Read Ebook: The Whistler Book A Monograph of the Life and Position in Art of James McNeill Whistler Together with a Careful Study of His More Important Works by Hartmann Sadakichi Whistler James McNeill Illustrator

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hed a number of pictures that since then have made history. They are all in a lighter key and of brilliant colouring. The problem he seemed to be most interested in was to reproduce in relief the charm of diversified colour patches as seen in Japanese prints.

He continued to see things in this way until he made a trip to South America in 1866. Feeling, perhaps, slightly discouraged, or in need of some recreation, he and his brother set out for Chili, under the pretence of joining the insurgents ? la Poe and Byron, although I hardly believe that a man of thirty-two really capable of such a wild goose chase. At all events, when they reached Valparaiso the rebellion had ceased and instead of handling a musket "our Jimmie" opened his paint box instead.

The result was startling. Impressed by the new sights of southern scenery, and in particular of the translucency and subdued brilliancy of the sky at night, he painted one of his finest nocturnes, the "Valparaiso Harbour," now at the National Gallery of Art. The darkness of night to a large extent bars colour, and furnishes a kind of tonal veil over all objects; but in southern countries the nights are clearer and brighter and, although forms and colours are indistinct, they remain more plainly discernible than in the blackness of our Northern nights.

After his return to London he worked hard at solving the problem of creating tone which would suggest atmosphere with as little subject matter as possible. Four years passed before he held the first exhibition of a "Variation" and "Harmony." He now began to feel his own strength. He felt that he had done something new and had the courage to coin his own titles. The method of classifying his pictures as Harmonies and Symphonies, Arrangements, Nocturnes, Notes, and Caprices, was entirely his own invention and in his earlier career did much to attract attention to his work. One year later, in 1872, exhibiting several symphonies, he included for the first time an impression of night under the title of "Nocturne." The years 1870-77 were probably the busiest and the most important ones of his whole career. They produced not only the "Nocturne," but also the "Peacock Room" and the painting which is generally conceded to be his masterpiece, the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother."

Success and fame at last knocked at his door. Mr. F. R. Leyland, the rich ship-owner of Liverpool, proved a generous patron. Between 1872 and 1874 he ordered portraits of himself, Mrs. Leyland and the four children. Whistler made long visits at Speke Hall, Leyland's home near Liverpool. His paintings began to sell more readily than heretofore and several orders for interior decoration had come in, among them the decoration of the music room of the famous violinist Sarasate's home in Paris. He was willing to work at anything as long as he could carry out his own ideas. He invented schemes for interior decoration and also once tried himself as an illustrator, when he made exquisite drawings of the vases, plates, cups of blue and white Nankin for the catalogue of Sir H. Thompson's collection of porcelain.

After leaving 7 Linsey Row, during the years 1866-1878, Whistler lived in several other houses situated in the Chelsea district, for like so many of us that have got used to a certain part of the city, he could never get away from it. The most pretentious of these abodes was the "White House" which became one of the centres of attraction in the art life of London.

His neighbours added to the lustre of this period. In the same district at that time lived Rossetti, Swinburne, George Meredith and Carlyle, and Whistler was on friendly footing with all of them.

Exhibitions of his work were now a regular occurrence. In 1874 he held his first "one man's show" of thirteen paintings and fifty prints at number 48 Pall Mall, London. In 1877 he arranged an exhibition in the Grosvenor Gallery. Among the exhibits were "The Falling Rocket" which brought about the Ruskin attacks, and consequently the famous libel suit, Whistler v. Ruskin. One can hardly imagine, to-day, why the picture should have created so much commotion; but it was a decided innovation at that time, an event in a way ushering in a new era of art. Now this particular style of representation has any number of disciples, and we have accepted it as one of the principal assertions of modern art.

Strange, that history always repeats itself. We should know by this time that our tastes and the tastes of time are not absolute, and that our sense of beauty is likely to be affected by circumstances to an extent which we cannot realize. There was a time, and not so long ago, when Gothic buildings were regarded by the man of culture much as dandelions are regarded by the gardener. For years the very name Nocturne was a reproach. It was supposed to be the product of idiosyncrasy and nonchalant audacity, the work of a decadent period in art, which, because it was decadent, could not be good, for everything that looked like a Whistler was regarded as a note of decadence. It was an argument in a circle, no doubt; but such arguments seem most convincing when once a prejudice exists in the art world. Only gradually did people begin to see more than cleverness in his products.

Oscar Wilde was a constant friend of Whistler's at this time. The friendship was still young and, for a while, the two were inseparable. The author of "Dorian Gray" spent hours in Whistler's studio, came repeatedly to the Sunday breakfasts, and presided at Whistler's private views. Whistler went out and about with him everywhere. But Whistler gradually came to feel that Wilde, in spite of his brilliancy and wit, lacked fundamental purpose. Wilde talked constantly about art, but, in the end, Whistler concluded that Wilde, like most modern authors, knew very little about it.

The days of the Renaissance, of versatility, of talent and appreciation seem to have passed. Whistler easily tired of his friends and, although this friendship had lasted for years, he finally dropped Wilde without much ado. A critic of "The London Times" has summed up the difference between the two in the following words:

"With a mind not a jot less keen than Whistler's, Oscar Wilde had none of the convictions, the high faith for which Whistler found it worth while to defy the crowd. Wilde had posed to attract the crowd. And the difference was this, that, while Whistler was a prophet who liked to play Pierrot, Wilde grew into Pierrot who liked to play the prophet."

Like most artists who have suddenly sprung into fame, Whistler had lived beyond his means. He was fond of comfort and elegance, and allowed himself the fulfilment of any whim as long as it granted him genuine pleasure, as "art and joy should go together."

The auction sale of the contents of his home in 1879, and the sale of his paintings at Sotheby's in February, 1880, were perhaps not entirely caused by financial difficulties. They may have been prompted in an equal degree by a desire to make a change and break the routine of the studio life. He told, however, to his friends in his inimitable way how the sheriff's officer called upon him with a writ, and the last bottle of champagne was brought out of the cellar for that worthy's delectation. In Venice, where he went in September, 1879, he seems to have been in straitened circumstances for quite a while. He lived in modest quarters and dined in cheap, dingy places. These were his "polenta and macaroni days," and, in a way, a repetition of his Paris student's life, only much harder to bear as he was older and used to luxury.

No matter what his reason may have been for breaking up his bachelor establishment it was the second turning point in his career.

Painting did not play quite as important a part in Whistler's life after his Venetian sojourn. He still painted a number of portraits, among them the "Sarasate" and "Comte Montesquiou," but he was more active as an etcher, lithographer, pamphleteer, lecturer and teacher. Orders were scarce at all times. The only regular portrait orders he had in the first half of the eighties were those of Lady Archibald Campbell, wife of the Duke of Argyll; and of Lady Meux, who liked her first portrait, in a black evening gown with a white opera cloak against a black background, so well that she had herself painted three times in succession. Whistler's sense of beauty was a strong feature in his work. Maybe it was not the sense of beauty an Englishman would like. He looked for a pictorial aspect, rather than the "lady" in his sitter; and in England the "lady" is the thing to secure in a portrait of a woman.

He returned to London in 1880, but stayed only a short while. During the next ten years he had no permanent home; like a nomad he flitted from city to city, from studio to studio through England, France and Belgium. Finally he found some sort of a resting place in the rue du Bac 110, for many years his Paris home. It was a two-story house with a garden enclosed by a wall, as secluded a spot as one could find in the gay and noisy city. He was always fond of gardens of flowers. "In the roses of his garden he buried his sorrows," one of his most talented pupils, E. H. Wuerpel, tells us, in his little brochure "My Friend Whistler."

In the meanwhile his London Exhibitions became more and more numerous. During the next fifteen years the following eight exhibitions are on record.

In the years following his death, as is usually the case, 1904-05, occurred the most important assemblage of his works--the memorial exhibition of Glasgow, Boston, Paris and London.

Of special interest are Whistler's first American exhibits. At the first exhibition of the Society of American Artists at the Kurtz Gallery, New York, 1878, he was represented by a "Coast of Brittany." In the autumn of 1881 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts he exhibited the portrait of his mother, which was also seen the following spring at the Society of American Artists in New York. Sheridan Ford once asked him why he did not exhibit more frequently in America. Whistler answered: "I don't know, they will not allow me to take them across the ocean. You see, I don't own my pictures. I sold most of them long ago to people who think more of them than they do of me. I wrote and asked for two or three of them to take over, and the answers I received were to the effect that I could have them to exhibit here, but not to exhibit in America. Why? Because the owners are afraid of the ocean. I said I would insure the pictures, at which of course they laughed. I may go and I may not. A good many people in America don't like me, and I am not there to fight them as I can fight my enemies here. I don't mind having enemies where I can get at them. I like the pleasure of whipping them; but these fellows in America have it all their own way. There is no record, and I am at a constant disadvantage."

In 1884 he was elected President of the Royal Society of British Artists, but soon quarrelled with the old-fashioned element among its members, and the whole affair degenerated into one of those disputes upon which such copious light has been shed in "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies."

It is not until towards the close of his life, in 1898, that we find him again at the head of an artistic corporation, when the International Society was proud to acknowledge his leadership. In 1880 Whistler made his d?but in Germany at the International Art Exhibition of Munich. The result was not a flattering one. The jury officiating on that occasion established a peculiar claim to the affectionate recollection of posterity by awarding a Second Class medal to the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother," now in the Luxembourg. Of course a jury has perfect rights to make awards as it pleases as long as the verdict is a competent and impartial one, but Whistler by this time was too well-known, and one can hardly blame him that he wrote the following sarcastic but unusually dignified letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee.

"SIR: I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, officially informing me that the committee awards me a second class gold medal. Pray convey my sentiments of tempered and respectable joy to the gentlemen of the committee, and my complete appreciation of the second-hand compliment paid me.

"And I have, Sir, "The honour to be "Your most humble obedient servant, "J. MCNEILL WHISTLER."

After 1895 Whistler ceased to hold exhibitions. The death of his wife brought about a long silence, and little was heard of Whistler. He had laid aside his jester's bells and cap and ceased pamphleteering and posing in public. He had become a kind of recognized institution in the art world, occupying a place apart from the masses of his contemporaries. Men of very dissimilar aesthetic convictions agreed in regarding him as a painter of exceptional ability, and he had a solid and appreciative following.

We in America wondered what had become of him. Occasionally a newspaper notice informed us that he had taken up teaching, or false reports crossed the ocean that he had become a symbolist. He himself was inactive, as far as the public was concerned.

I suppose he was at last tired of notoriety and the cares of public life. He had played his part and had played it well. Intimate friends tell us that he worked as hard as ever. He still had many problems to solve, if for nobody else but himself, and was satisfied that he could afford to devote his time to them. Financially he was fairly well situated; but he spent money extravagantly, and the two residences and various studios he kept up in Paris and London proved at all times a heavy drain on his income, which was derived entirely from his art products. He left about ten thousand pounds, a rather small sum, considering the prices he received for some of his paintings.

In 1902 he once more took a house in London and selected Cheyne Walk, an old mansion covered with ivy, near the Thames in the Chelsea district, where he had spent so many years during the beginning of his career. Friends could not imagine why he came back from Paris to London, as he disliked the place, its climate and its art. They simply forgot that he was a lover of atmospheric effects, and that London fogs and the Thames were, after all, nearest to his heart. In the summer of 1902 he contemplated a short trip to Holland in the company of Mr. Ch. W. Freer, but was taken sick in Flushing. After consulting some doctors in The Hague, he recovered sufficiently to return to London and set to work, but only one year in the old haunts was granted him.

He had just entered upon his seventieth year when he died suddenly on July 17, 1903. He suffered from some internal complaint, the exact nature of which is unknown. He had felt ill for several days, but on the seventeenth his condition had so improved that he ordered a cab for a drive. On leaving the house he was seized with a fit, but recovered; a short while later he had another spasm, which killed him. He was interred in the family burial plot in the churchyard of the old church at Chelsea , near the grave of Hogarth. The coffin, covered with purple pall, was carried to the church followed by the honorary pall-bearers and relatives on foot. The pall-bearers were: Sir James Guthrie ; Charles W. Freer, George W. Vanderbilt, Edwin A. Abbey, John Lavery and the art critic, Theodore Duret; all personal friends of Whistler's.

When a reporter called at the house July 18th he was informed that the artist had left stringent instructions that no information whatever regarding his illness or death should be given either to his friends or the newspapers. He remained true to his eccentricities, or rather to his peculiar personality. Even in his exit from this life to the thrones of glory beyond, he endeavoured to make it as odd and picturesque as possible. He played his part to the last. And it was one of the noblest parts ever played by man.

THE BUTTERFLY

The famous butterfly monogram, originally a decorative combination of the letters "J. M. W.," which evolved into a decorative design of a butterfly, enclosed in a circle, as it appeared in his "Sarasate" and "Carlyle," and, frequently, a mere stencil-like silhouette as seen in his correspondence, began to appear in Whistler's pictures in the late sixties. The "Symphony in Gray and Green--The Ocean" was probably the first important canvas in which it was introduced. In his earlier pictures he had made use of an ordinary written signature as most painters use. It is strange that it took an artist of Whistler's sensitiveness so long to realize the incongruities of these crude calligraphic displays. They disfigure many a good picture and smack of the materialism of this age. Every picture should have a signature, if for no other reason than to prove the authenticity at some future time. But surely it can be treated with more discretion than it is to-day. The Old Masters frequently handled it with ingenuity and some degree of modesty. It was the Japanese artist who gave it a decorative significance. The red cartouches of Hiroshige are known to every print collector. He considered it a part of the picture, a colour note or vehicle of balance in an empty space, as important a detail of composition as any other.

Whistler treated his monogram in the same conscientious and picturesque fashion. He used it with preference in his symphonies, nocturnes and large portraits, but, at times, also in white, as on a rail post in the lower right corner of his "Bognor." He handled it with more than ordinary reverence, as everything that pertained to the exploiting of his own personality. He often introduced it at the first painting to judge the effect, and, of course, he wiped or scraped it out over and over again until he procured the desired effect. He continually made slight changes in the design, he toyed with it as with some curio, elaborated it in many ways, and, eventually, even bestowed a sting upon the insect, as it appears in his "Gentle Art of Making Enemies."

The butterfly teaches a lesson. It proves that an artist can be self-assertive, arrogant and yet refined. Whistler thus introduced a method of picture signing that should be generally adopted. Every artist should have his own monogram, and use it with discretion.

But it has even a deeper significance in Whistler's life. It is in a way a symbol of his evolution as a painter. As we study his work we find that the butterfly monogram does not appear before Whistler freed himself from foreign influences, and invented an individual and independent style of his own. The butterfly may well stand for the full awakening and realization of his own faculties. Did he not say himself:

"In the pale citron wing of the butterfly, with its dainty spots of orange, he saw the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and was taught how the delicate drawing high upon the walls should be traced in slender tones of orpiment and repeated by the base in notes of graver hue."

Like all painters Whistler had to learn his trade, and then find his peculiar way of expression. It took him well nigh a quarter of a century. He entered the studio of Gleyre in the summer of 1855 as a young man of twenty-one, and was nearly forty-seven when he had finished the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" and had painted a few nocturnes. All his earlier pictures remind us of some other master. "The Music Room" recalls Stevens, "The Blue Wave: Biarritz" the forceful style of Courbet, and "The White Symphony" even the light manner of Alma Tadema.

Charles Gleyre was an excellent draughtsman of the Ingres school, but all he could teach his pupils was to draw. That he had once been capable of some finer appreciation of colour and atmosphere, students of art may notice in his "Evening," painted in 1843, but he became, like so many other painters of this period, the victim of the academic style. Outline drawing reigned supreme, there was room for nothing else, and it was surely not a congenial environment for young Whistler, who, even at that time, differed with the prevalent ideas of art. Drawing, however, is one of the most important factors of the technique of painting. Velasquez even thought it was the most important one, and Whistler, with the peculiar tendency of his art, was, no doubt, fortunate that he reached Paris while draughtsmanship was still honoured and not neglected, as in the later days of the impressionists. A student in Paris either becomes an enthusiastic worker from the nude, making one study after the other, like all those Julian and Colarossi pupils--or he gets so imbued with the art atmosphere that he sets about on conquests of his own, and the city of Seine, with its museums, monuments, artists, population, pleasures and sights is just the right place for "free lance" education. Whistler chose the latter way.

The canvases of this period show strong influences of Stevens and Courbet. He must have been enamoured with the style of that great painter of woman, as he was undoubtedly with the rude sincerity of Courbet. If any man could paint at that time it was Courbet. He was the simplifier of planes and values, who advocated frankness and freedom of expression, and detached painting from all the absurdities and abstractions of the classic and romantic periods. From him Whistler learned to put on his pigments in a bold, vigorous way. He was never fond of brushwork, but at that time he liked to pile it on in a flat and solid manner. Only gradually his brushwork became thinner and thinner, invisible and almost untraceable, carrying out his maxim: "A picture is finished when all traces of means used to bring about the end have disappeared." As is the case with all great paintings, one must forget all about technique.

From Stevens he learned, as he often said in later years, all that could be learned from him. I believe that the influence was subtler and more spiritual, and one that lasted all his life. Stevens was for him what the chart from which we learn history in school days remains for us. We can never forget it and entirely get away from it. In the beginning, of course, it was a technical preference. Like Stevens, he used precise outlines, a profusion of details and yet with all a poetic atmosphere that is produced principally by a beautiful juxtaposition of colour values. Even to-day few of Whistler's earlier canvases have more admirers than the "Harmony in Green and Rose," perhaps better known as "The Music Room" . It was painted in 1860, in the London home of Haden, the painter-etcher. This picture was first known as "The Morning Call." In the corner of the room a mirror reflects the profile of a woman, who is not represented in the picture. This is a portrait of Lady Seymour Haden, Whistler's stepsister, with whom he was lodging at the time. In front of the window hang a pair of white curtains with a green and red flower pattern. A young woman in a black riding habit, which she holds up with her gloved hand, stands on the dark red carpet. In the background sits a little girl reading.

The harmonious arrangement of the Japanese colour prints in particular fascinated the cognoscenti. The application of colour in Japanese art is somewhat different to ours. It is more primitive, and based on the decorative principle of simultaneous contrast. It deals solely with flat tints with occasional gradations on the outer edges, and vibration is produced by the simple method of letting the paper, or silk, shine through the pigment. If Japanese colouring does not directly recall the polychromic designs of primitive people, of pottery decorations, wall designs, carpets and mats, Scandinavian wood ornamentation, etc., the reason is entirely to be found in its refinement and finish. It has the same origin; a totem pole is the beginning, and a Japanese print about the end of the development.

True enough, coloured prints were classified as vulgar art. They were considered ordinary pictorial commodities of no more importance to the natives than coloured supplements to our Sunday readers. But they were of such exquisite finish that we wonderingly ask ourselves if the nobler branches of art in this country really reached a higher standard of perfection. It is hardly possible. It was rather their application than their art value which offended the nobility. Many of the most cherished prints of Kiyonaga, Sharaku, Shunsho, and Outomaro, depicting teahouse scenes, actors, wrestlers and ladies of the Yoshiwara, were drawn for no other purpose than to serve as souvenir cards and advertisements.

The colour appreciation of the Japanese clerk, labourer and peasant must have been developed to an exceptional degree, if these designs, that were so cheap that everybody bought them as we do newspapers, could arouse nothing but ordinary appreciation and matter-of-fact comment.

The Japanese used colours in combinations that seem strange and unusual to us. They did not seem to care about any complementary laws, but introduced yellow with pink, purple with green, brown with red without the slightest hesitation. This may be explained by the restraint of their palette. Their old hand-made colours are all keyed in middle tints; they did not lack decision or strength, but they were never loud or vehement. Thus arrangements were possible that would look crude with the use of Western colours. Cheret's and Toulouse Lautrec's posters, even when of three-sheet dimensions and seen in open air, seldom expressed more than contrast and animation. They worked on the principle of the Japanese colour print, but in a very crude and superficial fashion. They wished to startle, not to please.

If colour is seen in flat tint patches it produces a more vivid image on the retina than a pictorial representation of mixed pigments, as flat tints are more favourable to the brilliancy of colour. Each separate soft tint creates a complementary image, and the eye would be easily fatigued if the colours were strong. In the Japanese colour print they are softened and blended together not so much by the skilful and harmonious juxtaposition, as by the suavity of the medium, the introduction of neutral tints, the mellow white foundation of the paper, and the arrangement of shapes encased in precise lines.

The European painter had a different idea. Although recognizing the supremacy of colour, he took visual appearances as they were and actually appeared in life as guiding models for his representations. Colour became submerged in other qualities almost equally important, as those of line, perspective, chiaroscura, relief drawing and minute observation. The Eastern artist applied colour for colour's sake, and kept all other elements, notably those of line, feeling, shape and space arrangement independent--not independent as far as the tonality of the final effect was concerned, but independent in their function as vehicles of expression. They were never diffused in the same way as in an Old Master. Each line, shape and colour had to tell its own story, while in Western art composition, colour and idea often became inseparable by the application of the blurred outline.

Whistler, at this stage of his development, was interested simply in recreating Japanese colour arrangements, to paint local values in such a way that they would reflect the beauty, contrast and variety of an Outamaro print. The pictures of this period remind one of that capricious Chinese princess, of whom Heinrich Heine speaks, whose quaint and solitary pleasure consisted of tearing costly silks into tatters, to scatter the rags to the winds and to watch them flutter like rose, blue and yellow butterflies to the lily ponds below.

Already in his "Woman in White" Whistler had shown some preferences for colour, but not until after he had taken his first house in London, when his mother came to live with him, did he show those peculiar outbursts of colour that were a direct outcome of the study of Japanese prints. In later years it was all tone, but in the years 1863-66, it was all colour, with a preference for white. The principal pictures of this period were "Lange Leizen of the Six Marks: In purple and rose" ; "The Little White Girl" , "The Golden Screen," "The Princess of the Porcelain Land," and "The Balcony: Variations of Flesh Colour" and "The White Symphony" .

Whistler clothed his English models in Eastern dress, and reproduced the beautiful colours with Japanese detail. He was among the first to appreciate the beauty of Chinese porcelain, of which he owned many choice pieces. In his "Lange Leizen" is shown a young woman in a Japanese costume, seated and holding with her left hand on her lap a blue and white vase of the shape known in Holland as the "Lange Leizen of the Six Marks" . Her right hand, covered by the sleeve of the kimono, is raised and holds a brush. Her skirt is black with a delicate design in colours. The kimono is cream white, decorated with bright flowers and lined with rose colours. Around her hair, which falls over her shoulders, is tied a black scarf. On the floor are several blue and white vases and an Oriental carpet. To the right is a red covered table, and behind the figure is a chest. The painting is signed "Whistler, 1864," in the upper right-hand corner. The frame was designed by Whistler himself and decorated with Chinese fret and six marks. It was shown in the Royal Academy of 1864.

Another picture of this period is the "Golden Screen." A young woman in Japanese costume is seated on a brown rug, her head seen in profile, as she examines a Japanese print. She wears a purple kimono decorated with multicoloured flowers and bordered with a vermilion scarf, and a green obi tied around her waist; her outer kimono is white with a red flowered design. To the left is a tea box, some roses and a white vase with pansies. Hiroshige prints are scattered over the floor. The background consists of a folding screen with Japanese houses and figures, painted on a gold ground. These two pictures are far from being satisfactory. The composition is restless, the colours do not harmonize, and the figure is one of that peculiar nightmarish type which some artists affect; a being belonging to that peculiar class of humanity who wear slouch drapery instead of tailor-made costumes, and carry crystal balls, urns and sunflowers as an aesthetic amusement, I suppose, about their person.

The model for both these pictures was Joanna Heffernan, an Irish girl, neither particularly handsome nor well educated; but she was a good model, who adapted herself easily to a painter's idea, and her native wit and willingness to learn atoned for any lack of knowledge. She generally read while she was posing for Whistler, and as she talked with his friends, posed for other artists and visited picture exhibitions, she played quite an important part in the painter's life during his early years in London. She went to Paris in the winter of 1861-2 to pose for "The Woman in White," in his studio on the boulevard des Battignoles. He painted her in a number of other pictures, notably as "Jo" and "The Little White Girl." Although different in each picture, now young, now more mature, in one case a lady and in another a buxom girl, she is really beautiful in none, though always attractive. He probably merely used her as a suggestion. He liked to have her in his studio even when he did not paint her form or features. There is also a dry point of "Jo," dated 1861, which shows her with streaming hair, which is probably the nearest approach to a likeness. It is a beautiful bit of drawing and interesting as a space arrangement. It shows how a head can almost fill the entire space of a picture without becoming obtrusive or looking too large. The line work is excellent in its purity of design and apparent carelessness.

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