“The one aim of the unsuspecting painter is to make his man ‘stand out’ from the frame, never doubting that, on the contrary, he should really, and in truth absolutely does, stand _within_ the frame, and at a depth behind it equal to the distance at which the painter sees his model. The frame is, indeed, the window through which the painter looks at his model, and nothing could be more offensively inartistic than this brutal attempt to thrust the model on the hitherside of this window.”[46] The number of sittings required varied greatly, and did not depend in any degree upon the size of the canvas. Sometimes he would paint a life-size figure with great rapidity; again he would spend weeks and months on a very small picture. All depending upon conditions over which he had no control. He has devoted as many as ninety sittings to a portrait, only to pronounce it unfinished and unsatisfactory. No work counted or was permitted to remain save that painted in what he called his “grand manner,” which meant the work of those days and hours when everything--sitter, light, weather, spirits, mood, enthusiasm--was just right,--a combination that might come several days in succession or but once in a fortnight. He once said, “The portrait of my mother was painted in a few hours,” meaning that the work of the last few hours was the work that really counted. It was interesting to watch a picture grow under the hands of Whistler. With most painters something is finished from day to day, and in the course of ten or twelve sittings the portrait is complete. Not so with him. Nothing, not a detail, not even an infinitesimal section of the background was finished until the last. He worked with great rapidity and long hours, but he used his colors thin and covered the canvas with innumerable coats of paint. The colors increased in depth and intensity as the work progressed. At first the entire figure was painted in grayish-brown tones, with very little of flesh color, the whole blending perfectly with the grayish-brown of the prepared canvas; then the entire background would be intensified a little; then the figure made a little stronger; then the background, and so on from day to day and week to week, and often from month to month, to the exhaustion of the sitter, but the perfection of the work, if the sitter remained patient and continued in favor. At no time did he permit the figure to get away from or out of the background; at no time did he permit the background to oppress the figure, but the development of both was even and harmonious, with neither discord nor undue contrast. And so the portrait would really grow, really develop as an entirety, very much as a negative under the action of the chemicals comes out gradually--lights, shadows, and all from the first faint indications to their full values.