It was as if the portrait were hidden within the canvas and the master by passing his wands day after day over the surface evoked the image. Most painters can take a canvas and begin at once with the colors of the finished picture, making each stroke count from the very first, often, if the canvas has been prepared, doing little or nothing to the background. Whistler himself would sometimes let the prepared canvas show, all the resources of his art he understood, but if he did, the picture was simply a sketch. In a very profound sense Whistler’s work from the very beginning was always finished,--finished in the sense that any growing thing is perfect from day to day. The plant may be but a tender shoot just appearing above the ground, or it may be in full leaf, or in gorgeous blossom, but it is finished, it is perfect by day and night. In that sense were Whistler’s paintings finished. If they were sketches, then the slight amount of color used was precisely the amount the sketch required. At no time was the sense of proportion outraged by carrying line or color or likeness beyond the symmetrical development of the three. * * * * * One must not be understood as saying that all his pictures are of equal merit,--perfection does not necessarily mean that; nor that he did not do many things he considered failures. Few painters ever destroyed more work, no painter was ever more critical of his own work. But, in spite of all he could do, things would get out into the world that he wished destroyed. This was due in part to the facility with which he made sketches and the enthusiasm with which he would begin new things, many of which never got on. Now and then some of these unfinished things--unfinished from the first stroke, because never quite satisfactory to him--would escape his studio. Artists express very positive opinions regarding the merits of his pictures, placing some with the best the world has done, others as quite unworthy the master. As no two painters agree which are the best and which are the least worthy, the layman is helpless. In truth, only Whistler himself could have pointed out all the qualities and defects, and this he never did. If pressed for an opinion or a preference, he would evade the question, or by deftly speaking of this or that quality of the works under discussion would leave his hearers with the impression they knew all about the matter, when in reality they were no wiser than before. He simply did not care to discuss his work intimately with the lay or the professional mind. What he saw was beyond their comprehension, or if not beyond their comprehension, then they saw it without further words from him, for did not the picture speak plainly for itself? * * * * *