1889—The most representative exhibition of his works, since that of 1874, at the College for Working Women, Queen Sq., London.
1892—Mar.—An exhibition of forty-four nocturnes, marines and chevalet pieces for which Whistler prepared the catalogue. At the Goupil Galleries, Bond Street, London.
1895—Dec.—Exhibitions of seventy lithographs, London.
In the years following his death, as is usually the case, 1904-05, occurred the most important assemblage of his works—the memorial exhibition of Glasgow, Boston, Paris and London.
Of special interest are Whistler's first American exhibits. At the first exhibition of the Society of American Artists at the Kurtz Gallery, New York, 1878, he was represented by a "Coast of Brittany." In the autumn of 1881 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts he exhibited the portrait of his mother, which was also seen the following spring at the Society of American Artists in New York. Sheridan Ford once asked him why he did not exhibit more frequently in America. Whistler answered: "I don't know, they will not allow me to take them across the ocean. You see, I don't own my pictures. I sold most of them long ago to people who think more of them than they do of me. I wrote and asked for two or three of them to take over, and the answers I received were to the effect that I could have them to exhibit here, but not to exhibit in America. Why? Because the owners are afraid of the ocean. I said I would insure the pictures, at which of course they laughed. I may go and I may not. A good many people in America don't like me, and I am not there to fight them as I can fight my enemies here. I don't mind having enemies where I can get at them. I like the pleasure of whipping them; but these fellows in America have it all their own way. There is no record, and I am at a constant disadvantage."
In 1884 he was elected President of the Royal Society of British Artists, but soon quarrelled with the old-fashioned element among its members, and the whole affair degenerated into one of those disputes upon which such copious light has been shed in "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies."
The enforcement of the Whistlerian policy of elimination and arrangement brought disaster upon the Society. The annual sales fell from £8,000 in 1885 to under 1,000 in 1888. It was time for the ideal exhibitor and manager of mise en scènes to retire. And so he did, if not accompanied by a cavalcade of buglers blowing a blast with, at least, as much noise and controversy as he could conjure up in these art-forsaken and colourless days.
It is not until towards the close of his life, in 1898, that we find him again at the head of an artistic corporation, when the International Society was proud to acknowledge his leadership. In 1880 Whistler made his début in Germany at the International Art Exhibition of Munich. The result was not a flattering one. The jury officiating on that occasion established a peculiar claim to the affectionate recollection of posterity by awarding a Second Class medal to the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother," now in the Luxembourg. Of course a jury has perfect rights to make awards as it pleases as long as the verdict is a competent and impartial one, but Whistler by this time was too well-known, and one can hardly blame him that he wrote the following sarcastic but unusually dignified letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee.
"Sir: I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, officially informing me that the committee awards me a second class gold medal. Pray convey my sentiments of tempered and respectable joy to the gentlemen of the committee, and my complete appreciation of the second-hand compliment paid me.