"And now a few words about some of the pictures which the master had almost ready for exhibition: A full-length figure of a girl in out-door black dress, with a fur cape and a hat trimmed with flowers. She stands against a dark background, and she lives in her frame. A full-length portrait of Mr. Walter Sickert, a favourite pupil of Mr. Whistler's and one of his cleverest disciples. He is in evening dress, and stands against a dark wall. This is a picture that Velasquez himself would have delighted in. [It has vanished.] A full-length portrait of a man with a Spanish-looking head, painted in a manner that is surely of the greatest. [Perhaps the portrait of Chase or of Eldon; both have disappeared.]... A superb portrait of Mrs. Godwin will rank among Mr. Whistler's chefs d'œuvre. The lady stands in an ample red cloak over a black dress, against red draperies, and in her bonnet is a red plume. Her hands rest on her hips, and her attitude is singularly vivacious. This picture has been painted in artificial light, as has also another of a lady seated in a graceful attitude, with one hand leaning over the back of a chair, while the other holds a fan. She wears a white evening dress, and is seen against a light background. [A picture we cannot identify.] Besides these Mr. Whistler showed me sketches of various groups of several girls on the seashore ... [The Six Projects] and a sketch of Venus, lovely in colour and design, the nude figure standing close to the sea, with delicate gauze draperies lightly lifted by the breeze. The studio is full of canvases and pictures in more or less advanced stages, and on one of the walls hang a number of pastel studies of nude and partially draped female figures. A portrait-sketch in black chalk of Mr. Whistler by M. Rajon also hangs on the wall."
The Further Proposition, which was quoted by Mr. Salaman, can be read in The Gentle Art. It is Whistler's statement that a figure should keep well within the frame, and that flesh should be painted according to the light in which it is seen: the answer to the objection often made to his portraits because the "flesh was low in tone." A year later it was reprinted in the Art Journal (April 1887) by Mr. Walter Dowdeswell, whose article was the first appreciation of Whistler in an important English magazine. Whistler, knowing the value of what he wrote, meant that his writings should be preserved, and he gave to Mr. Dowdeswell for publication the reply which he had made twenty years earlier to Hamerton's criticism of the Symphony in White, No. III., but which was not then printed because the Saturday Review, where the criticism appeared, did not publish correspondence. Mr. Dowdeswell, describing the studio, adds a few details omitted by Mr. Salaman: "The soupçon of yellow in the rugs and matting; a table covered with old Nankin china; a crowd of canvases at the further end, and, pinned upon the wall on the right, a number of exquisite little notes of colour, and drawings of figures from life, in pastels, on brown paper."
Mr. E. J. Horniman, who had a studio near by, tells us that he often saw on the roof of the omnibus stable, just behind it, pictures put out to dry.
Many who visited the studio were surprised to find Whistler working in white. He sometimes wore a white jacket; sometimes took off his coat and waistcoat. He was as fastidious with his work as with his dress. He could not endure a slovenly palette, or brushes and colours in disorder, though the palette had a raised edge to keep the colour off his sleeve. Unfortunately, after his wife's death he ruined the two portraits of himself in the white painting jacket, which he never exhibited, by changing the white jacket to a black coat.
Other reminiscences of Fulham Road we have from William M. Chase, who came to London in 1885, with a suggestion that he and Whistler should paint each other; also, that Whistler should go back to America and open a school. "Well, you know, that anyway will be all right, Colonel," as Whistler called Chase. "Of course, everybody will receive me; tug-boats will come down the Bay; it will be perfect!" He thought so seriously of going, that he hesitated to send to the London galleries work he would want for America.
The two portraits were begun. Whistler painted a full-length of Chase, in frock-coat and top-hat, a cane held jauntily across his legs. As he wrote afterwards, in a letter included in The Gentle Art, "I, who was charming, made him beautiful on canvas, the Masher of the Avenues." Whistler was delighted with what he had done:
"Look at this, Colonel! Look at this; did you ever see anything finer?"
"It's meek or modest, they'll have to put on your tombstone!"
"Say 'and' not 'or'—meek and modest! H'm!—well, you know, splendid, Chase!"
Chase remembers an evening when they were to dine out, and Whistler had to go home to dress, and it was almost the hour before he ventured to remind him. Then Whistler was astonished: