The Italian masters influenced him, for he often spoke of them, of the wonderful effects they obtained with such simple materials and such straight-forward methods; their mastery of color influenced him, and he sought, so far as possible, to discover the pigments and the methods they used.
Those are the factors which helped to make Whistler,—the purest art; he was not influenced by what went on about him, or by what was said about him. So little did he care what others were doing or how they did it that his very brushes and pigments were different; and his methods were so peculiarly his own that no one painted at all like him, and his fellow-artists looked on in amazement.
The wave of impressionism which submerged all Paris in the very midst of his career left him unaffected,—for his art was an older and truer impressionism, an impressionism that did not depend upon the size of brushes or the consistency of pigments.
A visitor once said to him:
“Mr. Whistler, it seems to me you do not use some of those very expensive and brilliant colors which are in vogue nowadays.”
“No.” And he diligently worked away at his palette. “I can’t afford to,—they are so apt to spoil the picture.”
“But they are effective.”
“For how long? A year, or a score of years, perhaps; but who can tell what they will be a century or five centuries hence. The old masters used simple pigments which they ground themselves. I try to use what they used. After all, it is not so much what one uses as the way it is used.”
Much of the foregoing argument concerning the Americanism of Whistler and his art may seem to be contradicted by his own express utterances.
For did he not say in his “Ten o’Clock”?