The Life of James McNeill Whistler

to Fantin. "Chut! n'en parle pas à Courbet" was his warning, as if afraid to trust so good a subject to anyone. It was to be a masterpiece, he had painted it three t

Angel on the water-side at Cherry Gardens which exists to-day, one of a row of old houses with overhanging balconies. In the foreground, in a shadowy corner of the inn balcony, is a sailor for whom a workman from Greaves' boat-building yard, Chelsea, sat; next, M. Legros; and on the other side of M. Legros, with her back turned to the river, the girl with copper-coloured hair, Jo, the model for The White Girl and The L

s a strange way of spending Christmas. Whistler told us that Haden bought it for ten pounds-ample pay, Haden said: three pounds for each of the three days he spent painting it, and

nfluence of Courbet is evident. The portrait, painted in the Newman Street studio, has the heavy

y of the interior where Fantin's sisters sit. Fantin's home had an austerity he made beautiful; the Haden's house had colour-Harmony in Green and Rose was Whistler's later title for the picture. He emphasised the gaiety by i

tired without knowing it, and suddenly dissolved into tears, whereupon he was full of the most tender remorse, and rushed out and bought me a lovely Russia leather writing set, which I am using at this very moment! The actual music-room still exists in Sloane Street, though the present owners have enlarged it, and the date of the picture must have been '60 or '6

esent confusion in Whistler's titles is usually the result of his own vagueness. It became the property of Mrs. Réveillon, George Whi

ubt the result of his working over it probably on a bad ground. Of two pictures painted at the same period, the Wapping is badly cracked, and the Thames in Ice is in perfect condition. But this is due to his want of knowledge of the chemical properties of paints and mediums. Later, he gave great attention to these matters. He kept the Wapping four years before he showed it. Though started down the river in 1860, it contains a portrait of Greaves' man, whom he did not see for two or three years after. Walter Greaves stated, or allowed to

also of the portraits of Axenfeld, Riault, and "Mr. Mann." In 1861 there were more plates on the Upper as well as the Lower Thames. Two of the plates of 1861 were published as illustrations by the Junio

Wharf, one of the fullest of detail, that we asked Whistler. We had many discussions with him about them. Whistler maintained that they were youthful performances, and J. as strongly maintained that that had nothing to do with the matter; that he never surpassed the wonderful drawing and composition and biting. He insisted that his later work in Venice and in Holland was a great development, a great

l, and Traer, Haden's assistant, not "Freer," as he has long masqueraded in Mr. Wedmore's catalogue. Ridley also is in The Storm and The Guitar-Player. To these visits we owe an etching of

hansom cab from London. At that time there was no railway at Sunbury; Hampton Court three miles

proof cover," Mrs. Edwards added; "my husband and friends several times went up the river and slept in the boat. Whistler went once," when he did the plate Enca

g over the stove in the studio than exhibited at the Royal Academy, though it is replete with evidence of genius and study. If Mr. Whistler would leave off using mud and clay on his palette and paint cleanly, like a gentleman, we should be happy to bestow any amount of praise on him, for he has all the e

ften as Saskia in Rembrandt's. She was Irish. Her father has been described to us as a sort of Captain Costigan, and Jo-Joanna Heffernan, Mrs. Abbott-as a woman of next to no education, but of keen intelligence, who, before she had ceased to sit to Whistler, knew more about painting than many painters, had become well read, and had great charm. Her value to Whistler as a model was enormous, and she was an important element in his life during the first London years. She was with him in France in 1861-2, going to Paris in the winter to

white lead used in the picture. Her brother, a doctor, recommended a journey to the

my efforts useless and to know people were looking on saying, 'But the Monsieur amuses himself, he must be strong!' I cry, I scream in despair-I disappear three, four times. At last they understand. A brave r

was not shown until 1870. If there was any influence, it was all the other way. At Fuenterrabia Whistler was in Spain, for the only time; "Spaniards from the Opéra-Comique in the street, men in bérets and red blouses, children like little Turks." He wanted to go farther, to Madrid, and he urged Fantin to join him. Together they would look at The Lances and The Spinners as together they had s

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t his were "the most striking and original" etchings, everyone then said, Mr. W. M. Rossetti being among the first in England to say it boldly. Alone with the Tide was approved as "perfectly expressed," and The Twenty-fifth of December as "broad and vigorous, though perhaps vigour was pushed over the bounds of coarseness to become mere dash." Other work he showed elsewhere was praised. The Punt a

bold massing of white upon white was more bewildering than the minute detail of the Pre-Raphaelites. This summer (1862) the Berners Street Gallery was opened, "with the avowed purpose of placing before the public the works of young artists who may not have access to the ordinary galleries." Maclise, Egg, Frith, Cooper, Poynter forced their way in. But the Manager had the courage to exhibit The White Girl, stating in the catalogue that the Royal Academy had refused it. The Athen?um was independent enough to say that it was the most prominent picture in the collection, though not the most pe

er his first letter to the press,

Street. J

without my sanction, called my picture 'The Woman in White.' I had no intention whatever of illustrating Mr. Wilkie Collins' novel; it so happ

Whis

y disapproved strongly enough for him to tell his fri

wn in a dealer's gallery. Baudelaire saw them and understood, as he was the f

eillées comme l'improvisation et l'inspiration, représentant les bords de la Tamise; merveilleux fouillis d'agrés, de vergues,

Whistler's house was No. 12, but this is quite uncertain to me.[3] As my brother and I were much in that neighbourhood, to and fro, prior to settling down in No. 16 Cheyne Walk, we came into contact with Whistler, who every now and then accompanied us on our jaunts. I forget how it was exactly that we got introduced to him

n 1862. Four appeared in Once a Week: The Morning before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Count Burckhardt, The Major's Daughter, The Relief Fund in Lancashire, intended to be used as an illustration to the reprint of an address by Tennyson on the subject of the famine in Lancashire, but never written because of his illness. To this fund we believe Whistler con

e came to know the artist or his work, as Mr. Whistler was young

d that the same amount had to be paid for engravings. As a matter of

were the two he preferred, and when J. was preparing The History of Modern Illustration Whistler picked them out as "very pretty ones" that should be reproduced, though, if but a single example of his work could be used, he wished The Morning before the Massacre to be

ury implied that the drawings were made for the book, and thought that "the startling drawings

rote: "Jemmy Whistler.-Clever, sketchy, and incomplete, like everything he has done. A loaf of e

, and it was interesting to see him at work. The bridge was in perspective, still surrounded with piles, for it had only just been finished. It was the piles with their rich colour and delightful confusion that took his fancy, not the bridge, which hardly showed. He would look steadily at a pile for some time, then mix up the colour, then, holding his brush quite at the end, with no mahlstick, make a downward stroke and the pile was done. I remember his looking very carefully at a hansom cab that had pulled up for some purpose on th

he Pool. The dignity of composition in the picture and the vigour of handling impressed all who saw it in the London Memorial Exhibition, though they had to regret its shocking cond

ejected pictures in his gallery. But before this was arranged, Napoleon III ordered that a Salon des Refusés should be held in the same building as the official Salon, the Palais de l'Industrie. The decree was published in the Moniteur for April 24, 1863. The notice was issued by the Directeur-Général of the Imperial Museums, and the exhibition opened on May 15. The success was as great as the scandal. The exhibition was the talk of the town, it was caricatured as the Exposition des Comiques, and parodied as the Club des Refus

obody misses her. I watched several parties, to see the impression The Woman in White made on them. They all stopped instantly, struck with amazement. This

the portrait of a spirit, a medium, though of a beauty so peculiar that the public did not know whether to think it beautiful or ugly. Paul Mantz considered it the most important picture in the exhibition, full of knowledge and strange charm, and his article in the Gazette des

Jacket, and Irving in the London Memorial Exhibition. But it seemed revolutionary enough in the sixties, to become the clou of the S

adding to his collection of blue and white, when the news came of the reception of his picture in Paris, and he wrote to Fantin that he longed to be there and in the movement. It was

Hague, though he said he did not know how they got there, and he was given one of three gold medals awarded to foreigners-his first medal. T

n London, and when he returned he began to look for a house of his own. It was fortunate for him that his mother was in England. At the beginning of the Civil War, in which Whistler took the keenest in

was the schoolmaster Whistler found him when they first met; one's older relatives have a way of forgetting one can grow up. Once, when Whistler had done something more enormous than ever in Haden's eyes, he was summoned to the workroom upstairs, and lectured until he refused to listen to another word. He started down the four flights of stairs, with Haden close

tno

uret's W

onds to Mr. Rossetti's description, but we think it more likely-and he does too-that Whistler lived in one of the little brick cottages of Paradise Row. In an