The wit of Whistler was not like the wit, let us say, of Sheridan, but it was the result of intense personal convictions as to the lines along which art and life move together. About one or two things in this world Whistler was overflowing with wisdom, and upon those things his conversation was always salt, his sayings falling with a pretty and a startling sound. He talked about things which were much in advance of his day. His was not the wisdom of the past which always sounds impressive, but the greater wisdom of the future, of instincts not yet established upon the printed page. By these he formed his convictions as he went, referring all his experiences, chiefly artistic ones, back to his intelligence, which as we know was an extraordinarily acute one. Other people’s ideas, old-fashioned ones, coming into collision with the intensity of his own, produced sparks on every occasion, and this without over anxiety to be brilliant on Whistler’s part. It is so with original minds.

There is a difference between artistic work and other sorts of work. Outside the arts, in other professions, what a man’s personality is, whilst it affects the way his work is accomplished, does not alter the nature of that work. Immediately, however, the work becomes of such a nature that the word art can be inserted, then the personal equation is before everything to be considered. “Temperament” meets us at every turn, in the touch of brush to paper, in the arrangement of the design, in the subject chosen, in the way of viewing that subject, in the shape that subject takes. Also we can be sure that a picture suffers by every quality, either of mere craftsmanship or surface finish, that tends to obscure individuality of touch and feeling. Outside the arts every job must be finished, if not by one man then by another. A half-built motor-car means nothing to any one, it cannot be regarded as a mode of personal expression, but in art it is otherwise, no one can finish a work for some one else, and as Whistler pointed out, “A work of art is finished from the beginning.” In such a saying Whistler showed the depths from which his wit spilt over. His intuitiveness in certain directions was almost uncanny, taking the place of a profound scholarship, and this saying is a case in point. For however fragmentary a work of art is, if it contains only a first impulse, so far as the work there is sufficient to explain and communicate that impulse, it is finished—finish can do no more. And of course this is not to say that art should never pass such an early stage. All this depends on what the artist has to say: sometimes we have to value above everything the completeness, the perfection of surface with which a picture has been brought to an end. Whistler’s paradox sums up the fact that finish should be inextricably bound up with the method of working and the personal touch never be so “played out” that resort is made to that appearance of finish which can always be obtained by labour descending to a mechanical character. This may sound rather technical, but it is not so really.

Here we may remark on all that is due to Whistler, as to Manet, for disturbing the dust in the Academies, at one time so thick that the great difference between art and mere craft seemed almost totally obscured.

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