A handsome display of Whistlers with a strangely unfitting title
Goes to at Compton Verney, where the city-dwelling artist’s work speaks for itself
Edgar Degas once complained to James McNeill Whistler: “Really, Whistler, you behave as though you have no talent”. Degas’s point was that his Anglo-American pal made art that was good enough to speak for itself, yet he insisted on cultivating his celebrity – from wearing a dandyish, white feather in his hair to hosting Sunday breakfasts with exotic menus.
A new exhibition of 100 Whistler works at Compton Verney is curated in Degas’s spirit. Which is to say, with next to no biographical background – barely a mention of his friendship with Oscar Wilde, say, or the libel case he brought against art critic John Ruskin. The art speaks for itself.
Bar the odd oil painting, in the main this is a show of works on paper, from five decades of Whistler’s career. It starts with a pair of topographical drawings he made while a cadet at West Point Military Academy, near New York.
In 1855, aged 21, he moved to Europe, never to see the US again. Etchings sees him experimenting with hatched and cross-hatched lines, trying to emulate the dramatic light effects of Rembrandt.
Possibly the finest prints on show, however, are those showing a different influence: Japanese woodcuts (which were appearing in the West as Japan ended 220 years of isolation). In Black Lion Wharf, a longshoreman is seen on the Thames at Wapping – foreshortening of the space behind him means that he looks far closer to the north bank than he actually was.
Whistler is perhaps best known for his “Nocturnes”: hazily evocative, night-time scenes that anticipated abstraction. (Ruskin compared Whistler’s selling one of these, 1875’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The The Pool
La sylphide, subtly layers his washes so as to ensure that the strength of his blue varies according to the force of each part of each wave. The low vantage point, meanwhile, suggests this might almost be a swimmer’s-eye view.
The only problem with the exhibition – and it’s not an insignificant one – is the title: Whistler and Nature. I appreciate that something like“James McNeill Whistler: Some Rather Good Graphic Works” was never going to cut it. But the trouble is, even after having seen the show, I am unable to grasp where “nature” fits in.
Those expecting to see a bush or tree – let alone a forest or a wood – will be disappointed. Whistler was the ultimate city dweller, who could scarcely survive a day without visiting his tailor. Two whole sections of the show are even devoted to dancers and other models depicted in his studio. How is that nature?
Thankfully, Whistler was gifted enough an artist, across various media, for this not to matter too much. Fine show, then; shame about the title.