One day she drove to the studio in her victoria. Mr. Whistler went out to the sidewalk to greet her.
“Mr. Whistler,” she said, “two years ago I bought one of your pictures, a beautiful thing, and I have never been able to hang it on my walls. It has been loaned to one exhibition after another. Now, to-day I have my carriage with me, and I would like to take it home with me. I am told it is in your possession.”
“Dear lady,” returned Whistler, “you ask the impossible. I will send it to you at the earliest practicable moment. You know,—those last slight touches,—which achieve perfection,—make all things beautiful.” And so forth and so forth, to the same effect, and the lady drove off without her picture.
After she had departed, Whistler commenced to poke around the studio, and, to the great astonishment of a friend who had been an involuntary listener to the above conversation, he brought forth a canvas.
“Here it is,” he said. “She was right about one thing, it is beautiful.” And it was beautiful.
“But the impudence of these people,” he continued, “who think that because they pay a few paltry hundred pounds they own my pictures. Why, it merely secures them the privilege of having them in their houses now and then! The pictures are mine!”
However, this side of Whistler is on record in the case of “The Baronet vs. The Butterfly,” as he called the suit of Sir William Eden to obtain possession of the portrait of Lady Eden.
As the circumstances of this famous case illustrate Whistler’s attitude towards his work, and at the same time his attitude towards those who tried to deal commercially with him, they are worth recalling:
In June, 1893, Sir William Eden, a wealthy English baronet, wrote a letter to Goupil & Co., in London, asking what Mr. Whistler’s price would be for a small picture of Lady Eden, and he was informed that the price would be about five hundred guineas. He replied, stating that he thought the price too high, and said that he would call and see Mr. Whistler in Paris. Instead of so doing, he applied to a common friend, who wrote Whistler saying that the portrait “is for a friend of mine, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, you will have to paint a very lovely and very elegant woman, whose portrait you will be delighted to undertake,” and “under the circumstances I think you might make very liberal concessions.”
The matter of price was always a matter of indifference to Whistler,—if also of indifference to the other party,—and when Sir William wrote concerning the price, Whistler replied very cordially in January, 1894, as follows: