That he had nothing in common with English art, the English were quick to assert, until his fame made him a desirable acquisition, when on this side, and that within the last few years, a disposition to claim him--very much as the business-like empire seizes desirable territory here and there about the globe--has begun to show itself; and, unless America is alert, Whistler will yet appear in the National Gallery as--to quote again the words of the _Illustrated News_--“An English artist.” * * * * * As regards the French, they are disposed to claim Whistler on three grounds: First. That he was a student there,--with a master who taught him nothing. Second. That France acknowledged his genius by the purchase of the portrait of his mother,--twenty years after it was painted, and seven after it was exhibited in Paris. Third. That he lived for a time in Paris. Three reasons which would annex to France about every American artist of note, for most of them (1) studied in France, (2) are represented in the Luxembourg, and (3) have lived in Paris much longer than Whistler. * * * * * As for those first few years in Paris, even the French concede that Gleyre was entirely without influence upon Whistler’s subsequent career. As regards the recognition of his genius, France was exceedingly slow. The portrait of his mother was exhibited in London in 1871, and purchased for the Luxembourg in 1891, though it had been awarded a medal at the Salon some seven years before. France no more taught Whistler to paint than it taught him to etch. His masters were older and greater than the art of France. Before he was twenty-five he had absorbed all and rejected most that France had to teach. At twenty-eight he painted a picture which, scorned by the Salon, startled all who visited the “Salon des Refusés,” and then--still under thirty--he shook the dust of France from his feet, obliterated every vestige of her influence from his art, and started out to make his way alone and unaided in the domain of the beautiful. * * * * * In 1865 he again stirred the critics with that novel creation of color “The Princess of the Land of Porcelain.” Nothing of the kind had ever been seen in either French or any other art. It was the application of Western methods to Eastern motives; it was plainly a study primarily in color, secondarily in line, not at all in character. It was the first great step taken by the Western world towards abstract art. “The Princess of the Land of Porcelain,” the “Lange Leizen,” the “Gold Screen,” the “Balcony”--all early pictures--are all one and the same in motive; they are his first attempts in a large way to produce color harmonies, to subordinate everything to the color composition. [Illustration] Of Whistler and American art in those days an unnamed correspondent has written from Paris:[5]