. Art and criticism : monographs and studies. hree specimens of Whistlers visions of nature, The Balcony, the Portrait of Miss Corder, and the Noc-turne in Blue and Silver, representing a fragment of old Bat-tersea Bridge with fireworks in the distant sky. To explain to the public the charm of Mr. Whistlers art isa difficult task. It is inevitably the destiny of artists who seenature or man in a novel manner to have to struggle for a longtime against disdain or prejudice, until the eyes of the publichave become accustomed to their works. Such was the casewith Rousseau, Corot, and Millet, whom
. Art and criticism : monographs and studies. hree specimens of Whistlers visions of nature, The Balcony, the Portrait of Miss Corder, and the Noc-turne in Blue and Silver, representing a fragment of old Bat-tersea Bridge with fireworks in the distant sky. To explain to the public the charm of Mr. Whistlers art isa difficult task. It is inevitably the destiny of artists who seenature or man in a novel manner to have to struggle for a longtime against disdain or prejudice, until the eyes of the publichave become accustomed to their works. Such was the casewith Rousseau, Corot, and Millet, whom habit and fashion haveat last induced the public to accept, and even perhaps to yet to admire Rousseau and Millet and other modernFrench artists who are so much honored in these days, andperhaps more enthusiastically in America than anywhere else,is not so difficult: the art of the landscapist as practised bythose men is readily intelligible. The peasants of Millet, andthe work of materialist painters of the type of Bastien-Lepage,. ARRANGEMENT IN FLESH-COLOR AND GREEN—THE BALCONY. From the painting by James McNeil Whistler. AMERICAN ARTISTS AT THE PARIS EXHIBITION. 85 Dagnan-Bouveret, Roll, Gervex, Friant, and other shining lightsof the contemporary French school are also readily comprehen-sible to an eye of very ordinary culture. But in Mr. Whistlerswork we find nothing of this kind ; his constant aim is to es-chew materiality, grossness, and ugliness, and to evoke only themost delicate visions of form and light, as in his etchings ; ofform and color in luminous air, as in his portraits and pictures;or even of color alone, with the smallest substratum of form, asin his Nocturnes and Notes. In his recent etchings of thechateaux of Touraine, as in his etchings of Venice, Mr. Whis-tler has not set himself to reproduce patiently and painfully astoried facade, an oriel-window, or an elaborate gargoyle; buthe has given us a delicate and fascinating analytical vision oft
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