain and the soul are sleeping; and until they awake we shall not have an art worthy of our country.

George B. Rose