Also Alexander Harrison, the marine painter, expresses himself in a highly enthusiastic manner: "I have never known a man of more sincere and genuine impulse even in ordinary human relations and I am convinced that no man existed who could have been more easily controlled on lines of response to a fair and square apprehension of his genuine qualities. When off his guard he was often a pathetic kid and I have spotted him in bashful moods, although it would be hard to convince the bourgeois of this. Wit, pathos, gentleness, affection, audacity, acridity, tenacity were brought instantly to the sensitive surface, like a spark by rough contact."
Mr. Percy Thomas says: "He was a man who could never bear to be alone. Through his own open door strange people drifted. If they amused him he forgave them, however they presumed, and they usually did succeed. Whistler seldom painted men except when they came for their portraits, and the models drifting in and out of the door of Linsey Row, were mostly women. He liked to have them with him. Mr. Thomas thinks he felt it necessary to see them about his studio, for, as he watched their movements they would take the pose that he wanted, or suggest a group, an arrangement. He lived at a rate that would have killed most men, and at an expense in details that was fabulous."
Walter Gray speaks about Whistler's technique. "No one can realize who has not watched Whistler paint the agony that his work gave him. I have seen him, after a day's struggle with a picture when things did not go, completely collapse, as from an illness. His drawing coat gave him infinite trouble. Whatever his friends charge against him it seems to me that Whistler's faults and weaknesses sprang from an unbalanced mentality; he was a deséquilibré, the common defect of great painters. Yet, underneath all his vagaries and eccentricities, one felt that indefinable yet unmistakable being—a gentleman."
Pennell gives a most valuable description of Whistler as a painter. "The long nights of observation of the river were followed by long days of experiment in his studio. In the end he gave up even making notes of subjects and effects. It was impossible for him to choose and mix his colour at night, and he was compelled to trust his memory, which he cultivated, when he painted his nocturnes. He reshaped his brushes, usually heating them over a candle, melting the glue and pushing the hairs into the form he wanted. Whistler told us he used a medium composed of opal, mastix and turpentine. The colours were arranged upon a palette, a long oblong board some two feet by three with the 'Butterfly' inlaid in one corner; round the edge, sunken boxes for brushes and tubes. The palette was laid upon the table; the colours were placed, though, more frequently, there were no pure colours at all. Large quantities of different tones of prevailing colours in the fashion and his paints were mixed, and so much medium was used that he called it 'sauce.' Mr. Greaves says, that the nocturnes were mostly painted on very absorbant canvas, sometimes on panels, sometimes on bare brown holland sized. For the blue nocturnes the canvas was covered with a red ground, or the panel was of mahogany, which had the advantage of forcing up the blues. Others were done in a practically warm black ground. For the fireworks there was a lead ground, or if the night was grey—the canvas was grey.
IN THE SUNSHINE (ETCHING).
"So much 'sauce' was used that, frequently, the canvas had to be thrown flat on the floor to keep the whole thing from running off. He washed the liquid colours on the canvas, lighting and darkening the tone as he worked. In many nocturnes the entire sky and water is rendered with great sweeps of the brush exactly the right tone. How many times he may have wiped out that sweeping tone is another matter. Some one remembers seeing the nocturnes set out along the garden wall to bake in the sun, sometimes they dried out like body colour in the most unexpected manner. He had no recipe, no system.
"In his painting it was surprising to see how much he accomplished in a short time. He would decide upon any local tone, putting it on with five or six big strokes, any variation of tones would be added in the same way. In a given time he would put down more facts than any man I ever knew. In the beginning of a pastel he drew his subject crisply and carefully in outline with black crayon upon one of the sheets of tinted paper which fitted the general colour of the motives. A few touches with sky tinted pastels produced a remarkable effect. He never was in a hurry in his work, always careful and accomplished much. Every subject contrived some problem for nature which he wished to convey on canvas."
The portraits painted and etched by himself and various artist friends also comment favourably upon his personality. William Michael Rossetti, in his diary of February 5, 1857, mentions seeing in Whistler's studio "a clever, vivacious portrait of himself," believed to be that belonging to the late George McCullough and which appears as the frontispiece to Pennell's book. Another portrait sketch of this period or a little later was shown at the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1910.