Whistler on Exhibition

Magazine Antiques, June, 1995 by Margaret F. MacDonald

The portrait of Whistler's mother was nearly rejected by the Royal Academy for the 1872 exhibition. It was only hung after the academician Sir William Boxall (1800-1879), an old friend of the Whistler family, threatened to resign if it was not accepted. The public's reaction was mixed, and Whistler decided never to exhibit at the academy again. He set out to challenge the institution's stranglehold on British art. At the academy the subject matter of a painting was of supreme importance, while to Whistler it was outweighed by color and composition. As he later wrote of the portrait of his mother, it was

exhibited at the Royal Academy as an Arrangement in Grey and Black. Now that is what it is. To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?(15)

To keep his name before the public, Whistler exhibited his recent Nocturnes of the Thames at small galleries in London and Pads. In June 1874 he asserted his independence by holding his first one-man show - at the new Flemish Gallery on Pall Mall in London. Among the one hundred works, there were thirteen canvases, including the portraits of his mother, Carlyle, and Frederick Leyland and his wife, Frances Dawson Leyland (1834-1910),(16) who are said to have funded the exhibition. The critic of the London Evening Standard of June 24 praised the portrait of Cicely Alexander (Pl. II) as "truly a noble conception, treated with a Velasquean breadth" that showed "the bouyancy and freshness of childhood." Actually, the girl's mutinous expression reflects the screaming boredom of the seventy sittings demanded by the painter in his search for perfection.

Below the oils in the Flemish Gallery hung drawings on brown paper for the dresses worn by the Leyland and Alexander ladies when he painted them, as well as nudes, studies for the Six Projects, and drawings of Battersea Bridge. What one unidentified critic called a "magnificent collection" of some fifty etchings and drypoints [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED], "so highly and so justly esteemed for their truth and beauty as well as their marvellous technical skill,"(17) hung in a row around the room. All in all, it was an impressive exhibition that had considerable critical impact.

In 1875 Whistler exhibited Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (see frontispiece), among others, at the Dudley Gallery in London. The following year he showed the painting in Plate XII at the Society of French Artists in London. His distinctive compositions were greeted with curiosity and some approval.

When the Grosvenor Gallery opened in London in 1877, offering a real alternative to the Royal Academy, Whistler selected his most tried and tested works, among them several Nocturnes, his portrait of Carlyle, and portraits of his current mistress, Mary Franklin (called Maud; 1857-1941?).(18) The critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) launched a violent attack on Whistler's work, focusing on Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. The artist sued Ruskin for libel and won, but was awarded derisory damages. Although his views about art were widely disseminated during the trial, strengthening his influence among younger artists, Whistler's financial affairs were in disarray, and in 1879 he became bankrupt.