The Whistler family came originally from England, chiefly from the neighbourhoods of Whitchurch and Goring-on-Thames. A notable ancestor was Daniel Whistler, President of the Royal College of Physicians of England in the reign of Charles II. Several references to this “quaint gentleman of rare humour” are to be found in the pages of ‘Pepys’ Diary,’ and the family trait reappeared (with emphasis) in the character of the famous artist. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834, his father being Major George Washington Whistler, for some time consulting engineer to the St. Petersburg and Moscow Railway. The son was destined for a military career, and received a considerable amount of tuition at the Government College at West Point. Work as a cadet, and also on the coast survey, does not seem to have interested him. In the fifties he migrated to Paris and became a student in the atelier of Gleyre, two of his fellow pupils being Sir Edward Poynter and George du Maurier. Whistler cannot have had much sympathy with the art in vogue at that time, a degenerated style based upon a sentimental classicalism. He found his best friends amongst young Frenchmen with extremely different ideas, men such as Fantin-Latour, Bracquemond, Degas, Manet, Duret, Claude Monet, and many others. Whistler first acquired fame as an etcher, and his first set of plates, known as the “little French set,” amply justifies the welcome with which it was received. From that early date until his death he has been acknowledged pre-eminent in the etcher’s delicate and graceful art. At the Salon de Refusés (to which frequent reference has already been made) Whistler exhibited his first important painting, the _Little White Girl, Symphony in White No. 2_. It created his reputation as a painter, and remains one of the most charming of his canvases. An early contribution to the Royal Academy was entitled _At the Piano_, and clearly showed that the artist was then dominated by the subtle influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This influence was quickly discarded, for Rossetti’s talent was inferior to that of the gifted American.