PORTRAIT STUDY OF WHISTLER BY HIMSELF.
(From a black and white drawing.)

The authors have indeed, in a literary sense, adopted the pre-Raphaelite methods, to which in art they appear to be opposed, in painting their literary portrait of the great Impressionist. No one will doubt the patience, care, and zeal with which they have carried out the work, or the devoted loyalty of spirit in which what was evidently regarded as a sacred trust has been fulfilled; but in their natural anxiety to give full relief to the portrait of their hero and idol, the authors have not always been able to be fair to some of his contemporaries or predecessors, or to other forms of art than those which he practised, and they are apt to become a little extravagant in their terms. To assert, for instance, that Whistler was "the greatest artist and most remarkable personality of the nineteenth century" is a little "tall"; but no doubt the authors did not wish, any more than Mr. Wedmore, to "understate." The insertion of the little words one of in the above-quoted sentence would have been advisable, considering the number of remarkable personalities and artists the nineteenth century produced. This presentation of Whistler dominating and overtopping everybody reminds one of the method of the mural artists of ancient Egypt, who, in order to glorify their kings and impress beholders with his powers, represented the monarch as a gigantic figure clutching a handful of diminutive enemies trembling in his grasp, while he flourishes his sword over their heads.

It is, perhaps, one of "life's little ironies" that Whistler, who maintained in his "Ten o'clock" philosophy that the artist, like the unexpected, always "happens," and who took a purely individualistic view of artistic history should be at last fully accounted for on evolutionary principles. It seems strange that he, who apparently held that artists occurred accidentally here and there in the history of the world—like very sparing currants in a suet pudding, the pudding, or public, being always of the same materials, equally "stodgy," indifferent, or ignorant as to art—that Whistler, who might almost be described as the artist of accident, should be portrayed in minute detail under the glare of the limelight, and shown in relation to, and accounted for by, his heredity and environment.

A member of a most respectable family (like "The Newcomes") hailing originally from the Islanders he professed to hate, we may trace the origins of his personal characteristics, the germs of his development and the foundations of his art. His mastery in etching, for instance (perhaps destined to be considered the strongest and most enduring side of his art), had its roots in the technical experience and training of the United States Coast Survey. It is to be regretted that it was not found possible to include later illustrations of his etched plates in the book, as, with the exception of the pastels and water colours and the earlier pictures, the reproductions generally lose much of the charm, with the colour, of the originals, and most of their atmosphere.

Whistler in himself furnishes another illustration of the different side of his nature an artist often presents in his serious work from that usually perceived in him, by the world in general, as a man. If nothing of his self-assertive, combative, caustic and whimsical personality had been known, such traits could hardly have been suspected in the possessor of the refined taste, the delicate justness of tone, the somewhat austere and restrained decorative sense combined with a certain poetic vagueness, which generally characterize his works.

The work of Whistler at different periods of his life also illustrates the curious fact that artists of the most pronounced individuality of style and method often show how strongly they may become influenced by the work of others.

What Whistler's art would have been had he never seen the work of Courbet, of Velasquez, of Fantin, of Albert Moore, and of the Japanese, who can say? The power of assimilation itself may be an attribute of genius, and it is not so much what he may have absorbed, or from what source he may have derived suggestions, as what use an artist makes of his derivations that really matters.

The first time I saw Whistler's work was in the old rooms of the Royal Academy when that Institution shared the Gallery in Trafalgar Square with the National Collection, and the old masters and the moderns were next-door neighbours.

There was a certain obscure den opening out of a passage between two of the principal picture galleries, named the Octagon Room, almost as dark as a cellar, but it was here that Whistler's early and wonderful etchings of the Thames side first saw the light—such as it was! in the sixties.

I well remember, too, his early pictures, which also first appeared in the Royal Academy exhibitions in the Trafalgar Square rooms. The quiet power, rich tone, and distinction of "At the Piano," in 1860; the picture of a rocky seashore with a figure of a fisher-girl lying on the sand ("The Coast of Brittany," 1862), "skyed," if I remember rightly, which, Mr. Pennell says, "might have been signed by Courbet"; the lady in a Japanese robe painting a blue pot ("The Lange Leizen—of the Six Marks," 1864); I recall the striking effect of these works among the commonplaces of the usual mixed exhibition. They struck new notes. I also remember the "Wapping," "The Thames in Ice," "The Music Room," and "The Little White Girl," all of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy in the early sixties. These impressed me more than any other, or later, of Whistler's works. All the above-mentioned early pictures are reproduced in Mr. and Mrs. Pennell's book, and, to my mind, they still hold their place as the strongest and most interesting of the works of the artist in painting.