Whistler sent The White Girl to the Academy of 1862, with The Twenty-fifth of December, 1860, on the Thames; Alone with the Tide; and one etching, Rotherithe. The White Girl was rejected. The two other pictures and the print were accepted, hung, and praised. The Athenæum compared the Rotherithe to Rembrandt. Whistler could scarcely be mentioned as an etcher without this comparison; since Rembrandt his were "the most striking and original" etchings, everyone then said, Mr. W. M. Rossetti being among the first in England to say it boldly. Alone with the Tide was approved as "perfectly expressed," and The Twenty-fifth of December as "broad and vigorous, though perhaps vigour was pushed over the bounds of coarseness to become mere dash." Other work he showed elsewhere was praised. The Punt and Sketching, published in Passages from Modern English Poets, were singled out for admiration. Thames Warehouses and Black Lion Wharf won him recognition as "the most admirable etcher of the present day," at South Kensington Museum, where in 1862 an International Exhibition was held. Whistler had no pictures, but the collection of modern continental art was one of the finest ever seen in England.
In nothing had Whistler been so completely himself as in The White Girl, and it failed to please. The artist is born to pick and choose, and group with science, the elements in Nature that the result may be beautiful, he wrote in The Ten O'Clock, and The White Girl was his first attempt to conform to a principle no one ever put so clearly into words. It was an attempt, we know now, comparing the painting to the symphonies and harmonies that came after. But at the time it was disquieting in its defiance of modern conventions. It was without subject according to Victorian standards, and the bold massing of white upon white was more bewildering than the minute detail of the Pre-Raphaelites. This summer (1862) the Berners Street Gallery was opened, "with the avowed purpose of placing before the public the works of young artists who may not have access to the ordinary galleries." Maclise, Egg, Frith, Cooper, Poynter forced their way in. But the Manager had the courage to exhibit The White Girl, stating in the catalogue that the Royal Academy had refused it. The Athenæum was independent enough to say that it was the most prominent picture in the collection, though not the most perfect, for, "able as this bizarre production shows Mr. Whistler to be, we are certain that in a very few years he will recognize the reasonableness of its rejection. It is one of the most incomplete paintings we ever met with. A woman in a quaint morning dress of white, with her hair about her shoulders, stands alone in the background of nothing in particular. But for the rich vigour of the textures, we might conceive this to be some old portrait by Zucchero, or a pupil of his, practising in a provincial town. The face is well done, but it is not that of Mr. Wilkie Collins' Woman in White."
The criticism brought from Whistler his first letter to the press, published in the Athenæum, July 5:
"62 Sloane Street. July 1, 1862.
"May I beg to correct an erroneous impression likely to be confirmed in your last number? The Proprietors of the Berners Street Gallery have, without my sanction, called my picture 'The Woman in White.' I had no intention whatever of illustrating Mr. Wilkie Collins' novel; it so happens, indeed, that I have never read it. My painting simply represents a girl dressed in white, standing in front of a white curtain.—I am, &c.,
James Whistler."
The critics were spared the sting of his wit, but they disapproved strongly enough for him to tell his friends that The White Girl enjoyed a succès d'exécration.
A different success awaited his Thames etchings in Paris, where they were shown in a dealer's gallery. Baudelaire saw them and understood, as he was the first to understand the work of Manet, Poe, Wagner, and many others. He wrote:
"Tout récemment, un jeune artiste américain, M. Whistler, exposait à la galerie Martinet une série d'eaux fortes, subtiles, éveillées comme l'improvisation et l'inspiration, représentant les bords de la Tamise; merveilleux fouillis d'agrés, de vergues, de cordages; chaos de brumes, de fourneaux et de fumées tire-bouchonnées; poésie profonde et compliquée d'une vaste capitale."
According to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Whistler soon moved to Queen's Road, Chelsea: "I fancy that the houses in Queen's Road have been much altered since Whistler was there in 1862–63. They were then low (say two-storeyed), quite old-fashioned houses, of a cosy, homely character, with small forecourts. I have a kind of idea that Whistler's house was No. 12, but this is quite uncertain to me.[3] As my brother and I were much in that neighbourhood, to and fro, prior to settling down in No. 16 Cheyne Walk, we came into contact with Whistler, who every now and then accompanied us on our jaunts. I forget how it was exactly that we got introduced to him; possibly by Mr. Algernon Swinburne, who was also to be an inmate of No. 16. Either (as I think) before meeting Whistler or just about the time we met him, we had seen one or two of his paintings. At the Piano must have been one, and we most heartily admired him, and discerned unmistakably that he was destined for renown."
The friendship may have led to Whistler's interest in black-and-white, for in England it was Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who revolutionised illustration and proved it a dignified and serious form of art. The more brilliant of the younger men were working for the illustrated magazines, and Whistler found a place among them. He made six drawings in 1862. Four appeared in Once a Week: The Morning before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Count Burckhardt, The Major's Daughter, The Relief Fund in Lancashire, intended to be used as an illustration to the reprint of an address by Tennyson on the subject of the famine in Lancashire, but never written because of his illness. To this fund we believe Whistler contributed a drawing. The two other illustrations, for The First Sermon, were published in Good Words. They were drawn on wood in pencil, pen and wash, are full of character, and, in the use of line, are like his etchings. They were engraved by the Dalziel Brothers and Joseph Swain, and from Mr. Strahan, the publisher of Once a Week, we have these additional facts:
"They were arranged for by Edward Dalziel, and I cannot say how he came to know the artist or his work, as Mr. Whistler was young then, and, as far as I know, had not contributed to any magazine.
The average price we paid to artists was nine pounds, and we reckoned that the same amount had to be paid for engravings. As a matter of fact, the sum paid to Mr. Whistler was nine pounds for each drawing."
We showed Whistler once The Morning before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. "Well, now, not bad, you know—not bad even then!" and he followed, with his expressive little finger, the flowing line, pointing to the hand lost in the draperies. This and The Major's Daughter were the two he preferred, and when J. was preparing The History of Modern Illustration Whistler picked them out as "very pretty ones" that should be reproduced, though, if but a single example of his work could be used, he wished The Morning before the Massacre to be selected, for it was "as delicate as an etching, and altogether characteristic and personal." Count Burckhardt he did not care for, insisting that he would rather not be represented if this were to be the only example in the book. "It was never a favourite," he added.
The four drawings of Once a Week were reprinted in Thornbury's Legendary Ballads, 1876. Thornbury implied that the drawings were made for the book, and thought that "the startling drawings by Mr. Whistler prove his singular power of hand, strong artistic feeling, and daring manner."
Our copy belonged to George Augustus Sala. On the margin of The Morning before the Massacre he wrote: "Jemmy Whistler.—Clever, sketchy, and incomplete, like everything he has done. A loaf of excellent, fine flour, but slack-baked." So Sala believed in 1883, and it is typical of the time.
Another important work of 1862 was The Last of Old Westminster. Mr. Arthur Severn knows more about it than anyone, as his account to us explains: "On my return from Rome to join my brother in his rooms in Manchester Buildings, on the Thames at Westminster Bridge