those who had looked on Mr. Whistler as a master of persiflage merely,
and had not known him as we do, as a master of painting also. For that
he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting is my opinion.
And I may add that in this opinion Mr. Whistler himself entirely concurs.




THE RELATION OF DRESS TO ART: A NOTE IN BLACK AND WHITE ON MR. WHISTLER'S
LECTURE


(Pall Mall Gazette, February 28, 1885.)

'How can you possibly paint these ugly three-cornered hats?' asked a
reckless art critic once of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 'I see light and shade
in them,' answered the artist. 'Les grands coloristes,' says Baudelaire,
in a charming article on the artistic value of frock coats, 'les grands
coloristes savent faire de la couleur avec un habit noir, une cravate
blanche, et un fond gris.'

'Art seeks and finds the beautiful in all times, as did her high priest
Rembrandt, when he saw the picturesque grandeur of the Jews' quarter of
Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks,' were
the fine and simple words used by Mr. Whistler in one of the most
valuable passages of his lecture. The most valuable, that is, to the
painter: for there is nothing of which the ordinary English painter needs
more to be reminded than that the true artist does not wait for life to
be made picturesque for him, but sees life under picturesque conditions
always--under conditions, that is to say, which are at once new and