International studio (20.1903)

of his performances—a lesson which every painter
who aspires to greatness would do well to master.
He has proved beyond all question what vast
possibilities there are in common things. The
beauty of everyday life was one of his strongest
convictions, and his faculty for finding suitable
material for great pictures in any direction never
failed him. He never had to wander far from
home in search of subjects; he took what came
and illuminated it by the light of his genius
until the merest commonplaces were full of
exquisite artistic suggestions. It was his rare
decorative instinct that saved him from ever
missing his mark, and led him always aright
in his management of the resources of his
craft. If the artists who seek to rival him will
estimate justly the significance of this factor
in his greatness he will assuredly not have
laboured in vain.

EMINISCENCES OF WHIST-
LE LER. BY MORTIMER MENPES.
) \ RECORDED BY DOROTHY
^MENPES.
How fascinating those were, the days when I
lived with Whistler in the intimacy of his studio !
And it was at the very best period of his life that I
knew him—a period which is known as the "Maud'
period. Yet at that time there was a good deal of
fighting to be done. His position then was not
what it is now. Now Whistler's pictures are recog-
nised by everyone to be masterpieces, and Whistler
himself a great master; but I can remember the
time when scarcely a single critic of a single
London paper failed to rail and jeer at him and
his work. And some of the men about him—men
who had been hypnotised by his overpowering
personality, myself among the number—clubbed
together and formed a
little army, whose sole aim
of existence was to fight
Whistler's battles, and to
place him, where he should
be placed, far above the
unbelieving Philistines and
on a par with such men
as Velasquez and Rem-
brandt. We called our-
selves the " Whistler
Followers." We were in-
tensely in earnest; that
was the best and the
saddest thing about us.
We were boiling over with
enthusiasm. We thought of
nothing else but Whistler.
We talked of nothing else
but Whistler. We lived for
nothing else but Whistler.
We had no time to do any
actual work, our time was
taken up in fighting for the
master. In silence and
in secret, and from a
respectful distance the
followers worshipped him.
We felt that the master
was in possession of tre-
mendous secrets about art,
but we never got within
a certain crust of reserve
and mystery in which he
kept his real artistic self
245


STUDY IN CHALK, ON BROWN PAPER BY J. MCNEILL WHISTLER
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