To anyone familiar with art schools Whistler's idea appeared revolutionary, but he knew that he was carrying on the tradition of Gleyre. Art schools are now conducted on such different principles that a comparison may be useful. Usually the student is not taught to do anything. The master puts him at drawing, telling him, after the drawing is finished, where it is wrong. The student starts again and drops into worse blunders because he has not been told how to avoid the first. If he improves, it is by accident, or his own intelligence, more than by teaching. At length, when the pupil has learned enough drawing to avoid the mistakes of the beginner, and to make it difficult for the master to detect his faults, he is put at painting, and the problem becomes twice as difficult for the student. In drawing, each school has some fixed method of working, nowhere more fixed than at the Royal Academy, which leads to nothing—or Paris. In painting, the professor corrects mistakes in colour, in tone, in value, which is easier than to correct drawing, and the student becomes more confused than ever, for he is in colour less likely than in drawing to tumble unaided on the right thing. As to the use of colours, the mixing of colours, the arrangement of the palette, the handling of tools—these are never taught in modern schools. The result is that the new-comer imitates the older students—the favourites—and shuffles along somehow. Any attempt on the part of the master to impress his character on the students would be resented by most of them, and any attempt at individuality on their part would be resented by the master, for the official art school, like the official technical school, is the resort of the incompetent. The Royal Academy goes so far as to change the visitors in its painting schools—that is, the teachers—every month, and the confusion to the student handed on from Mr. Sargent to Sir Hubert von Herkomer and then to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema can hardly be imagined.
For this sort of art school Whistler had no toleration—its product is the amateur or Academician. When he was asked, "Then you would do away with all the art schools?" Whistler answered, "Not at all, they are harmless, and it is just as well when the genius appears that he should find the fire alight and the room warm, an easel close at hand and the model sitting, but I have no doubt he'll alter the pose!"
Whistler would have liked to practise the methods of the Old Masters. He would have taught the students from the beginning, from the grinding and mixing of the colours. He believed that students should work with him as apprentices worked with their masters in earlier times. Artists then taught the student to work as they did. How much individuality, save the master's, is shown in Rubens' canvases, mostly done by his pupils? So long as Van Dyck remained with Rubens he worked in Rubens' manner, learning his trade. When he felt strong enough to say what he wanted to say in his own way as an accomplished craftsman, he left the school and set up for himself. Raphael was trained in Perugino's studio, helped his master, and, when he had learned all he could there, opened one of his own. And this is the way Whistler wished his students to work with him. The misfortune is that he made the experiment when it was too late to profit by the skill of the pupils whom he wished to train to be of use to him. He knew that it would take at least five years for students to learn to use the tools he put in their hands, and the fact that, at the end of three years, when the school closed, a few of his pupils could paint well enough for their painting to be mistaken for his shows how right he was. If, after five years, they could see for themselves the beauty that was around them, they would by that time have been taught how to paint it in their own way, for what he could do was to teach them to translate their vision on to canvas. Mr. Starr says that Whistler "told me to paint things exactly as I saw them. 'Young men think they should paint like this or that painter. Be quite simple, no fussy foolishness, you know, and don't try to be what they call strong. When a picture smells of paint,' he said slowly, 'it's what they call strong.'"
Had his health been maintained, had he not been discouraged because students mostly came to him with the desire to do work which looked easy, great results would have been accomplished. His regret was that students did not begin with him. Mrs. Addams has told us of the great success of one, Miss Prince, who had never been in an art school. She had nothing to unlearn. She understood, and, at the end of a year, had made more progress than any. There were exceptions among the more advanced, men who to-day are well-known artists and who, looking back, admit how much they learned. Frederick Frieseke, Henry S. Hubbell, and C. Harry White passed through the school. One of the few Frenchmen was Simon Bussy, who describes Whistler as très distingué, très fin, très autoritaire, though not so stimulating a master as Gustave Moreau, under whom he had been studying. But the greater number of students, elementary or advanced, thought that Whistler was going to teach them, by some short cut, to arrive at distinction. When they found that, though the system was different, they had to go through the same drudgery as in any school, they were dissatisfied and left. Moreover, the strict discipline and the separation of the sexes were unpopular. Nor could they understand Whistler. Many of his sayings remembered by them explain their bewilderment.
One day, Whistler, going into the class, found three new pupils. To these he said:
"Where have you studied?"
"With Chase."
"Couldn't have done better!"
"And where have you studied?"
"With Bonnat."