I once rented a studio that Whistler had used, and the decorator, who had a shop below, told me that he had changed the color of the wall to agree with every new picture he painted. On one side of the room was a large space filled with palette scrapings. When I think of Abbott Thayer, I know I must have missed a good business deal by not cutting them off to sell to his admirers in the U. S. A. Mr. Thayer was giving an outdoor lesson to a number of girls and, wishing to sit down, and also having on a new pair of trousers, he went over to a near-by barn and got a shingle. When he left he heard a sound like a football rush. The girls were fighting for the shingle! There is a letter of Whistler’s, written in the ’sixties, to Fantin Latour, which I am going to quote, trusting there may be some young artist, in however remote a land, who, reading it for the first time, will say: “I will profit; I will learn my trade.” DEAR FANTIN—I have far too many things to tell you for me to write them all this morning, for I am in an impossible press of work. It is the pain of giving birth. You know what that is. I have several pictures in my head and they issue with difficulty. For I must tell you that I am grown exacting and “difficile”—very different from what I was when I threw everything pell-mell on canvas, knowing that instinct and fine color would carry me through. Ah, my dear Fantin, what an education I have given myself! Or, rather, what a fearful want of education I am conscious of! With the fine gifts I naturally possess, what a painter I should now be, if, vain and satisfied with these powers, I hadn’t disregarded everything else! You see I came at an unfortunate moment. Courbet and his influence were odious. The regret, the rage, even the hatred I feel for all that now, would perhaps astonish you, but here is the explanation. It isn’t poor Courbet that I loathe, nor even his works; I recognize, as I always did, their qualities. Nor do I lament the influence of his painting on mine. There isn’t any one will be found in my canvases. That can’t be otherwise, for I am too individual and have always been rich in qualities which he hadn’t and which were enough for me. But this is why all that was so bad for me. That damned realism made such a direct appeal to my vanity as a painter, and, flouting all traditions, I shouted, with the assurance of ignorance, “Vive la Nature!” “Nature,” my boy—that cry was a piece of bad luck for me. My friend, our little society was as refractory as you like. Oh, why wasn’t I a pupil of Ingres?—How safely he would have led us!