Rossetti: "Yes, it is."
Attorney-General: "Is it worth two hundred guineas?"
Rossetti: "Yes."
Albert Moore said that Whistler's pictures were beautiful, and that no other painter could have succeeded in doing them. The Black and Gold he looked upon as simply marvellous, the most consummate art. Asked if there was eccentricity in the picture, he said he should call it originality.
W. G. Wills testified to the knowledge shown in the pictures; they were the works of a man of genius.
Mr. Algernon Graves was in court to give evidence to the popularity of the Carlyle. As the picture was not catalogued when exhibited at the Grosvenor, Baron Huddleston ruled that there was no proof of its having been exhibited in 1877, and he was not called. These were the only witnesses for Whistler, though we have seen a letter he wrote to Anderson Rose suggesting Haweis, who had preached "a poem of praise" about The Peacock Room, and Prince Teck, who might be asked to swear that he "thought it a great piece of art." We have also seen the draft of a letter to Tissot upon whose aid he relied.
The Attorney-General submitted there was no case. But Baron Huddleston could not deny that the criticism held Whistler's work up to ridicule and contempt; that so far it was libellous, and must, therefore, go to the jury. It was for the Attorney-General to prove it fair and honest criticism.
The Attorney-General's address to the jury began with praise of Ruskin, it went on with ridicule of the testimony for the plaintiff, it finished with contempt for Whistler and his work.
"The Nocturnes were not worthy the name of great works of art. He had that morning looked into the dictionary for the meaning of coxcomb, and found that the word carried the old idea of the licensed jester who had a cap on his head with a cock's comb in it. If that were the true definition, Mr. Whistler should not complain, because his pictures were capital jests which had afforded much amusement to the public. He said, without fear of contradiction, that if Mr. Whistler founded his reputation on the pictures he had shown in the Grosvenor Gallery, the Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Nocturne in Blue and Silver, his Arrangement of Irving in Black, his representation of the Ladies in Brown, and his Symphonies in Grey and Yellow, he was a mere pretender to the art of painting."