Whistler has long been my favorite painter. In this passage, he crystallizes his brilliance. This statement was contrary to the popular concepts about art and nature of the day. Pick up The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. This is an Excerpt from Whistler's Ten O'Clock Lecture, February 20, 1835, London.
"Nature contains the elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music.
But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful--as the musician gather his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony.
To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the piano.
That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically, as untrue, as it is one whose truth universally taken for granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that is might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition of things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at all."
