How did so many fail to appreciate Whistler?
I approached this exhibition like a conscientious critic, poring over the catalogue, the signage, making notes… And then, about halfway through, I drifted. I dawdled. I stopped thinking and gave in to the aesthetic rapture, the rhyming half-tones, the ‘breath-like softness’ of Whistler’s paint. I was a disciple, briefly, of art for art’s sake, even though I wasn’t wearing white, nor carrying a peony. It was the room full of Nocturnes that sent me. Their opiate-like gloomth put me right beside the Thames at dusk. No, that’s too pedestrian. Not beside the Thames; with the Thames. Whistler lived on Cheyne Walk, but watching the river was not enough; he would take a boat out at night to prepare for his paintings.
