took up his position at one end of the room, with his sitter and
canvas at the other. For a long time he stood looking at her, holding
in his hand a huge brush as a man would use to whitewash a house.
Suddenly he ran forward and smashed the brush full of color upon the
canvas. Then he ran back, and forty or fifty times he repeated this.
At the end of that time there stood out on the canvas a space which
exactly indicated the figure and the expression of his sitter."

This portrait was to have belonged to Lord Redesdale, but through
circumstances nothing less than tragic it never came into his
possession. There were bailiffs in the house when it was finished.
This was no novelty to Whistler. He only laughed, and, laughing, made
a circuit of his studio with a palette-knife, deliberately destroying
all the pictures exposed there. The portrait of the lady was among
them.

* * * * *

Moncure D. Conway in his autobiography relates this:

"At a dinner given to W.J. Stillman, at which Whistler (a Confederate)
related with satisfaction his fisticuffs with a Yankee on shipboard,
William Rossetti remarked: 'I must say, Whistler, that your conduct
was scandalous.' Stillman and myself were silent. Dante Gabriel
Rossetti promptly wrote:

"'There is a young artist called Whistler,
Who in every respect is a bristler;
A tube of white lead
Or a punch on the head