Merrie England.
"The 'evolution principle' has been visibly in operation for a dozen years or so in the successive Whistlers put before the public during that time. First of all we remember pictures of ladies pale and attenuate poring with tender interest over vermilion scarfs. The taint of realism was on them, but even in them were hints of the pensive humour that was to fetch mankind in the well-known 'arrangements' at a later time. A good deal was left to the spectator's imagination even in them."—London.
"We note his predilections for dinginess and dirt."
Weekly Press.
41.—ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK.
La Dame au Brodequin Jaune.
"All these pictures strike us alike.
"They seem like half-materialised ghosts at a spiritualistic séance. I cannot help wondering when they will gain substance and appear more clearly out of their environing fog, or when they will melt altogether from my attentive gaze."—Echo.
"He has placed one of his portraits on an asphalte floor and against a coal-black background, the whole apparently representing a dressy woman in an inferno of the worldly."—Merrie England.
"Mr. Whistler has a capricious rendering of a lady dressed in black, in a black recess, on a dark green floor. She is turning affectedly half-round towards the spectator as she buttons the gant de suède upon her left hand, &c. &c. Its obvious affectations render the work displeasing."—Morning Advertiser.