The Life of James McNeill Whistler

d with his sister, Lady Haden, at 62 Sloane Street, sometimes bringing with him Henri Martin or

den, who urged me to come to London; he had also talked about me to Boxall

ere hung in the little octagon room, or "dark cell," reserved for black-and-white. "Les souvenirs les plus vifs que j'ai conservés de ce temps à Londres," Fantin wrote "étaient notre admiration pour l'exposition des tableaux de Millais

o deplorable a condition," Whistler said to us, "that it needed God or a lesser person to pull him out of it. And so I brought him over to London, and for a while he worked in my studio. He had, before coming, sold a church interior to Haden, who liked it, though he found

k dawned upon him. That he could not stand. What was he to do? he asked Whistler. "Run off with it," Whistler suggested. "We got it down, called a four-wheeler, and carried it away to the studio-our own little kopje," for Whistler told us the story in the days of th

ue c'est que cette espèce de cataracte de Niagara?" when Haden turned on the shower-bath in the morning. Fantin was almost as dismayed by the luxury at the Hadens'. "What lunches!" he wrote home, "what roast beef and sherry! And what dinners-always champagne

rtain to shut off the corner used as a bedroom. There was hardly ever a chair to sit on, and often with the brocade a towel hung from the line: their decoration and drapery. Du Maurier's first Punch drawing-in a volume full of crinolines and Leech (vol. XXXIX., October 6, 1860)-shows the two, shabby, smoking, calling at a photographer's to be met with an indignant, "No smoking here, sirs!" followed by a severe

o their evenings and played in their private theatricals, and there remains a programme designed by Du Maurier with a drawing of himself, Whistler, and Aleco Ionides at the top, while Luke Ionides and his sister, Mrs. Coronio, stand below with the list of dramatis person? between. And Whistler also took part in their masquerades and fancy-dress balls, on

ng was put up. Du Maurier with Harold Sower would sing a duet, Les Deux Aveugles; Grossmith half killed us with laughter (it was at these parties he first came out). Stacy Marks was a great attraction, but towards the end of the evening, when we were all in accord, there were yells for Whistler, the eccentric Whistler! He was seized and stood up on a high stool, where he assumed the most irresistibly comic look, put his glass in his eye, and

w hat" were conspicuous in London, where personality of dress was more startling than in Paris. Boughton refers to a flying trip to Paris at this period, when he was "flush of money and lovely in attire." Others recall meeting him, armed with two umbrellas, a white and a black, his practical preparation for all weathers

e white lock appeared almost immediately. Mr. Theodore Roussel tells a somewhat similar story. But we think if this were so, Whistler would have told us of it. In an exhibition of oil paintings and pastels by Whistler held in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in March 1910, a painting was shown entitled Sketch of Mr. Whistler. It was lent by Mr. Charles L. Freer and was sold to him by an art dealer. We are by no means certain that it is genuine, though we have only seen the reproduction, the frontispiece of the catalogue. J. recently went to Detroit, but in Mr. Freer's absence he was not allowed to see the painting. If it is genuine, it is most likely a study by Whistler of the Chi

he wane. A few interesting young men were at work: Charles Keene, Boyd Houghton, Albert Moore; Fred Walker and George Mason. Bu

nd Watts and Tadema.' 'Golly! what a crew!' I said. 'And that's just what they says when I told 'em I was a-posing to you!' Then I found out the mystery; it was the moment of painting the Royal Academy picture. Each man was afraid his subject might be stolen. It was the era of the subject. And, at last, on Varnishing Day, there was the subject in all its glory-wonderful! The British subject! Li

eur Astruc, Rédacteur du Journal 'L'Artiste,' portrait, and three of the Thames Set. Whistler had

en just then was playing the authority on art, and he could never look at it without poi

tler afterwards married). Phillip had just returned from Spain with, "well, you know, Spanish notions about things, and he asked who had painted the picture, and they told him a youth no one knew about, who had appeared from no one knew where. Phillip looked up my address in the catalogue and wrote to me at once to say he would like to buy i

eccentric, uncouth, smudgy, phantom-like picture of a lady at a pianoforte, with a ghostly-looking child in a white frock looking on," it struck the Daily Telegraph. But the Athen?um, having discovered the "admirable etchings" in the octagon room, managed to see in the "Piano Picture, despite a recklessly bold manner and sketchiness of the wildest and roughest kind, a genuin

that Whistler waited long for notice. He was always

he succeeded badly. The fact that he gave it up when half done shows that he thought so and was too big an artist to be an imitator, especially of a "little man like Méryon." Besides, he was much less in Paris now, for, though he preferred life there, he found h

s he saw it so he rendered it, as no one ever had before-as it is. It was left to the American youth to do for London what Rembrandt had done for Amsterdam. There were eleven plates on the Thames during this year. To make them he wandered from Greenwich to Westminster; they included Black Lion Wharf, Tyzac, Whiteley and Co., which he never excelled at any period

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he London Docks to get to the place, as out of the way now as then. He says Whistler lived in a little inn, rather rough, frequented by skippers and bargees, close to Wapping steamboat pier. But there is no doubt that much of his work was done from Cherry Gardens, on the other side of the river. Unfortunately it was not until after his death that we looked into this matter. At any rate, if he lived at Wapping, he worked a great deal at Cherry Gardens, al

Jimmie proposed the landlord's health; he felt flattered, but we were in fits of laughter. The landlord was very jealous of his

d Millais through difficult days. Whistler had issued his French Set of etchings in London in 1859: Twelve Etchings from Nature by James Abbott Whistler, London. Published by J. A. Whistler, At No. 62 Sloane Street (Haden's house). The price, as in Paris, for Art

cal methods of the Coast Survey, though it is said that the Coast Survey plates were banked up with wax and the acid poured over them. This is supposed to have been the method of Rembrandt. Serjeant Thomas, in his son's words, was "great for port wine," and he would fill a glass for Whistler, and Whistler would place the glass by the bath, and then work a little on the plate and then stop to sip the port, and he would say, "Excellent! Very good indeed!" and they never knew whether he meant the wine or the work. And the charm of his manner and his courtesy made it delightful to do anything for him. Serjeant Thomas brought Delatre from Paris, the only man, he th