James Abbott McNeill Whistler

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was an abrasive exhibitionist American, who arrived in London in 1859 from Paris. His propensity for entitling his portraits 'arrangements' and his river and seascapes 'nocturnes' and 'symphonies' reflected his attitude that pictures need not have any specific 'subject' and were essentially arrangements of line and form. With Albert Moore he formed the theory of 'art for art's sake', laying the cornerstone to that monument of elitism which fine art would rapidly become as a result of this idea: an impenetrable game, played out beyond the reach - or interest - of laypeople who were no longer initiated into its language or conventions.

Whistler's effect on landscape painting was decisive, although he was not a landscape artist. When he did not paint portraits he chose tidal rivers, coasts and the sea, while living an urban life. He maintained that to create harmony an artist must discriminate and arrange, and he rejected any belief that it was the mission of the artist to copy nature. Towards the end of the 1860s, Whistler began to reject Realism for Aestheticism. He was still painting modern landscapes, but now chose to veil the ugliness of industrial London by painting it at night. He prepared for these pictures by going out in a boat on the Thames after dark, committing the scenes to memory so that he could work on his paintings back in his studio.

Whistler called these revolutionary works 'Nocturnes', deliberately comparing their lack of narrative content to music. Their compositions are startlingly simple, the colours reduced to a few delicate tonal harmonies. He produced them using paint so thin it was as translucent as watercolour. He owed much to his enthusiasm for Chinese and Japanese painting, and it brought him into direct conflict with Ruskin who, viewing Whistler's 'Nocturnes' (twilight studies of the Thames river) in 1879, accused him of 'throwing a pot of paint in the public's face'!

Most Victorian viewers were scandalised by their absence of subject matter and lack of finish. John Ruskin attacked them in print, prompting Whistler to sue him for libel and leading to a celebrated court case.

		JM Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket 1875

Society in Victorian Art

 

Derby Day by William Powell Frith, RA. [Original 1858 in Tate Gallery, London] Signed and dated 1893-94. 102.3 x 234.4 cm. City Art Galleries, Manchester. According to the museum site, "This version replicates a Royal Academy exhibit of 1858. It was commissioned by James Gresham of Stretford and was thought by Frith to be better than his original." The museum's entry further explains:

Derby Day was an established day out by the 1850s. The crowds of thousands came from all social classes for the colourful entertainments as much as the race. Frith's first visit to Epsom Downs was in 1856, when he was taken in by a thimble-rigging gang. A team of these con-men can be seen on the left. The Victorians were fascinated by phrenology, the reflection of social types in facial characteristics. This partly accounts for the success of and other crowd scenes by Frith and his followers.

In 1855, Victorian artists had the opportunity to be judged against their European counterparts at the Paris International Exhibition. British painting though not found to compete with the elevated characters of French works, was admired for its originality, eccentric humor and love of detail in the genre and narrative paintings.

Domestic genre, rustic subjects and literary and historical anecdotes continued to flourish in mid-Victorian Britain, but from the early 50s, a new element entered narrative and genre painting. Many of the artists now began to paint the contemporary urban middle-class milieu with a naive delight in the up-to-date: omnibuses and railway stations, opera boxes and parlormaids, and scenes from life and from modern literature.

The move to paint contemporary life was part of a wider repositioning of European taste. Baudelaire, in his Paris salon reviews of the mid 40s had called for artists to represent the heroism of modern life, its 'neck ties and patent leather boots', and the 'thousand existences' which formed the 'floating life of a great city'. British painters, while remaining conservative in their attitude to narrative, detail and composition, anticipated in the 50s and early 60s, the subject that would be taken up by the Impressionists in the 70s and 80s: the races, the opera, the urban middle classes at leisure in parks, on beaches and city streets.

Paintings on urban life by William Powell Frith were among the most popular of British depiction of contemporary social life. Frith's pictures, for all their novelettish concentration on surface rather than inner moral complexities, have something of the richness of Dickens' novels with their interweaving of plot and subplot, and their mixture of characters from different social worlds.

The Victorian Compromise

 

 

The Victorians sought a happy compromise when they were faced with radical problems. They were not willing to be dominated by one extreme viewpoint and in a welter of confusing issues, they struck out a pleasing compromise.

In the field of political life, there was a compromise between democracy and aristocracy. While accepting the claims of the rising masses to political equality, they defended the rights of aristocracy. While reposing their faith in progress in the political sphere, they were not ready for revolutionary upsurges disturbing the settled order of life. Progressive ideals were reconciled with conservative leanings for an established order of society.

In the field of religion and science, a satisfying compromise was affected. The advances made by science were accepted, but the claims of old religion were not ignored. The Victorians took-up compromising position between faith of religion and doubt created by science.
"There remains more faith in honest doubt
Believe me than in half the creeds."

The Victorians desired to discover some compromise which, while not outraging their intellect and their reason, would none the less soothe their conscience and restore their faith- if not completely, at least sufficiently to allow them to believe in some ultimate purpose and more important still, in the life after death. In voicing these doubts, in phrasing the inevitable compromise, Tennyson found and endeavored passionately to fulfil his appointed mission.

In the field of sex too, the Victorians made a compromise. The sex problem was the most blatant and persistent. In this field their object was to discover some middle course between the unbridled licentiousness of previous ages and the complete negation of the functions and purposes of nature. The Victorians permitted indulgence in sex but restricted its sphere to conjugal felicity and happy married life. They disfavored physical passion and illegal gratification of sex impulse.

Against the backdrop of technological, political, and socioeconomic change, the Victorian Period was bound to be a volatile time, even without the added complications of the religious and institutional challenges brought by Charles Darwin and other thinkers,reformers and writers. Hence also, the need for a compromise.

Society and Thought in the Victorian Age

 
The Victorian age (1837-1901) is one of the most remarkable periods in the history of England. It was an era of material affluence, political consciousness, democratic reforms, industrial and mechanical progress, scientific advancement, social unrest, educational expansion, empire building and religious uncertainty.


The social history that is reflected from the literature of the period reveals two things that distinctly stand out- 1.The steady progress of democratic ideals and 2. the progress of scientific thoughts. The passing of the Reform Acts set at rest the political disturbances that came in the wake of the French Revolution. It satisfied the demands of the lower middle classes who yearned for peace and stability. Rules of conduct and religious beliefs had been rudely shaken in the storm in the storm of the Revolution. The unbridled laxity in morals during the reigns of the Georges called for a large measure of self-control. Thus, with the advance of democracy and the rise into power by the middle class, the need for an accepted standard of stricter morality was felt and was imposed by common consent.

Not that the acceptance of a single body of doctrine distinguished the age but this spirit of acceptance, the innate desire to affirm and conform rather than to question and reject - marked the intellectual temper of the age. This was the Victorian attitude of Compromise. Professor Ward writes- "A further characteristic of the Victorian age was a firm belief in the permanence of 19th century institution, both temporal and spiritual. The Home, the Constitution, the Empire, the Christian religion each in its own form and degree was taken as a final revelation."

In the course of the victorian era, there developed among the increasingly large number of literary intellectuals,a humanist attitude to life which was not a matter of creed and dogmas, but a recognition of the love and loyalty that the better-sensed people had for their unfortunate brethren. In the works of Dickens, Mrs Gaskell, Carlyle and Ruskin, we notice the crusading zeal of the literary artists to bring about salutary reforms in the social, political and economic life of the country.

The growing importance of the masses and the large number of factory hands gave a spurt to the Reform Bills, which heralded the birth of democratic consciousness among the Victorian people. England also witnessed expansion in the field of education. The passing of the Education Acts was a landmark in the history of education in the country. A large reading public was prepared to welcome the outpourings of novelists, poets and social reformers. The press also came into its own and became a potent force in awakening political consciousness among the people of this age.

It is important to mention the number of thinkers who were well satisfied with the Victorian progress but there were some who adversely criticised the values held dear by the society. While Macaulay trumpeted the progress that the Victorians had made, Ruskin, Carlyle and Arnold raised frowns of disfavor against the soul-killing materialism of the age. Carlyle believed that there is found 'deep seated spiritual vulgarity that lies at the heart of our civilization'. Symons detected in the Victorian period, elements of 'world fatigue' which were quite alien to the Elizabethan age.

Whatever may be the defects of the Victorian way of life, it cannot be denied that it was in many ways a glorious epoch in the history of England.