“‘What a nuisance you are!’ declared Whistler, and was sulky the rest of the way.
“It was not a pose. The painter was so enchanted by what he saw that banker and money were nothing to him at that moment.”
And it is said a visitor once found him at work in his studio.
“The furniture was of a pale gray; the hangings were of the same color; the window shades were of gray; the model a woman with gray eyes, wearing a gray costume; and the costume of the painter was also of the same prevailing color.
“Whistler refused to talk with his visitor until he had removed his flaming red cravat; and, after a few minutes’ conversation, commented upon the fact that the tone values of his coat and trousers were out of harmony.”
An exaggeration, but it all might have occurred; for has he not himself described, in “Gentle Art,” how the loud dress of a critic destroyed his exhibition. “To have seen him, O, my wise Atlas, was my privilege and my misery,—for he stood under one of my own ‘harmonies,’ already with difficulty gasping its gentle breath, himself an amazing ‘arrangement’ in strong mustard-and-cress, with bird’s-eye belcher of Reckitt’s blue, and then and there destroyed absolutely, unintentionally, and once for all, my year’s work!”
The analogy between the musical scale and the color scale has been many times noted.
Helmholtz[37] draws the following analogy:
There is, of course, this fundamental difference between the two senses: the action of air-waves upon the ear is mechanical, simply a succession of beats, while the action of ether-waves upon the retina is chemical in its character.