The Man Whistler by Hesketh Pearson

Author:Hesketh Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

All that need be added is that Whistler had to make the best of his followers, and did not exert himself to get anyone’s work exhibited in Suffolk Street except on one occasion, when against the general wish he insisted that a picture by Lady Colin Campbell should be passed without submission to the hanging committee. Perhaps he valued his office more for the position it gave him in the outside world than for the influence he could exercise in the sphere of art. He was invited to Westminster Abbey for the celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee, to a garden party at Buckingham Palace, to a Naval Review off Spithead, and to a reception at the Royal Academy, the last of which appealed to his sense of humour. The President, Sir Frederick Leighton, was receiving guests at the top of the stairs when he saw Whistler and went forward with extended hands to welcome him: “My dear Jimmy, this is the first time I have seen you here!” “Yes, Freddie, it is quite true, and I have such a rotten excuse to offer you. It is the first time I have been invited.”

For two years the opposition to his leadership of the British Artists grew, and at last became open rebellion. His despotism had succeeded in uniting the majority. The hanging of pictures in an isolated manner, the decorations, the repainting of their signboard with the addition of a butterfly, the irritation of non-members who could not sell their works because they were not seen, the space given to a foreign artist, Monet, the arbitrary way in which the President had obtained a royal title for the Society, his declaration that members should resign from any other art society to which they belonged: all these things and a dozen more came boiling to the surface at a series of committee meetings, and Whistler defended himself by attacking his opponents. “I wanted to make it an art centre; they wanted it to remain a shop, although I said to them, ‘Gentlemen, don’t you perceive that as shopmen you have already failed. Don’t you see, eh?’” He also entertained some of them, and irritated others, with a parable:

“You know, you people are not well. You remind me of a shipload of passengers living in an antiquated boat which has been stuck in the mud for many years. Suddenly this old tub, which hitherto has been disabled and incapable of putting out to sea to face the storm and stress of the waves, is boarded by a pirate. (I am the pirate.) He patches up the ship and makes her not only weathertight, but a perfect vessel, and boldly puts out, running down less ably-captained ships and bearing a stream of wreckage in her wake… Naturally some of her original crew begin to notice the motion and feel rather uncomfortable. But I assure you, gentlemen, that this feeling does not last, and as soon as you get your sea legs you will enjoy

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