Once inside his studio, Whistler seemed to lose all the eccentricities of manner by which he was known to the world. He doffed his coat, substituted for his monocle a pair of servicable spectacles, and was ready for work. If it were a full-length portrait, he placed the canvas near his palette and his sitter in pose about four feet to the other side of the easel. For observation he stood about twelve feet back towards the doorway,--very close, in fact, to the refractory stove. The light fell slanting on the right of the portrait and sitter, over the painter’s left shoulder, and this light he would modify each day according to the amount of sunshine and the effect he desired. He then selected two or three small brushes with handles about three feet in length, stood back about twelve feet, took a good look at both sitter and canvas, then stepping quickly forward, and, standing as far from the canvas as the long handles and his arms permitted, he began to rapidly sketch in the figure with long, firm strokes of the brush. The advantage of long handles was obvious,--they enabled him to stand back quite a distance and sketch directly from his sitter. Except for this first sketch, he used ordinary brushes with ordinary handles. There was nothing eccentric or unusual in his methods or in what he worked with. Probably no painter in all Paris used simpler means to arrive at great results. It is quite likely that no other painter of to-day--judging entirely from appearances of modern canvases--could achieve any satisfactory results with materials so elemental. To make the sketch required possibly thirty minutes. To the casual observer there was often more of a likeness in the first sketch than at any time after,--which simply goes to show the power of line devoid of color and also the easy task of the caricaturist. * * * * * The sketch finished, the long-handled brushes were discarded and work began in earnest. With one or more, sometimes a handful of brushes,--for they would accumulate without his realizing it,--he would again stand back and carefully scrutinize sitter and canvas until it seemed as if--and no doubt it was so--he transferred a visual impression of the subject to the canvas and fixed it there ready to be made permanent with line and color; then quickly, often with a run and a slide, he rushed up to the canvas and, without glancing at his sitter, vigorously painted so long as his visual image lasted, then going back the full distance he took another look, and so on day after day to the end. In life-size work he seldom stood close to the canvas and painted direct from his sitter. He has laid down the proposition: