Identifier: whistlerbookmono00hart (find matches)
Title: The Whistler book; a monograph of the life and positin in art of James McNeill Whistler, together with a careful study of his more important works
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Hartmann, Sadakichi, 1867-1944
Subjects: Whistler, James McNeill, 1834-1903
Publisher: Boston : L.C. Page & company
Contributing Library: University of British Columbia Library
Digitizing Sponsor: University of British Columbia Library

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t is apparentlyhurriedly dashed off, but the result of manycareful studies and experiments. It is a merefragment, negligent, disdainful; but howknowingly made, and how characteristic ofthe poets personality! Despite its vaguenessit is a likeness, and preferable, to me at least,who was fortunate to know Mallarme in theearly eighties, to most portraits made of him. Whistler never surpassed this particulareffort, although his portraits of Joseph Pen-nell, Mrs. Pennell, Walter Sickert, W. E.Henley and his wife, Miss Philip and ComteMontesquieu are excellent character studies.Way published in 1896 a catalogue of 130lithographs. Later additions probably in-crease the number to 150. The London FineArts Societv held in 1895 a special sale of75 lithographs. The Groher Club of NewYork in 1900 held an exhibition of 106 prints. His nudes are charming little inventions inpose and gesture with considerable knowledgeof the human figure. In the Society exhibi-tion of 1885 he exhibited a nude entitled
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STUDY OF NUDE FIGURE (CHALK DRAWING). Moss-like Gradations 177 Caprice. A^. A. Horsley took exceptionto it, and in a lecture before a Church Con-gress, after indulging in most curious, pedan-tic and mediseval arguments, ended with thefollowing tirade: Is not clothedness a distinct type and fea-ture of our Christian faith? All art repre-sentations of nakedness are out of harmonywith it. Whistler, ever ready to take up the cudgel,avenged himself by writing under the picture:^^ Horsley soit qui mal y pense, and leavingit there during the entire exhibition. Strange, that Whistler never attempted topaint a large nude in oil. He, no doubt, hada reason for this omission, although it isnowhere recorded. Perhaps he agreed on thepoint with Ruskin that a realistic nude had noplace in modern life, not for any moral reasonbut merely that the human body was too de-fective to allow the highest sesthetic gratifica-tion. A figure in modern garb is a part ofmodern life, a nude is an alien in space with

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