The National Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn are customary destinations for art buffs visiting the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Recently, a stroll in the Smithsonian Gardens close by led me to the National Museum of Asian Art for a travel through time and places: Yemen, China, India, Japan,..., Hiroshige's landscapes, calligraphy scrolls, sculptures of Buddha,.... Wandering from gallery to gallery, the rather intriguing title of a wall text caught my attention: "Dirty Pictures". Furthermore, the paintings lining up the walls were definitively not Asian but Western art. I had reached the American art collection.
The Freer Gallery of Art combined with the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery "houses one of the premier collection of Asian art". It is also famous for its unique example of interior decoration in the Anglo-Japanese style, The Peacock Room painted by James McNeill Whistler in 1876-1877. Originally commissioned by the British shipowner Frederick Richards Leyland to display his china collection, subsequently acquired by the American industrialist Charles Lang Freer for his mansion, the paneled room was finally installed in the Freer Gallery of Art, opened to the public since 1923. In the 1890's Freer became patron and friend of Whistler and sought the artist's advice to build his Asian art collection. He was also the most important collector of Whistler's works, all bequeathed to the museum.
Whistler, born in America in 1834, had a peripatetic childhood due to his father's occupation as a railroad civil engineer. He spent some time in Massachusetts, Connecticut, St Petersburg in Russia and London. After a stint at West Point, it became clear that art was his calling and he left the United States for Paris where he adopted a free spirited lifestyle. He was twenty one years old. Despite his prickly character, he nurtured enriching relationships with artists of all venues. His peregrinations brought him as far as Chile in 1866 during the Spanish-South American War and later on, he produced a trove of works during a fourteen-month stay in Venice. He always came back to London, his favored city, where he died in 1903.
"Dirty" was the adjective used by aficionados to describe Whistler's series of thirty two landscapes of London at night. During a flourishing Victorian era, he was known for his portraits, and the images of the city's unalluring side were a challenge for the critics and the public. Under the low light of the Freer Gallery, five small paintings generated an irresistible attraction. Nocturne: Grey and Silver- Chelsea Embankment, Winter (Ca. 1879) features three small boats aground on the snowy bank of the Thames at the bottom of the painting. The vertical composition is filled with the grey of the icy river turning into a slightly bluer grey sky. In the background, the city's blurry shadow with its faint lights gleaming on the river underlines the menacing profile of cranes in the center, defiantly reaching the top of the painting. The silver and grey palette suggests the moonlight's reflection on the landscape.
Symphony in Grey: Early Morning, Thames (1871) is an horizontal composition filled with the calm river, a pale grey ribbon flowing between its banks. The painter brings us on a walk along the straight edge of the Thames, looking at an industrial site on the distant shore as a light fog blurs the contours of the land. A high chimney and puffs of smoke break the line of the horizon below a narrow strip of grey sky. The reflection of the industrial landscape in the water creates an inverted shadowy replica of a factory. Two ghostly ships drift far away. A closer look at the painting reveals a coat of brown underpaint seeping through the thin grey brushstrokes. From afar, the brown color melting into the grey gives depth and a subtle flow to the river. Whistler's butterfly signature at the bottom of the painting alludes to the influence of the Japanese masters on his works.
On a similar theme, Nocturne: Blue and Silver- Battersea Reach (1870-1875) is centered around the motionless river lined up along its banks by a row of cranes and the smokestacks of factories. The stillness of the water reflecting a bluish grey sky and the lack of life imply silence. The gloomy atmosphere defines a short time at dusk "entre chien et loup" when one cannot distinguish a dog from a wolf.
Under a pale blue wintery sky, Nocturne: Trafalgar Square, Chelsea-Snow (Ca. 1875-77) depicts residential buildings around a square covered with dirty snow. A few yellow spots of light hint to the warmth of homes amidst the cold empty outdoors. At dusk, the trees become threatening shadows and mystery invades the abandoned city.
The scene of a naval battle witnessed by Whistler from the window of his hotel in Valparaiso, Chile, has become a key work of the artist's career. Eighteen sixty-six, the first date of Nocturne in Blue and Gold; Valparaiso (1866/ca.1874) is proof of a timely and precise recording of the action. The assault on the Chilean harbor occurred in the morning of March 31 1866, and the first version was a landscape bathed in an early daylight. Back in London, almost a decade later, it became a Nocturne. Hardly distinguishable black shapes dissolved in a threatening dark mass fill the lower half of the painting. The abstracted rendering of the action contrasts with, above it, the view of sailboats under full attack surrounded by smoke and fiery explosions and a detailed nighttime depiction of the harbor in the background.
"By using the word 'nocturne', I wished to indicate an artistic interest alone, divesting the picture of any outside anecdotal interest which might have been otherwise attached to it. A nocturne is an arrangement of line, form, and color first." In this quote, Whistler states his goal: art for art.
Two major exhibitions (last year "The Woman in White: Joanna Hifferman and James McNeill Whistler" at the National Gallery of Art and ongoing "The Artist's Mother: Whistler and Philadelphia" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) show the interest for Whistler's portraits guaranteed to bring crowds to the museums. What about his Nocturnes, his "dirty pictures"? Greys, blues, brown colors were selected to create mood and atmosphere, more important to depict landscapes than reproducing reality. Photography, electricity, factories, a new world of industrialization was in the making and for Whistler, painting was not just copying a scene, but creating "an artistic arrangement". During the Ruskin trial about one of his Nocturnes, accused of messy work, quickly done and overcharged, the painter famously replied: "... I ask it (two hundred guineas) for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime."
Why was I struck by the five paintings during my visit? Why these Nocturnes still feel so relevant? The artist transmutes the scenes in a romantic way, filled with untold, leaving room for the imagination and dreams of a wandering mind. The paintings triggered my memories of aimless walks along the river and left me filled with emotions. After several encounters with his works, for the first time, I felt a connection with Whistler.
photographs by the author:
"Nocturne: Grey and Silver- Chelsea Embankment, Winter", ca. 1879
"Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso", 1866/ca.1874
"Nocturne,: Blue and Silver-Battersea Reach", 1870-1875
