As much as I admire Roger Fry, I wish that I might never disagree with him. His aesthetic theory offers a balance between the appreciation of pure beauty and moral value that I embrace as well. His writing presents a man who kept learning ever year, and so inevitably altered his opinion as he reconsidered works of art in new contexts, only then to revisit them again later and change his opinion once more. I admire the flexibility of his mind and his wit.
Have I sufficiently prove to myself how tentative I am to disagree with him? Yet, here I am heart broken that he did not appreciate the later works of Whistler, which are to me precious jewels, each and every one. They are not sharp crystals in the spotlight glory of a Tiffany window. They are instead the rough cut gems that remind us that such value comes from deep within the earth, mined with diligence to uncover from the rock and the dirt something ancient and precious.
The last paintings are vague and shadowy...even more so than his well known larger nocturnes. They are covered in fog, morning mist and mood. They are small teardrops from an authentic spirit who could no longer paint fireworks but had still the tenacity to show us a vision of melancholy that asks no pity, inspiring this art lover to return many times to the room of his miniature works in the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian. They are always there to comfort me, affirming that my existential loneliness, my poverty of means need not slip into a poverty of endurance.
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