This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: …point he was very insistent on–the keeping the whole canvas wet at the same time. With each step upward in tone and definition, the whole picture must advance together, not be completed in a piecemeal sort of fashion as was taught by some Professors then; and Whistler practised this himself, and was, I remember, very critical of his State portrait of Lady Meux, because he had done some slight painting upon her arm after it had dried. He constantly varied the texture of his canvases, which he used to prime himself. Sometimes they were of the coarsest sacking, at other times as thin and smooth as unglazed calico. The
Mother’s Portrait was, unless my memory plays me false, painted upon the reverse side of an ordinary white primed canvas; and on this, before he had reversed it, he had traced down a cartoon of the Three Girls, having pricked it through in the old manner, and then outlined the figures with a fine red line. The usual theory about oil-painting is, that if painted upon a dark ground the brilliancy in time will be lost, and sink into the ground, as it were. I do not think this has happened to his works so far. He told me he did not want any toning from age to come on his pictures, but that they should remain as he left them. He came to us, too, to superintend the production of those entertaining catalogues of his exhibitions at Dowdeswell’s Gallery, with their collections of press abuse. They are amazing to read, but could not any really distinguished painter gather together something similar if he agreed to spend the time in doing so? Sir W. Q. Orchardson would have had little difficulty, I should think, in making a catalogue of such vilification! On some of these occasions he took…