“The Dutchman Holding His Glass. This is signed ‘J. W.,’ and but two or three impressions are in existence.”
There must have been many other early attempts before the “French Set” was formally undertaken, and possibly other plates and prints will come to light in the rigorous search that is sure to be made for everything that he ever did. A plate made while in the service of the coast survey is in existence,—a headland embellished with vagrant heads and figures. Some of the prints are to be seen in collections.
The “French Set” consisted of twelve plates and an etched title, making thirteen plates in all.
But few copies of the set were printed, and the original price was two guineas per copy.
It is, of course, quite impracticable to give a complete list of Whistler’s etchings, for three hundred and seventy-two have been duly listed and described, and it is altogether likely that this number will be increased to over four hundred.
Whistler himself was very careless about keeping either a set of proofs or anything like a memorandum of what he had done. In fact, he did not know what or how many etchings and lithographs he had made or how many pictures he had painted.
Everything he did was so entirely the pleasure of the moment, and each new work, whether large or small, so completely absorbed him, that he quite forgot the labor of yesterday.
All his life long he would begin things and throw them aside, and he would finish things and throw them aside also. To him the only hour of vital import was the present. To the very last his work shows the enthusiasm, the even more than youthful impulsiveness, with which he would begin each new undertaking.
He could never work at an etching, a lithograph, or a painting one moment after it became drudgery; he could never finish a thing simply because he had begun it, or because some one thought it ought to be finished; hence endless misunderstandings with sitters and patrons, who could not understand why what they had bargained for should not be finished and delivered.
No matter how hard at work on any subject, he was instantly diverted by another which appealed to him more; and he would leave a sitter who was to pay him a thousand guineas to sketch an Italian urchin.