Masarykova univerzita V brně

MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English Language and Literature

The Picture of Dorian Gray: Basil Hallward and James McNeill Whistler

Final Work

Brno 2018

Final Work Consultant: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D.

Author: Mgr. MgA. Kateřina Pažoutová, Ph.D.


Anotace

Diplomová práce „The Picture of Dorian Gray: Basil Hallward and James McNeill Whistler” pojednává o vývoji vztahu spisovatele Oscara Wilde a malíře Jamese MacNeill Whistlera v přibližně desetiletém období bezprostředně před publikováním knihy Portrét Doriana Graye Oscara Wilde. Základní cíl byl najít jakékoliv souvislosti mezi Jamesem MacNeill Whistlerem a fiktivním malířem Basilem Hallwardem, autorem portrétu Doriana Graye. Možnost takovéhoto ovlivnění je přezkoumávána srovnáváním životopisů Wilda a Whistlera a dalších dostupných zdrojů a analýzou samotného textu románu. V diplomové práci jsou rovněž zmiňovány možné vzory všech tří hlavních románových postav – Basila Hallwarda, Doriana Graye a Lorda Henryho.

Vše začíná estetickým hnutím a nově otevřenou Grosvenor Gallery, kde byly vystaveny Whistlerovy obrazy a Wilde o nich psal. Wilde and Whistler jsou přátelé. Whistlerova přednáška ’Ten O’Clock lecture’ z poloviny osmdesátých let 19. století otevírá jejich spor o umění, který později kulminuje a oni se stávají nepřáteli. Jedno z hlavních témat sporu – Příroda versus Umění – prostupuje celým románem. Ovlivnění postavy malíře Basila Hallwarda Jamesem Whistlerem se zdá být nejsilnější v momentu, kdy je Basil zavražděn Dorianem Grayem.
Annotation

Diploma thesis “The Picture of Dorian Gray: Basil Hallward and James McNeill Whistler” deals with the development of writer Oscar Wilde’s and painter James McNeill Whistler’s relationship in the decade imminently before the publication of Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The primary goal was to find any connections of James McNeill Whistler to the fictitious painter Basil Hallward, the author of Dorian Gray’s portrait. The presumption that there was such an influence is being examined through the comparison of Wilde’s and Whistler’s biographies and other available sources and through the analysis of the novel itself. Thesis are also mentioning possible originals for all three main characters of the novel – Basil Hallward, Dorian Gray and Lord Henry.

All begins with the Aesthetic movement and in this time newly opened London Grosvenor Gallery where Whistler paintings were exhibited and Wilde wrote about them. Wilde and Whistler are friends. With Whistler’s Ten O’Clock lecture in the middle of eighties of 19^th century their dispute about art begins and later intensifies and they are becoming enemies. One of their disputes main topics - Nature versus Art - seems to be the most influential on the novel. If there is any moment where Basil is Whistler or like Whistler so it is the moment when Basil is murdered by Dorian Gray.
Klíčová slova

Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray, James McNeill Whistler, portrét, malířství
Keywords

Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray, James McNeill Whistler, Portrait, Painting

Prohlášení

Prohlašuji, že jsem diplomovou práci zpracovala samostatně a použila jen prameny uvedené v seznamu literatury.

Declaration

I declare that I have worked on my final work on my own using only quoted literary sources.

Brno 15 August 2018

Mgr. MgA. Kateřina Pažoutová, Ph.D.

Acknowledgement

My special thanks belong to

Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. for all advices, comments and kind help that she provided me with as my consultant.

Mgr. Pavla Buchtová for the encouragement in the moment of my indecisiveness

Mgr. Eva Honková for the support with books loans from other libraries and also thank to other employees from libraries of Pedagogical and Philosophical Faculties of Masaryk University in Brno

Ing. Stanislav Pištěk for the support with online book purchase and other advices

and - last but not least - my daughter for the ‘Patience‘ (sic)

Content

Introductory note The Picture of Dorian Gray 1

The aim and the situation outline 2

Short summary of The Picture of Dorian Gray 4

• 
  1. Preparation of The Picture of Dorian Gray
  

Aesthetic movement and the Grosvenor Gallery 6

Wilde and Whistler on the beginning of eighties 8

Opera Patience 12

Wilde’s American Tour 13

Wilde and Whistler and their bon-mots 15

Wilde’s wedding and A Rebours 17

Tite Street 19

Wilde’s London lecturing and journalism 21

Whistler’s Ten O’Clock lecture 23

Whistler accusing Wilde from plagiarism 29

Portrait painting 34

The Portrait of Mr. W.H. 36

• 
  2. The Picture of Dorian Gray
  

Originals of the main characters in the novel 42

Nature versus Art in The Picture of Dorian Gray 47

The picture of Dorian Gray being finished 50

First signs of the change of the portrait 61

Basil’s wish to exhibit the picture 63

Murder 65

Black cave of Time opened 74

The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Press 77

Conclusion 79

Literature 81

Introductory note about The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde’s (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900)¹ novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was published twice at the beginning of the nineties of the 19th century.

First time in the American Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in June 1890², second time as a book in 1891³ in London.

The second edition was longer, with new chapters and had a preface. ⁴

Important is also to take into consideration the first typewritten draft version which was not published till 2011. ⁵

I am using here as the primary source the second edition version of Wilde’s novel from the book Gillespie, Michael Patrick, editor. The picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde, New York. London: W.W.Norton. 2007 Print.

When quoting from it I always write only Wilde and the page quoted.

The aim and the situation outline

When I was reading The Picture of Dorian Gray first time I read it in Gillespie’s critical edition⁶ where are both Lippincot’s (1890) and book (1891) versions, accompanied by multiple critical notes with different materials of the period and also with nowadays essays and commentaries, I saw there a note about the connection between Wilde’s novell and well known American painter James McNeill Whistler (11 July 1834 - 17 July 1903.)⁷

I became interested what was Whistler’s connection to the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and especially to the fictitious painter Basil Hallward. My expectations were that I will find some direct connection of his painting style to the manner how Dorian’s portrait was painted. I read the novel again and searched for all described details about the painting and about Basil’s character. Surprisingly for me there were not many such traces. Both first chapters were more discussion like and it was not different even throughout the whole novel. These few details I found I was comparing with what I read about James McNeill Whistler.

My final work differs from my expectations. Whistler’s style was not this what was most influential and also he was not definitely only original for Basil’s character.

I learned a lot about Wilde’s and Whistler’s relationship and I have learned probably even more about the way how Wilde was thinking and building the structure of the novel and its characters. It was the reason why I added to all gathered notes about the relationship of Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler also more info about possible originals for all three main characters of the novel – Basil, Dorian Gray and Lord Henry.

As main sources related to Wilde’s novel I used the mentioned Gillespie’s book together with Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde, Joseph Pearce’s The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, Barbara Belford’s Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius and Neil Sammell’s The Plays and Prose of Oscar Wilde. For the full picture I had to read also the uncensored edition of the first Wilde’s typescript from Nicholas Frankel. Regarding sources related to James McNeill Whistler’s life I used Anderson’s and Koval’s book James McNeill Whistler. Beyond the myth.

Short summary of The Picture of Dorian Gray

Main characters of The Picture of Dorian Gray are:

-Dorian Gray – the sitter for the portrait

-Basil Halward – the painter

-Lord Henry – ‘Victorian Dandy’⁸ and a promoter of the philosophy of New Hedonism who influences the mind of Dorian Gray the most.

All three of them are meeting during the last sitting for the portrait painted by Basil Hallward in his studio.

The story itself is quite simple. Dorian stays forever young and the portrait, which stays whole time in Dorian’s possession, hidden and not exhibited, ages.

One might understand The Picture of Dorian Gray as a moral about the contract with the devil which is followed later by the retribution in the form of the death of the main character.

But there are “but”. Dorian does not sign consciously anything. It was just his wish – that he would give his soul if it is not him who ages but the picture - forced or awaken at the moment of the last sitting by the talking of Lord Henry who is defending the beauty and the youth as the only truthful values and the overall atmosphere in the studio. There is no need for explicit contract with the devil. Devil seems omnipresent and immediately ready to fulfill even the inner thoughts to everyone.

And it is more Art than the devil with whom is Dorian unconsciously signing the contract. Art is getting so the devil’s position (the out of moral position).

The motive of the final solution is also present even on the very beginning. As Dorian says: “youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.” (Wilde 26)

Ellie Ragland-Sullivan thinks “that the pain of Dorian’s shame and guilt as told by the picture completely overshadows the overt theme: that Dorian has sold his soul in order to stay young for ever.” (Ragland-Sullivan 490) But it happened unconsciously, his aging is stored in the attic of his mind where also his childhood is stored. According Ragland-Sullivan “the story narrated in Dorian Gray is itself secondary.” (Ragland-Sullivan 490) “The outer person is just a trompe l’oeil while the soul never ceases to keep its corrective accounting.” (Ragland-Sullivan 489) ⁹

Preparation of The Picture of Dorian Gray

Aesthetic movement and the Grosvenor Gallery

Oscar Wilde was one of representatives of Aesthetic movement. He studied in Oxford where the author of Renaissance ¹⁰ Walter Pater was teaching. Pater’s book “was quietly subversive of Victorian certainties and assumptions.” (Bergonzi 348) Here can be found roots of Wilde’s thinking about art as he admits later himself. “It is in art, Pater believes that the finest sensations are to be found and where we have the best hope of preserving the intense but fleeting moment of experience. This doctrine made Pater a revered master for the aesthetic poets and writers of the closing years of the century.” (349)

Pater was advocating aesthetic hedonism and his impact was so subversive that he was forced to remove from the second edition of Renaissance now celebrated ‘Conclusion’, because it might possibly be misleading for young men. He writes there “Not the fruit of the experience, but experience itself is the end … To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.” (Alexander 312) Pater’s Renaissance was “a key to the cultivated aestheticism which dominated avant-garde culture in the 1890s. It is also one of the serious experiments in art history, advancing beyond Ruskin’s restrictive canons and burgeoning speculations into an analytical study of Renaissance painting.” (Sanders 469-70)

Pater’s book together with Ruskin was influential also for Oscar Wilde because this searching for sensual experiences is in the background of whole story of Dorian Gray and behind all advises given to him by Lord Henry.

Opening of the Grosvenor Gallery on 30 April 1877 was one of key moments of the aesthetic movement. The Grosvenor Gallery stayed in the opposition to the traditional Royal Academy. As Gillespie explains Grosvenor was “A Bond Street art gallery established by the painter Sir Coutts Lidsay in May 1877 as an alternative to the gallery of the Royal Academy. It came to known as the “Temple of the Aesthetic”. (Gillespie 6) This gallery was the only option for part of the contemporary artists as “Royal Academy rejected early works by Whistler, Millais and other leading artists of the day.” (Frankel 71)

According Ellmann after the first private showing on 30 April 1877 there was the official opening on the following day, “when the Prince of Wales, Gladstone, Ruskin, Henry James and other dignitaries were also present....Lindsay intended his new gallery to present not only paintings of this school and others, but to constitute in itself a work of art ...Whistler, with whom Wilde had struck up an acquaintance, was commissioned to do a frieze on the coved ceiling of the West Gallery, showing in silver, against a subdued blue ground, the moon in its phases and the accompanying stars.” (Ellmann 78)

According Barbara Belford it was Wilde’s “first public appearance … The Dublin University Magazine asked him to write a review of this landmark event, which broke the hegemony held by the Royal Academy for more than a century by providing a space for contemporary French paintings and the avant-garde as exemplified by James Whistler. The review was Wilde‘s first published prose and his debut as an art critic. He wrote an ambitious essay that attempted to link painting with the writings of Pater, Ruskin, Morris, Swinburne, and Symours” (Belford 57-8)

Ellmann compares Wilde’s article with the one of Henry James’s who dismissed Whistler’s art works. Wilde appreciates “Whistlers portrait of Carlyle … [but] When it comes to the Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, the most daring of all, Wilde banters about it like a simple minded realist: it ‘is worth looking at for about as one looks at a real rocket, that is, for somewhat less than a quarter of a minute.”

(Ellmann 80)¹¹

Wilde’s view on Whistler paintings was changing within the time, which Ellmann comments: “Although Wilde’s approbation of Whistler’s paintings in the first Grosvenor Gallery exhibition had been equivocal, his taste being than almost exclusively ‘Pre-Raff,’ he made up for it with his review, in a Dublin newspaper on 5 May 1879, of a later exhibition. … He no longer questioned that Whistler was the greatest painter in London. (Ellmann 131)¹²

Judging from what Gillespie says Grosvenor Gallery became part of Wilde’s life -“Wilde had done reviews of exhibits there in the late 1870s and early 1880s.” (Gillespie 6)

Wilde and Whistler on the beginning of eighties

It is not clear when Wilde and Whistler met first time. If it was in Grosvenor when they began to talk or later somewhere else. According what Barbara Belford writes their first conversation might have happened the following way:

“Whistler was wearing the farthing on his watch chain when he and Wilde formally met in 1879. The meeting took place at Frank Mile’s¹³ studio, on the top floor of a dark, haunting three-story building a 13 Salisbury Street off the Strand. One poseur greeted the other and the competition began. When Wilde came down from Oxford and took the floor below the studio, he appraised his new address and christened it Thames House for its best feature: a river view. A penchant for naming friends now extended to homes.” (Belford 69)¹⁴

On the beginning they were friends later they became enemies.

Ellmann describes the beginning s of Wilde’s and Whistler’s relationship when it was more like relationship of the disciple and the teacher: “Whistler demanded admiration bordering on sycophancy and gave in return domination bordering on enmity. To Wilde, gazing down at him, Whistler was short but formidable.” (Ellmann 131)

The turn of seventies and eighties seems to be a right timing for their relationship. Whistler was back in London in November 1880 from Venice ready to continue where he stopped after the trial with Ruskin. According Ellmann:

“In 1879 Wilde was still obscure; in 1880 he was famous. For the time the two suited each other. Whistler was twenty years older, American … He had spent several years in France, and was acquainted with the principal artists and writers there. Wilde aspired to be the same. Whistler lived a life made up of seemingly firm friendships which regularly ended in brief, conclusive quarrels. To be his friend was to court dismissal; Wilde managed it successfully for half a dozen years. He received the master barbs in good part, one of his most attractive characteristics being his enjoyment of jokes against himself.” (Ellmann 131)

When Whistler returned in 1880 from the Venetian exile he lived again on Tite Street – only on different place and so was again the neighbour of Miles and Wilde. Whistler was printing his Venetian plates in this time. (Ellmann 131)¹⁵

Anderson and Koval are giving more details:

“While preparing for the second show, James was also busy socially, holding his famous Sunday breakfasts for the likes of Oscar Wilde and Lillie Langtry¹⁶ … Oscar had become a regular visitor to James’s studio and the two were frequently seen together. All the best parties or social events were guaranteed success with the appearance of James Whistler and Oscar Wilde, who together could set the Town talking. The actress Ellen Terry wrote in her memoirs that ‘The most remarkable men I have ever know were Whistler and Wilde.’ ¹⁷ Arthur Symons, the poet, wrote of the subtle differences between the wit of the two men: Whistler, whom I knew for many years, was a great wit, and his wit was a personal expression … [It] was not, as with Wilde, a brilliant sudden gymnastic, with words, in which the phrase itself was always worth more than what was said: it was a wit of ideas, in which the thing said was at least on the level of the way saying it. And with him, it was really a weapon used as any rapier in an eternal duel with an eternal enemy. ¹⁸ Another contemporary, Frank Harris, the editor of the Fortnightly Review, was witness to the moulding of Wilde in James’s studio: ’Oscar sat at his feet and assimilated as much as he could of the new aesthetic gospel. He even ventured to annex some of the master’s theories and telling stories, and thus came into conflict with his teacher.’ ¹⁹ Harris further claimed that among the influences which went into the shaping of Wilde’s talent, it was James who taught him the value of wit and that ‘singularity of appearance counts doubly in a democracy of clothes.’ ²⁰ …. With James and Wilde dressing the part, the ‘Cult of the Dandy’ was now in full swing.” (Anderson 239-40)

Pennels also mention that according Whistler’s friend Sir Rennell Rodd “It was in '82, '83 that I saw most of him. Frank Miles, Waldo and Julian Story, Walter Sickert, Harper Pennington, and, at one time, Oscar Wilde, were constantly there. Jimmy, unlike many artists, liked a camarade about the place while he was working, and talked and laughed and raced about all the time, putting in the touches delicately, after matured thought, with long brushes. ” ” (Pennel 225-6)

Pennels continues quoting letter from Rennell Rodd:

“For two or three years Oscar Wilde was so much with Whistler that everyone who went to the studio found him there, just as everyone who went into society saw them together. Wilde had come up from Oxford not long before the Ruskin trial, with a reputation as a brilliant undergraduate, winner of the Newdigate prize, and he now posed as the apostle of "Beauty." ... Oscar's witty sayings were repeated and his youth seemed to excuse his pose. Whistler impressed him. ... When Wilde came to London Whistler was the focus of the world. Whistler was sought out, Wilde tried to play up. In Tite Street blue and white was used, not as a symbol of faith, but every day; flowers bloomed, not as a pledge of "culture," but for their colour and form; beauty was accepted as no discovery, but as the aim of art since the first artist drew a line and saw that it was beautiful. Whistler knew all this. Wilde fumbled with it. Whistler was flattered by Wilde. He was looked upon as the world's jester when Wilde fawned upon him. Other young men gathered about Whistler had name and reputation to make. But Wilde's name was in every man's mouth; he glittered with the glory of the work he was to do. He was the most promising poet of his generation and he was amusing. There was a charm in his personality.” (Pennel 227)

Sherard’s²¹ short note on the end of his story foreshadows the future evolution of Wilde’s and Whistler’s relationship. Sherad says he was frequently dining with Wilde.

“Sometimes we went to the Café Royal, and on more than one occasion Whistler was with us. He was not very prosperous in those days, and used to order the very cheapest claret to take with his frugal grill. Oscar Wilde showed him the greatest deference. “Like the grand Virginian gentleman that you are,” he sometimes said to him. Whistler seemed to me always to be nurturing a grievance, either against some individual, or against the social collectivity. I remember once saying to Oscar that the pre-prandial conversation with Whistler was an excellent substitute for bitters as an apéritif, and so indeed it was. His remarks were the cascara sagrada of conversation. I was promptly snubbed by Oscar for my observation. “One does not criticize James MacNeil Whistler,” he said, though later on he himself was to criticize him, and not without acerbity.” (Sherard 286)

Opera Patience

Wilde’s reputation of the “aesthetic dandy”²² in eighties is documented by the opera Patience. “A song from the comic opera Patience (1881)²³, with words by W. S. Gilbert and music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and produced by D’Oyly Carte, shows that Wilde had been noticed in London.” (Alexander 313) Here is an illustrative quote from the opera:

If you walk down Picadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medi-eval hand.

And everyone will say,

As you walk your flowery way,

‘If he’s content with a vegetable love which would certainly not suit me,

Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be!’” (313) ²⁴

Wilde and James Whistler were in the audience, they “sat in the front row at the first performance.” (314)

Both artists were icons of the cultural London of eighties and opera’s two aesthetes, Reginald Bunthorne and Archibald Grosvenor had a flavor of both of them together with other leading figures of the Aesthetic movement²⁵. Opera itself was a successfull parody and satire on the aesthetic movement and as Ellmann claims “Max Beerbohm is probably right in saying that Patience prolonged the aesthetic movement.” (Ellmann 136)²⁶ Also Grosvenor Gallery “was parodied by Gilbert and Sulivan in Patience as the “greenery-yallery, Grosvenor gallery” because of its dominant color keys.” (Gillespie 6)

According Ellmann

“In his libretto, Gilbert profited from a relentless sequence of caricatures by George du Maurier in Punch. As an art student du Maurier had lived with Whistler in Paris. The sight of his old friend with Wilde probably stirred du Maurier early in 1881 to conceive two aesthetic types, the poet Maudle and the painter Jellaby Postlethwaite. Week after week these caricatures appeared, never mentioning Whistler, too distinguished to be an easy target, but constantly involving Wilde. Great fun was made of his flowing locks, his lilies, his rondeaux and other French forms, The Grosvenor Gallery, blue china, poems entitled ‘Impressions’. … If by no means always clever, this parody was good-humored., and Wilde was too aware of the usefulness of publicity to quarrel with Punch. He made a point of always greeting du Maurier graciously. Once at a showing of Whistler’s work, the painter came up to them as they stood talking together and asked, ‘Which of you discovered the other?’ Du Maurier wished he had replied, ‘We have both invented you,’ but Whistler had slipped away.” (Ellmann 136)