Toward the middle of the seventies recognition appeared to come more readily. He seemed to know everybody of note, and everybody seemed to know him. His writings and controversies attracted considerable attention, his supremacy as an etcher had been admitted, and his pictures became more widely known. He had gathered around him a number of wealthy patrons, who were connoisseurs and keen appreciators of his talents. He was so successful financially in the latter part of his life that he had residences and studios in Paris as well as in London. At Paris his headquarters were in the rue du Bac. In London he had various quarters,—on Fulham Road, Tite Street, Langham Street, Alderney Street, St. Regents Street, The Vale, etc. Going from one place to the other as his moods dictated to him, with an occasional sketching trip to Venice, to Holland or the northern parts of France, he lived the true life of the artist, quarrelled with his friends, delighted his admirers with the products of his fancies, and astounded the intelligent public on two continents with the caprices of his temper. Strange to say, even at that time, his best work had already left his easel. He was busy with minor, but not less interesting, problems and devoted most of his time to etchings, pastels and lithographs. But it was at this time that his "Ten O'clock" and "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies" were published; and when his "Carlyle" found its way to the Glasgow City Gallery, and "The Portrait of the Artist's Mother" was purchased by the Luxembourg Gallery at Paris.

Comparatively little is known of Whistler's private life. I wonder how many of his admirers, excepting his personal friends, were acquainted during his life-time with the fact that he was married, and could tell whom he had married. He remained a bachelor until his fifty-fourth year, when he married the widow of his friend E. W. Godwin, the architect of the "White House." She was the daughter of John Bernie Philip, a sculptor, and was herself an etcher. They were married on Aug. 11, 1888. Eight years later his wife died, May 10th, 1896.

How this man of moods and capricious tastes got along in married life the general public has never found out. His friends assure us that it was a happy union and that he was deeply devoted to his wife. He has painted her repeatedly, but the pictures do not betray any domestic secrets to the public. Although Whistler was fond of notoriety, and managed to keep himself continually before the public,—in the fullest limelight, so to speak,—he never allowed personal news and the details of his everyday life to claim the attention of the public. All his innumerable feuds and press displays were related to his work,—to his completed pictures and theories of art. He liked to play upon his personality, but only as far as the artist was concerned. He was peculiarly free from the taint of exploiting his own domestic affairs. He hated biographies and all references to his family life. Even in his feuds with his old friends, F. R. Leyland, and his brother-in-law, Seymour Haden, when he brutally dragged apparent private matters into the glare of publicity, the discriminating observer will notice that his controversies, sarcasms and interpretations refer solely to "art situations" and never descend to the low depths of personal abuse.

THE SELF PORTRAIT OF 1859.

James McNeill Whistler was born on July 10th (some say July 11th), 1834, at Lowell, Mass. One of his ancestors, a Dr. Whistler, is frequently mentioned in Pepys' delicious diary. He was baptized James Abbott Whistler in the Church of St. Anne, at Lowell. His father, Major George Washington Whistler, was a civil engineer and, during the first eight years of James' life, moved from Lowell to Stonington, Connecticut, thence to Springfield, Massachusetts, and, finally, in 1842, went to Russia to superintend the construction of the railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The following year the family sailed from Boston to make their home in St. Petersburg.

This was the first impression the boy Whistler received from the outside world, and no doubt the trip across the Atlantic and the sojourn in a foreign country made a lasting impression upon him. Russia, with its quaint old civilization and touches of barbaric splendour, was the country to excite the imagination of any boy, and the change from a New England village life to the metropolitan turmoil of St. Petersburg would have left imperishable traces in any receptive mind. The father was paid lavishly and the boy was brought up in luxury.

The first report of any art talent in the boy can be found in the reference, mentioned by several biographers, to his taking lessons at the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg. It had probably no particular bearing on his career, since art teaching in Russia was traditional, and probably consisted of nothing but drawing from wooden models and plaster casts. It informs us, however, of the fact that he became familiar with the rudiments of drawing at an early age. Of by far greater importance to his development were his visits to the Hermitage. There he saw for the first time Velasquez and he learnt to differentiate between painters who could paint and such who could only tell a story in line and colour.

PEN AND INK SKETCH, MADE AT WEST POINT.

On the death of the father, April 7th, 1849, the family returned to the United States and settled in Stonington, Conn., and young Whistler attended school at Pomfret, Conn. In 1851, seventeen years old, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point and was enrolled as James McNeill Whistler, taking his mother's maiden name as a middle name. Like Poe, he does not seem to have been over-fond of a routine military career. No doubt something of the artist's temperament had awakened in him, and, like all young talents, he objected to regulated study, and tried to satisfy the vague aspirations of his unsettled consciousness with work that was more congenial to him.

He left West Point in July, 1854. The technical discharge was "deficiency in chemistry," but it was probably general unfitness for a career of discipline and exactness. Through some influence he received an appointment in the drawing division of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey at Washington, D. C., at the salary of $1.50 a day, but he resigned two months later. The government records show that he worked only six and a half days in January and five and three-quarter days in February. He apparently had no taste for map designing and bird's-eye views. It is said he paid more attention to the deliberate drawing of little trees and detail than to the typographic facts.

DRAWING MADE FOR THE UNITED STATES COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY.

His military career had come to an end; he had to do something else, and he felt that he had to become an artist at any price. Money was not over abundant in the Whistler family, but there was sufficient to allow him a few years' leisure to study art wherever he chose, and so he went to Paris, and joined the youthful band of artists, who fought for modernism and a new technique, and the glory of the mÉtier, with an enthusiasm, a bravery and devotion that has rarely been encountered. There he lived the regular student life for four years. He entered the atelier of Charles Gleyre, but only stayed for a short while. He preferred to look about for himself. At one time he and young Tissot made a copy of Ingres' "Angelique."

Whistler arrived in France shortly after the coup d'État. Paris was not then what she is to-day. None of the chain of boulevards around the centre of the town, not even the boulevard of St. Michael, which became the great thoroughfare for artists, were in existence in their present condition. But Whistler had come at the time when Paris was being reconstructed into one of the most beautiful cities of the world, and, when the Imperial rÉgime unfolded its full splendour. Paris became intoxicated with its own beauty, and the social life blossomed forth in all its elegance and frivolity.

During 1857-58 Whistler had a studio in the rue Compagne PremiÈre, boarding in Madame Lalouette's pension in the rue Dauphine. For some time he also shared quarters with Fantin-Latour, who, with Legros, was his most intimate friend during his student years. They saw each other daily, and it was on one of these occasions that he made the humourous sketch of Latour, depicting him on a cold winter morning seated in bed, drawing, all dressed, with a top hat on his head.

PORTRAIT SKETCH OF FANTIN-LATOUR.

They were the days of Henri Murger's "La Vie BohÊme," of bon camaraderie, eccentric days when every man sought to make his mark by peculiarities of dress, soft felt Rubens' hats, velvet cloaks with the ends thrown over the shoulders, and other exotic garments. In one exhibition, in sheer audacity of youth, Whistler appeared dressed in a Japanese kimono. Think of a man in a kimono in 1855! Whistler at that time was a true Bohemian. His little studio was his workshop, his temple, his parlour, his playhouse and his dormitory. He frequented the queer, interesting quarters that students seek,—quaint old cafÉs where food was good as well as cheap, and character abundant.

What is there so fascinating about the Bohemian's life? The Philistine, I fear, generally considers him an eccentric, indolent man, with no thought for the morrow, no notion of economy, no home save the place which affords him temporary shelter. He never stops to think that the Bohemians are the men who make our songs, who paint our pictures, chisel marvellous creations out of wood and stone, compose our sweetest poems and write our newspapers. It is a grievous mistake to assume that they are merely a lot of idle, luckless fellows. They are men with brains of good quality, and hearts in the right place. All classes and trades of men have burdened the world with their wants and woes. Not so the Bohemian. He, too, has his heartaches and bitter disappointments, but who ever hears of them? The humourous tale over which you laugh so heartily, recounting the adventures of a poet in search of a publisher, had the author's personal experience for a basis. He could not sell his poems, but needed bread; so, out of his misfortune, he had good cheer. The ordinary man, rebuffed by fortune, would sit down and mourn himself into illness. The Bohemian utilizes these very reverses, and both he and the world are the merrier eventually for them. He lives in a world distinct from that of common men. Talent, love of comradeship, a sunny disposition—these are the magnets that will draw one toward it. It has its obligations, its trials, its code of honour, rigid as the most unbending militarism; but there is charm of companionship and an absence of jealousies and pettiness within it that makes you powerless to rid yourself of its enchantments. The Bohemian's life is apart from yours, but why chide him for it? He builds on the ruins of no other man's life, he feeds on no man's scandals, he exults in no man's misfortunes, but goes on his way, imbibing the sweetness of life from every flower, and, in his own way, scattering the perfume broadcast. He does half our thinking and originates two-third of all the movements for the social reclamation of the world. He is no hypocrite before the mighty, nor heartless in the face of the unfortunate. He covets no man's goods, but lives his own quiet, interesting, exquisite life. He asks only a share of the sunlight of life. In du Maurier's "Trilby" we find a sympathetic description of the art life of that period, but also a rather despicable type of a man, "Joe Sibley," by name, who always pretends but never does a thing and who was meant for a ludicrous satire on young Whistler (a character which was eliminated on Whistler's request from the second edition).

It is easy to draw a mental picture of him as he looked at that time. I see him studying in the Louvre, in a loose black blouse with low turned down collar and a soft black hat on his long, slightly curled hair, lost in wonder before a painting by Leonardo; or strolling along the Boulevards, cane in hand, ogling the beautiful women, and dreaming of designing some dress for the Empress Eugenie, passing by in an open phaeton. And how enthusiastic he got, no doubt, over some Japanese print or Chinese vase in some curio shop.

A certain trigness, smartness, acquired very likely at West Point where the cadets change their white duck trousers several times a day, induced him, even at this time, to take special care over the fit of his coat.

"HOMMAGE À DELACROIX," BY FANTIN-LATOUR.

In 1859 he went with several fellow students, Fantin-Latour, Legros, and Ribot, to Bonvin's studio to work from the model, under the direction of Courbet. At that time he was interested in types. He painted a "Fumette," a little grisette of the Quartier Latin, and the "Mother Gerard," who in her younger days had been a maker of pretty verses, but, reduced in circumstances, had become a flower vender at the Bal Bullier. Among his friends and associates we find the names of Legros, Cordier, Duranty, the etcher Bracquemond, inventor of the "pen and ink" process, de Balleroy, Champfleury, Manet and Baudelaire. They were all young men of talent, plein d'avenir. Fantin-Latour made a group-portrait of them, including Whistler and himself, seated and standing, assembled about a portrait of Delacroix. The canvas was exhibited at the Salon of 1864 as an "Hommage À Delacroix."

Whistler's step-sister had married Seymour Haden, the etcher, and Whistler, paying them a visit in 1859, stayed in London. The four years in Paris had matured him, and he knew how to accomplish something beyond the routine studio work. In 1862 he exhibited for the Royal Academy. It was his "At the Piano," which, if not a masterpiece, is already a true and individual work of art.

Courbet still had a strong hold on him. He spent two summers with him in Trouville and may have derived his first lessons as a mystificateur, which part he played so successfully during life, from the French painter, for Courbet was a poseur throughout, who assumed a particular kind of dress, and who was not satisfied merely with painting pictures that offended the Academy and conventional taste, but made a special effort and took special pleasure in shocking the bourgeoisie.

Whistler also made his first trip to Holland during these years, and became enchanted with Rembrandt and Vermeer, but took a great dislike to Van der Helst. In 1859-60 youthful efforts of his had been refused at the Paris Salon; the same happened again in 1863, but he was one of the men who scored a success at the Salon des RefusÉes. A number of talented painters, and among them men of genius like Manet, Cazin, Degas, Harpignies, Vollon, Pissaro, Jongkind and Bracquemond, tired of the cliquism and jury of the regular Salon,—a story which repeats itself everywhere,—decided to arrange their own exhibition. Napoleon III, in his nonchalant way a true patron of art, issued an order to arrange the exhibition of "revolt" in the same building as the official exhibition. The exhibition was a success, and even the Empress Eugenie and the court came to see it. This is really of no significance, as nobody bought anything; but it sounds well, and biographers should never neglect to mention such incidents.

Owned by John H. Whittemore
THE WOMAN IN WHITE.

One thing is certain: Whistler's picture, "The White Girl," even with Manet's "Dejeuner sur l'Herbe" in the same room, attracted an unusual share of attention. Zola, in "L'Œuvre," says that the crowd laughed in front of "La Dame en Blanc." Desnoyers thought it "the most remarkable picture, at once simple and fantastic with a beauty so peculiar that the public did not know whether to think it beautiful or ugly." Paul Mantz wrote in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts that it was the most important picture in the exhibition and called the picture a "Symphonie du Blanc" some years before Whistler adopted that title.

The exhibition of this picture represents, in a way, the turning point in Whistler's career. It was a steady ascent ever after. Before this he was unknown, and exposed to the manifold privations and vicissitudes of an artist's career. Many a day he had gone hungry and frequently could not paint for lack of material. Now things began to run a trifle smoother, although sales were still rare and money scarce. His lodgings in 7 Linsey Row (now 101 Cheyne Walk) were extremely simple and his studio consisted of a second-story back room.

During the next three years he worked hard, and finished a number of pictures that since then have made history. They are all in a lighter key and of brilliant colouring. The problem he seemed to be most interested in was to reproduce in relief the charm of diversified colour patches as seen in Japanese prints.

He continued to see things in this way until he made a trip to South America in 1866. Feeling, perhaps, slightly discouraged, or in need of some recreation, he and his brother set out for Chili, under the pretence of joining the insurgents À la Poe and Byron, although I hardly believe that a man of thirty-two really capable of such a wild goose chase. At all events, when they reached Valparaiso the rebellion had ceased and instead of handling a musket "our Jimmie" opened his paint box instead.

The result was startling. Impressed by the new sights of southern scenery, and in particular of the translucency and subdued brilliancy of the sky at night, he painted one of his finest nocturnes, the "Valparaiso Harbour," now at the National Gallery of Art. The darkness of night to a large extent bars colour, and furnishes a kind of tonal veil over all objects; but in southern countries the nights are clearer and brighter and, although forms and colours are indistinct, they remain more plainly discernible than in the blackness of our Northern nights.

After his return to London he worked hard at solving the problem of creating tone which would suggest atmosphere with as little subject matter as possible. Four years passed before he held the first exhibition of a "Variation" and "Harmony." He now began to feel his own strength. He felt that he had done something new and had the courage to coin his own titles. The method of classifying his pictures as Harmonies and Symphonies, Arrangements, Nocturnes, Notes, and Caprices, was entirely his own invention and in his earlier career did much to attract attention to his work. One year later, in 1872, exhibiting several symphonies, he included for the first time an impression of night under the title of "Nocturne." The years 1870-77 were probably the busiest and the most important ones of his whole career. They produced not only the "Nocturne," but also the "Peacock Room" and the painting which is generally conceded to be his masterpiece, the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother."

Success and fame at last knocked at his door. Mr. F. R. Leyland, the rich ship-owner of Liverpool, proved a generous patron. Between 1872 and 1874 he ordered portraits of himself, Mrs. Leyland and the four children. Whistler made long visits at Speke Hall, Leyland's home near Liverpool. His paintings began to sell more readily than heretofore and several orders for interior decoration had come in, among them the decoration of the music room of the famous violinist Sarasate's home in Paris. He was willing to work at anything as long as he could carry out his own ideas. He invented schemes for interior decoration and also once tried himself as an illustrator, when he made exquisite drawings of the vases, plates, cups of blue and white Nankin for the catalogue of Sir H. Thompson's collection of porcelain. (Ellis and Elvey, London, 1878.)

National Gallery, Washington
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK: F. R. LEYLAND.

After leaving 7 Linsey Row, during the years 1866-1878, Whistler lived in several other houses situated in the Chelsea district, for like so many of us that have got used to a certain part of the city, he could never get away from it. The most pretentious of these abodes was the "White House" which became one of the centres of attraction in the art life of London.

There he gave his famous Sunday morning breakfasts, which Mr. Harper Pennington describes so amusingly: "They were always late in being served, outrageously delayed without apparent cause. It was no uncommon thing for us to wait an hour, or even two, for the eggs, fish, cutlets, and a sweet dish of which the meal consisted. A bottle of very ordinary white wine was our only drink." The whole thing, in fact, was an "arrangement"—just a colour scheme in yellow to match his "blue and white" porcelain and his "yellow and blue" dining room. The room itself was unique in its effective and independent style of decoration. It was entirely carried out after his own designs, even to the painting of the exterior. And the environment, the Thames, the old church of Chelsea with its square tower, the peculiar shaped bridge of Battersea, the lights of Cremorne in the distance, all furnished interesting pictorial topics and played an important part in the painter's mise en scÈne.

His neighbours added to the lustre of this period. In the same district at that time lived Rossetti, Swinburne, George Meredith and Carlyle, and Whistler was on friendly footing with all of them.

Exhibitions of his work were now a regular occurrence. In 1874 he held his first "one man's show" of thirteen paintings and fifty prints at number 48 Pall Mall, London. In 1877 he arranged an exhibition in the Grosvenor Gallery. Among the exhibits were "The Falling Rocket" (Nocturne in black and gold) which brought about the Ruskin attacks, and consequently the famous libel suit, Whistler v. Ruskin. One can hardly imagine, to-day, why the picture should have created so much commotion; but it was a decided innovation at that time, an event in a way ushering in a new era of art. Now this particular style of representation has any number of disciples, and we have accepted it as one of the principal assertions of modern art.

Strange, that history always repeats itself. We should know by this time that our tastes and the tastes of time are not absolute, and that our sense of beauty is likely to be affected by circumstances to an extent which we cannot realize. There was a time, and not so long ago, when Gothic buildings were regarded by the man of culture much as dandelions are regarded by the gardener. For years the very name Nocturne was a reproach. It was supposed to be the product of idiosyncrasy and nonchalant audacity, the work of a decadent period in art, which, because it was decadent, could not be good, for everything that looked like a Whistler was regarded as a note of decadence. It was an argument in a circle, no doubt; but such arguments seem most convincing when once a prejudice exists in the art world. Only gradually did people begin to see more than cleverness in his products.

Oscar Wilde was a constant friend of Whistler's at this time. The friendship was still young and, for a while, the two were inseparable. The author of "Dorian Gray" spent hours in Whistler's studio, came repeatedly to the Sunday breakfasts, and presided at Whistler's private views. Whistler went out and about with him everywhere. But Whistler gradually came to feel that Wilde, in spite of his brilliancy and wit, lacked fundamental purpose. Wilde talked constantly about art, but, in the end, Whistler concluded that Wilde, like most modern authors, knew very little about it.

The days of the Renaissance, of versatility, of talent and appreciation seem to have passed. Whistler easily tired of his friends and, although this friendship had lasted for years, he finally dropped Wilde without much ado. A critic of "The London Times" has summed up the difference between the two in the following words:

"With a mind not a jot less keen than Whistler's, Oscar Wilde had none of the convictions, the high faith for which Whistler found it worth while to defy the crowd. Wilde had posed to attract the crowd. And the difference was this, that, while Whistler was a prophet who liked to play Pierrot, Wilde grew into Pierrot who liked to play the prophet."

Like most artists who have suddenly sprung into fame, Whistler had lived beyond his means. He was fond of comfort and elegance, and allowed himself the fulfilment of any whim as long as it granted him genuine pleasure, as "art and joy should go together."

The auction sale of the contents of his home in 1879, and the sale of his paintings at Sotheby's in February, 1880, were perhaps not entirely caused by financial difficulties. They may have been prompted in an equal degree by a desire to make a change and break the routine of the studio life. He told, however, to his friends in his inimitable way how the sheriff's officer called upon him with a writ, and the last bottle of champagne was brought out of the cellar for that worthy's delectation. In Venice, where he went in September, 1879, he seems to have been in straitened circumstances for quite a while. He lived in modest quarters and dined in cheap, dingy places. These were his "polenta and macaroni days," and, in a way, a repetition of his Paris student's life, only much harder to bear as he was older (forty-five) and used to luxury.

No matter what his reason may have been for breaking up his bachelor establishment it was the second turning point in his career.

Painting did not play quite as important a part in Whistler's life after his Venetian sojourn. He still painted a number of portraits, among them the "Sarasate" and "Comte Montesquiou," but he was more active as an etcher, lithographer, pamphleteer, lecturer and teacher. Orders were scarce at all times. The only regular portrait orders he had in the first half of the eighties were those of Lady Archibald Campbell, wife of the Duke of Argyll; and of Lady Meux, who liked her first portrait, in a black evening gown with a white opera cloak against a black background, so well that she had herself painted three times in succession. Whistler's sense of beauty was a strong feature in his work. Maybe it was not the sense of beauty an Englishman would like. He looked for a pictorial aspect, rather than the "lady" in his sitter; and in England the "lady" is the thing to secure in a portrait of a woman.

He returned to London in 1880, but stayed only a short while. During the next ten years he had no permanent home; like a nomad he flitted from city to city, from studio to studio through England, France and Belgium. Finally he found some sort of a resting place in the rue du Bac 110, for many years his Paris home. It was a two-story house with a garden enclosed by a wall, as secluded a spot as one could find in the gay and noisy city. He was always fond of gardens of flowers. "In the roses of his garden he buried his sorrows," one of his most talented pupils, E. H. Wuerpel, tells us, in his little brochure "My Friend Whistler."

In the meanwhile his London Exhibitions became more and more numerous. During the next fifteen years the following eight exhibitions are on record.

1881—Jan.—An exhibition of fifty-three pastels at the Fine Art Society in Bond St., London.

1883—Feb.—Fifty-one etchings and dry points exhibited in Bond St. Gallery, London.

1884—May—Harmonies—Notes—Nocturnes—shown at the Dowdswell Gallery, London. At the same time an exhibition took place in Paris and Dublin. They were arranged according to his own idea of exhibiting.

JO (ETCHING).1884—Nov.—Twenty-five works sent to the exhibition of the Dublin Sketching Club.

1886—May—A second series of Notes—Harmonies—Nocturnes shown at the Dowdswell Gallery.

1889—The most representative exhibition of his works, since that of 1874, at the College for Working Women, Queen Sq., London.

1892—Mar.—An exhibition of forty-four nocturnes, marines and chevalet pieces for which Whistler prepared the catalogue. At the Goupil Galleries, Bond Street, London.

1895—Dec.—Exhibitions of seventy lithographs, London.

In the years following his death, as is usually the case, 1904-05, occurred the most important assemblage of his works—the memorial exhibition of Glasgow, Boston, Paris and London.

Of special interest are Whistler's first American exhibits. At the first exhibition of the Society of American Artists at the Kurtz Gallery, New York, 1878, he was represented by a "Coast of Brittany." In the autumn of 1881 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts he exhibited the portrait of his mother, which was also seen the following spring at the Society of American Artists in New York. Sheridan Ford once asked him why he did not exhibit more frequently in America. Whistler answered: "I don't know, they will not allow me to take them across the ocean. You see, I don't own my pictures. I sold most of them long ago to people who think more of them than they do of me. I wrote and asked for two or three of them to take over, and the answers I received were to the effect that I could have them to exhibit here, but not to exhibit in America. Why? Because the owners are afraid of the ocean. I said I would insure the pictures, at which of course they laughed. I may go and I may not. A good many people in America don't like me, and I am not there to fight them as I can fight my enemies here. I don't mind having enemies where I can get at them. I like the pleasure of whipping them; but these fellows in America have it all their own way. There is no record, and I am at a constant disadvantage."

In 1884 he was elected President of the Royal Society of British Artists, but soon quarrelled with the old-fashioned element among its members, and the whole affair degenerated into one of those disputes upon which such copious light has been shed in "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies."

The enforcement of the Whistlerian policy of elimination and arrangement brought disaster upon the Society. The annual sales fell from £8,000 in 1885 to under 1,000 in 1888. It was time for the ideal exhibitor and manager of mise en scÈnes to retire. And so he did, if not accompanied by a cavalcade of buglers blowing a blast with, at least, as much noise and controversy as he could conjure up in these art-forsaken and colourless days.

It is not until towards the close of his life, in 1898, that we find him again at the head of an artistic corporation, when the International Society was proud to acknowledge his leadership. In 1880 Whistler made his dÉbut in Germany at the International Art Exhibition of Munich. The result was not a flattering one. The jury officiating on that occasion established a peculiar claim to the affectionate recollection of posterity by awarding a Second Class medal to the "Portrait of the Artist's Mother," now in the Luxembourg. Of course a jury has perfect rights to make awards as it pleases as long as the verdict is a competent and impartial one, but Whistler by this time was too well-known, and one can hardly blame him that he wrote the following sarcastic but unusually dignified letter to the Secretary of the Central Committee.