WHISTLER V. RUSKIN

DANIEL E. SUTHERLAND: LETTERS FROM AMERICA

Looking ahead to next summer’s highly anticipated Whistler exhibition at Tate Britain, I have been wondering how the Society might contribute to this marvellous occasion.  One idea that occurs to me is a recreation of the Whistler v. Ruskin court battle.  It would not be the first time this pivotal moment in the Master’s life has been given dramatic treatment.  The Whistler-Ruskin confrontation, long recognized as a seminal moment in nineteenth-century art history, has inspired numerous dramatic productions on both stage and radio that we might use as a model.

     Whistler’s outsized personality and often controversial art made him a tempting subject for the stage even during his lifetime.  An inkling of what was to come could be seen in an English interpretation of a French play La Cigale (The Grasshopper) and Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience.  The former play poked fun at him for his links to Impressionism.  The latter, while mocking the Aesthetic Movement, had a leading character who dressed as a combination of Whistler and Oscar Wilde but sporting Whistler’s white forelock and imitating his patented laugh, “Ha ha!”

     Following his death, Whistler was first associated with a pair of amateur productions, staged as fund

raisers during World War I.  In December 1916, an “American matinee” at Chelsea’s Palace Theatre included tableau of paintings by Whistler and John Singer Sargent.  Next, in March 1917, came “Chelsea on Tiptoe.” Ellen Terry appeared as “The Spirit of Chelsea,” Augustus John illustrated a printed program, and Edward Elgar wrote and conducted his one-act ballet The Sanguine Fan for the event.  Described as a “light-hearted tribute” to some of Chelsea’s “traditional celebrities,” the performance involved a series of skits.  Whistler appeared in one through inference with the popular actress Julia James portraying Connie Gilchrist—subject of a celebrated Whistler painting—and singing the former child actress’s “Skipping Song.”

Whistler did not become a featured character in these plays until the mid-1920s, but he has trod the boards ever since.  Not all productions have centered on the Ruskin trial.  Instead, playwrights have exploited Whistler’s flamboyant personality, rather than his art, and surrounded him with equally colourful friends, such as Oscar Wilde and Algernon Swinburne.  Anna Whistler and Joanna Hiffernan have also been portrayed.

     As it happens, most stage depictions of the trial have centered on Ruskin.  The most successful effort was Tamas MacDonald’s 1983 The Plague Wind.  While the Whistler-Ruskin trial is a pivotal event, the play is primarily a psychological study of Ruskin.  The title, which comes from a public lecture Ruskin gave on the environmental changes wrought by industrialisation, stands as a metaphor for Ruskin’s generally pessimistic view of the modern world.  Whistler, who represents this creeping decay in art, serves as a convenient foil.  Sixty-year-old John Bott, a familiar face in television

dramas, played the aging Ruskin.  Forty-four-year-old Ian Thompson, better known for his theatre work, played Whistler at that same age.  Reviews of this “impressionistic muddle” were mixed, but Bott was applauded for his sensitive portrayal.  One reviewer thought Thompson, in his “arch” performance, came across as “a would-be Oscar Wilde but one who had nothing to declare but feeble jokes.”  More generous assessments called his performance “splendidly alert,” filled with “wit and vivacity,” and “colourfully arrogant as the wild and witty Whistler.”

     Each, in its way, was a fair assessment.  Thompson, with feathery forelock, monocle, “natty, white suit,” patent-leather shoes, and four-feet-long cane, looked the stereotypical Whistler.  The trial, at his insistence, takes place in a private club, rather than (as was the case) in the courts of law, but the dialogue accurately reflects Whistler views on artistic criticism.  “Never mind that what he says damages my commercial reputation,” Whistler explains of his reason for suing the critic. “Ruskin’s rantings touch the broader question of artistic conscience.”  Whistler celebrates his legal victory by clowning and sarcastically mocking Ruskin in a shrill voice as his friends shout, “Art is liberated!” and “Vindicated!”  But the play ends with Ruskin, who had earlier shown signs of mental agitation and instability, exuding calm, the plague cloud having passed.

     Several amateur groups have also tackled Whistler v. Ruskin.  In 1987, a dramatic production written by Howard Burman was staged in Detroit.  In London, members of the Oscar Wilde Society have been responsible for two Whistler-related plays, both performed at the Chelsea Arts Club.  One, titled “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,” in 1991, was about the relationship between Jemie and Oscar, but the other effort, described as a “dialogue,” in 2018, went straight to the point with “Whistler v Ruskin.” The heart of that piece had Ruskin’s barrister Sir John Holker (played by David Owen-Jones) cross-examining Whistler (played by our own Darcy Sullivan).

     Difficult as it has been to mount a serious play about Whistler, musicals would seem an even less likely vehicle.   His only appearance on the musical stage came in Oscar, by James Clutton and Damien Landi.  Based on the life of Oscar Wilde, it was first staged in 1992 with occasional revivals since then.  Whistler has a small but important role early in the play when the famous verbal sparring between the erstwhile friends turns into a romantic rivalry for the attentions of Lillie Langtry.  As a trio, they sing “The Gentle Art,” which ends with Lillie yielding to Oscar’s “wit” and the “music” of his voice.  The rejected Whistler responds by singing “Whistler’s Song.”  It is a bitter rejoinder, as seen in its opening line, “Do you know what it’s like to really hate a man?” with the artist revealing his deep-seated jealousy of the poet.

     As for the trial, the closest anyone has come to a musical rendition is an opera about Ruskin.  First produced in 1995, Modern Painters, by David Lang and Manuela Hoelterhoff, does not put Whistler on stage or recreate their standoff, but the brooding art critic does lament the humiliation of the famous court case.

     The medium of radio has treated Whistler more reverently.  The United States led the way with a pair of dramas in 1932 and 1937, the latter one being part of a Depression era Works Progress Administration project for unemployed writers.  Titled simply “James McNeill Whistler,” the half-hour episode featured Frederick R. Leyland, the Peacock Room, and Ruskin trial, although Oscar Wilde, who did not, in fact, enter Whistler’s life until the 1880s, also puts in an appearance.  The program concluded with a narrator describing the trial as a “moral triumph for Whistler,” who had gone to court “not for damages but to vindicate his position, and therefore, that of all artists.”

     Since then, the British Broadcasting Company has taken the lead.  Their first “wireless” Whistler

program, “Nocturne at Chelsea,” was broadcast in 1939 and featured, intriguingly enough, Mexican-born

actor Romney Brent (born Romulo Larralde) as the artist.  Written by early Whistler biographer James Laver, it included a measure of speculation and fiction but concluded with an old man explaining to a young friend, “My boy, if Whistler taught us anything, he taught us that Beauty is in the eye of the Artist. . . . and helps us to see it in the contemporary scene.”

     The Whistler-Ruskin trial would provide fodder for at least five more BBC radio dramas, the last one coming in 2001.  The only surviving script is for a 1960 broadcast called “The Verdict of the Court.”  The play concludes with its narrator commenting not so much on the artistic significance of the verdict as on its legal viability.  “In

my view the result of the case of Whistler v. Ruskin was a travesty of justice,” he intones. “Then, of course, Whistler was a terribly bad witness. . . . [H]e ought to have given the appearance of a dedicated and sincere artist—which, of course, he was. But it was not in his character to do it.”

      As you see, there are models galore for recreating the trial, and so contributing to Whistler’s enduring legacy.  Personally, I like the idea of a musical.

Images in order of appearance: 1. George Grossmith in Patience 2. Julia James 3. Ian Thompson 4. Programme for Oscar 5. Romney Brent 6. Drawing by Phil May in Pick-Me-Up