Nocturnes & Peacocks
Updated: 5 days ago
According to Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler was ‘never dull, his brilliant wit, his caustic satire and his amusing epigrams made his views on art as delightful as they were misleading, and as fascinating as they were unsound.’ Wilde and Whistler were notorious dandies of Victorian London and vied with each other for the position of preeminent wit and vainest man of the era. They were famous friends until Wilde’s growing reputation threatened to knock Whistler, who was twenty years Wilde’s senior, off the top spot. Whistler’s ego couldn’t cope with that.
Photo of Whistler 1885 Arrangement in Grey & Black, Portrait of the Painter’s Mother 1871 Crepuscule in Flesh Colour & Green, Valparaiso 1866
Whistler and Wilde both championed the idea of Art for Art’s sake and they delighted in challenging Victorian conventions and scandalising society. For Whistler, painting was about creating beauty rather than telling stories, copying nature or delivering a moral message. He approached his paintings with musical compositions in mind, finding the right balance of colour, tone and form, and using musical terms in titles: Nocturne, Harmony, Symphony, Arrangement. He said, ‘as music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight.’
Nocturne in Blue & Silver, Cremorne Lights 1872 Green & Grey, Channel 1865 Nocturne Blue & Silver, Chelsea 1871 Nocturne in Blue & Gold, Old Battersea Bridge 1875
Tate’s exhibition offers a comprehensive view of the artist’s career. There are galleries full of paintings, drawings and prints as well as a reconstruction of the extraordinary Peacock Room. The evidence of Whistler’s talents as a painter, draftsman and printmaker is all around. No doubt Whistler’s ghost would revel in the great display of all his talents but as a painter, I just wanted to see his paintings. There seemed to be a lot more etchings than oils, so many etchings, some very dull.
But the paintings in the exhibition don’t disappoint. There are marine paintings from Whistler’s early career when he worked alongside the French realist Courbet on the Normandy coast. His later scenes of the Thames at night, with distant lights dissolving into misty, abstract arrangements reveal the influence of Turner and Monet. Whistler developed a technique of using thin layers of dilute paint and a very restricted palette to create atmospheric and sometimes haunting imagery.
There are some fine portraits in the show, some with props – blue and white china, oriental fans, sprigs of blossom – others pared back and strikingly modern. Arrangement in Grey and Black No 1 (1864) is better known as Whistler’s Mother. It was painted during a visit by Anna, his mother, who had travelled from the United States to stay at Whistler’s house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The painting shows her still in mourning clothes for her husband, who died of tuberculosis in 1849.
Symphony in White No.2, The Little White Girl 1864 Mother of Pearl & Silver, The Andalusian 1900 Harmony in Grey & Green, Miss Cicely Alexander 1874
One of the exhibition galleries features a series of Nocturnes, some so dark I could hardly make anything out. Others are full of glittering points of light, suggesting fireworks. Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (not in the exhibition) famously caused a legal battle. The revered art critic John Ruskin accused Whistler of throwing a pot of paint in the public’s face: Ruskin objected to everything about the work, including its price tag of 200 guineas. Whistler sued for libel and the two-day case at the Old Bailey in 1878 gave him an opportunity to present his case in favour of Art for Art’s sake. In the witness box Whistler was asked if he could justify charging such a high price for a painting he admitted he could produce in a few days: Whistler responded by saying the price reflected the value of a lifetime’s knowledge. He won the court case but received only a farthing in damages and was financially ruined by the legal costs.
This exhibition makes a case for Whistler’s central place in the story of modern art. Throughout his career, he battled for the freedom to define art on his own terms.
Whistler by William Merritt Chase 1885 Harmony in Blue & Gold, The Peacock Room 1877
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