Modern Painting | Page 5

has not the profound beauty of the
Infantes by Velasquez in the Louvre; but for pure magic of inspiration,
is it not more delightful? Just as Shelley's "Sensitive Plant" thrills the
innermost sense like no other poem in the language, the portrait of Miss
Alexander enchants with the harmony of colour, with the melody of
composition.
Strangely original, a rare and unique thing, is this picture, yet we know
whence it came, and may easily appreciate the influences that brought
it into being. Exquisite and happy combination of the art of an entire
nation and the genius of one man-the soul of Japan incarnate in the
body of the immortal Spaniard. It was Japan that counselled the strange
grace of the silhouette, and it was that country, too, that inspired in a
dim, far-off way those subtly sweet and magical passages from grey to
green, from green again to changing evanescent grey. But a higher

intelligence massed and impelled those chords of green and grey than
ever manifested itself in Japanese fan or screen; the means are simpler,
the effect is greater, and by the side of this picture the best Japanese
work seems only facile superficial improvisation. In the picture itself
there is really little of Japan. The painter merely understood all that
Japan might teach. He went to the very root, appropriating only the
innermost essence of its art. We Westerns had thought it sufficient to
copy Nature, but the Japanese knew it was better to observe Nature.
The whole art of Japan is selection, and Japan taught Mr. Whistler, or
impressed upon Mr. Whistler, the imperative necessity of selection. No
Western artist of the present or of past time--no, not Velasquez
himself--ever selected from the model so tenderly as Mr. Whistler;
Japan taught him to consider Nature as a storehouse whence the artist
may pick and choose, combining the fragments of his choice into an
exquisite whole. Sir John Millais' art is the opposite; there we find no
selection; the model is copied--and sometimes only with sufficient
technical skill.
But this picture is throughout a selection from the model; nowhere has
anything been copied brutally, yet the reality of the girl is not
sacrificed.
The picture represents a girl of ten or eleven. She is dressed according
to the fashion of twenty years ago--a starched muslin frock, a small
overskirt pale brown, white stockings, square-toed black shoes. She
stands, her left foot advanced, holding in her left hand a grey felt hat
adorned with a long plume reaching nearly to the ground. The wall
behind her is grey with a black wainscot. On the left, far back in the
picture, on a low stool, some grey-green drapery strikes the highest
note of colour in the picture. On the right, in the foreground, some tall
daisies come into the picture, and two butterflies flutter over the girl's
blonde head. This picture seems to exist principally in the seeing! I
mean that the execution is so strangely simple that the thought, "If I
could only see the model like that, I think Icould do it myself", comes
spontaneously into the mind. And this spontaneous thought is excellent
criticism, for three-parts of Mr. Whistler's art lies in the seeing; no one
ever saw Nature so artistically. Notice on the left the sharp line of the
white frock cutting against the black wainscoting. Were that line taken
away, how much would the picture lose! Look at the leg that is

advanced, and tell me if you can detect the modelling. There is
modelling, I know, but there are no vulgar roundnesses. Apparently,
only a flat tint; but there is on the bone a light, hardly discernible; and
this light is sufficient. And the leg that is turned away, the thick,
chubby ankle of the child, how admirable in drawing; and that touch of
darker colour, how it tells the exact form of the bone! To indicate is the
final accomplishment of the painter's art, and I know no indication like
that ankle bone. And now passing from the feet to the face, notice, I
beg of you to notice--it is one of the points in the picture--that jaw bone.
The face is seen in three-quarter, and to focus the interest in the face the
painter has slightly insisted on the line of the jaw bone, which, taken in
conjunction with the line of the hair, brings into prominence the oval of
the face. In Nature that charming oval only appeared at moments. The
painter seized one of those moments, and called it into our
consciousness as a musician with certain finger will choose to give
prominence to a certain note in a chord.
There must have been a day in Mr. Whistler's life when the artists of
Japan convinced him once and for