dans l’horrible, is now a commonplace 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 anything 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. But
the poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master
of colour and of 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 Baudelaire, not to Benjamin
West and Paul Delaroche. However, I should 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.
(Pall Mall Gazette, February 28, 1885.)
‘How can you possibly paint these ugly three-cornered
hats?’ asked a reckless art critic once of Sir
Joshua Reynolds. ’I see light and shade
in them,’ answered the artist. ‘Les
grands coloristes,’ says Baudelaire, in a charming
article on the artistic value of frock coats, ’les
grands coloristes savent faire de la couleur avec
un habit noir, une cravate blanche, et un fond gris.’
’Art seeks and finds the beautiful in all times,
as did her high priest Rembrandt, when he saw the
picturesque grandeur of the Jews’ quarter of
Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were
not Greeks,’ were the fine and simple words
used by Mr. Whistler in one of the most valuable passages
of his lecture. The most valuable, that is, to
the painter: for there is nothing of which the
ordinary English painter needs more to be reminded
than that the true artist does not wait for life to
be made picturesque for him, but sees life under picturesque
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