PAINT INTO SPIRIT
As I read a review of the new biography of James MacNeill Whistler, A Life for Art’s Sake, I learned that he was 5’-3" tall, a dear friend of Oscar Wilde’s, and, basically, a cad and a profligate. These final revelations sat oddly with the gorgeous delicacy of his paintings, particularly the nocturnes, which flicker between abstraction and depiction before settling, gloriously, into abstraction.
So I hunted down the Whistler paintings at the Met. There are two of them in the main galleries: a formal portrait of French art critic Theodore Duret, and a nighttime view of Cremorne Gardens in London. The portrait is lovely, and exactly what one expects: a flattering depiction of a fop in a tuxedo, top hat and pince nez posed against a plain white backdrop. It’s executed in feathery, fluid brushtrokes that give the entire image, even the tiniest details, a tone of dreamy indecision.
The painting of Cremorne Gardens is a revelation. While it depicts a complex, vivid scene, of fashionable men and women seated in the garden at night, it stays close to abstraction. A few broad strokes from left to right, across the top of the narrow, horizontal canvas, make a line of tree tops. Some strokes across the bottom of the canvas make a sandy, open ground. And a dark slash in the between them opens the middle distance, giving depth to the canvas and life to the illusion. On the left-hand side, one vertical stroke – a flick of the wrist, a smear of blue paint – is a woman in a fancy dress and hat standing and taking in the scene.
After looking at the canvas for a few seconds the brushstrokes, ethereal, come to the forefront, and it is they, not the scene, that linger in memory. The paint has no substance; it seems to hover above the canvas like smoke.
Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum.