"But the exhibition altered all this, and it is revealing no secrets to say that within a year after the exhibition was closed I had aided in the transfer of more than one-half of the pictures from their first owners. Mr. Whistler, to whom I always referred before concluding any transaction, came to the conclusion that there was hardly a holder of his pictures in England but who would sell when tempted by a large price. It may be that these owners had become affected by the continual misunderstanding and abuse of Mr. Whistler's works, and that when they were offered double or three times the sum for which they had their pictures insured they thought they had better take advantage of the enthusiasm of the moment. They did not realise that this enthusiasm would continue to enlarge, and that what seemed to them as original purchasers of the pictures to be a great price is only about one-fourth of their present money value.
"It was the artist's wish that a similar exhibition should be held in Paris, but the project fell through, and from more recent experience it would appear as if the London public, sometimes so severely scoffed at by Mr. Whistler, was really more appreciative than the Parisian public, and, therefore, perhaps after all more intelligent."
Whistler sold The Falling Rocket for eight hundred guineas, and wished that Ruskin could know that it had been valued at "four pots of paint." The Leyland sale, May 28, 1892, brought the Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine and smaller works into the auction-room, and, though the Princesse fetched only four hundred and twenty guineas, this was four times as much as Whistler received. What would he have said to the five thousand Mr. Freer paid for it within a year of his death? The sixty or eighty pounds Mr. Leathart paid Whistler for the Lange Leizen increased to six or eight hundred when he sold it. Mr. Ionides had bought Sea and Rain for twenty or thirty pounds, and now asked three hundred. Fifty pounds, the price of the Blue Wave when Mr. Gerald Potter had it from Whistler, multiplied to a thousand when it was his turn to dispose of it. Fourteen hundred pounds was given by Arthur Studd for The Little White Girl and a Nocturne, the two having cost Mr. Potter about one hundred and eighty pounds, and we have been told that Arthur Studd was recently offered six thousand pounds for The Little White Girl alone. Whistler resented it when he found that fortunes were being made "at his expense" by so-called friends, and he complained that they were turning his reputation into pounds, shillings, and pence, travelling over Europe and holiday-making on the profits. The previous sentence was written when our book first appeared. During 1918 and 1919, there has been a fabulous increase in the selling price of Whistler's work. We do not know what amount was paid by Mr. Frick for the Lady Meux, the Rosa Corder, and the Mrs. Leyland which he recently purchased. Some of the reports of prices are greatly exaggerated, no doubt. A few owners of Whistlers do appreciate them. But nearly all collectors in the United States regard art as they do stocks. They buy for a rise, and appreciate only the monetary value of the works they possess. One of the most striking cases is that of Mr. Howard Mansfield, whom Whistler, during many years, furnished with some of his most interesting prints, aided and directed in their collection, hoping, of course, that they would be left to a museum. But Mr. Mansfield sold his collection for an enormous price, altogether out of proportion to what Whistler received. Surprising statements have been circulated about the sale of pictures. The announcement of the price recently paid for the Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine is as incorrect as the title given to the painting, which is simply a small slight sketch and different version of the important subject owned by Mr. Freer. The bigger the lie, the more impressive is such a statement concerning the prices asked and obtained—the merit of the work is of secondary importance. This is a fair specimen of American commercial art criticism.
Whistler, after the trade in his work began, suggested that a work of art, when sold, should still remain the artist's property; that it was only "lent its owner." It was now his frequent demand to owners and condition to purchasers that his pictures should be available for exhibition when and where and as often as he pleased. This is illustrated in the following letter which Mr. H. S. Theobald, K.C., writes us:
"... About 1870 I began to get such of his etchings as I could, and somewhere early in the eighties I became the fortunate possessor of some thirty or forty drawings and pastels through the Dowdeswells. Whistler became aware of my ownership of these, and they sometimes brought him to my house, which was then in Westbourne Square. The pictures, owing to stress of space, hung mostly on the staircase, and Whistler would stand in rapt admiration before them, with occasional ejaculations of 'how lovely,' 'how divine,' and so on. On one of these occasions he asked my wife if she had had her portrait taken. 'But of course not,' he added, 'as I have not painted you.'
"My intercourse with the Master was limited to occasions when he wanted to borrow the pictures. His manner of proceeding was somewhat abrupt. Some morning a person would appear in a four-wheel cab and present Whistler's card, on which was written, 'Please let bearer have fourteen of my pictures.' Sometimes, but not often, there was a preliminary warning from Whistler himself. But though the pictures went easily, it was a labour of Hercules to retrieve them. Once when I went to fetch them at his studio by appointment, after a previous effort, also by appointment, which was not kept, I found the studio locked, but after a search among the neighbours I got the key, and then I found some two or three hundred pictures stacked round the room buried in the dust of ages. Whistler loved his pictures but he certainly took no care of them. On that occasion I remember I took away by mistake in exchange for one of my pictures, a Nocturne that did not belong to me, though it was very like one of mine. You can imagine the Master's winged words when he found this out. I could only cry mea culpa and bow my head before the storm. It was the risk to which I feared the pictures were exposed which made me harden my heart."
Whistler was as anxious to keep his pictures out of exhibitions when for some reason he did not care to have them shown. The large Three Girls (Three Figures, Pink and Grey, in the London Memorial Exhibition) was at Messrs. Dowdeswell's in the summer of 1891. He had before this tried to get possession of it in order that he might destroy it, and he had offered to paint the portrait of the owner and his wife in exchange. His offer was refused, and while the picture was at Messrs. Dowdeswell's, he wrote a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette (July 28, 1891), to explain that it was a painting "thrown aside for destruction." An impudent answer from a critic led to a more explicit statement of his views on the subject:
"All along have I carefully destroyed plates, torn up proofs and burned canvases that the truth of the quoted word shall prevail, and that the future collector shall be spared the mortification of cataloguing his pet mistakes. To destroy, is to remain."
When this picture, with a number of studies for it, was sent to the London Memorial Exhibition, it was found very interesting and it was hung, and we think it fortunate that it was not destroyed. But had the Committee known it was the picture he wished destroyed it never would have been exhibited by the International Society.