The Professor of Drawing was Robert W. Weir. Mr. J. Alden Weir, his son, remembers, "as a boy, my father showing me his work, which at that time hung in what was known as the Gallery of the Drawing Academy. There were about ten works by him framed. From the start he showed evidences of a talent which later proved to be unique in those fine and rare qualities hard to be understood by the majority." Brigadier-General Alexander S. Webb, one of Whistler's classmates, says: "In the art class one day, while Whistler was busy over an India-ink drawing of a French peasant girl, Weir walked, as usual, from desk to desk, examining the pupils' work. After looking over Whistler's shoulder he stepped back to his own desk, filled his brush with India-ink [General Webb says he can see him now, rubbing the colour on the slab], and approached Whistler with a view of correcting some of the lines in the latter's drawing. When Whistler saw him coming, he raised his hands as if to ward off the strokes of his brush, and called out, 'Oh, don't, sir, don't! You'll spoil it!'" Mr. William M. Chase told the story to Whistler and asked if there was any truth in it. "Well, you know he would have!" said Whistler. Colonel Larned writes us: "I have here two drawings made by Whistler in his course of instruction in drawing, one of which is a water-colour copy of a coloured print, without special merit, and much touched up by Professor Weir, as was his wont; another, a pen-and-ink copy also of a colour print, quite brilliant and masterful in execution, which I presented to the officers' mess. The colour sketch bears the ear-marks all over it of Weir's retouching. It was his habit to touch up all water-colours of the cadets for the examination exhibition, and I don't believe Whistler at that time had any such facility in colour work as is indicated in this drawing. With my knowledge of my predecessor's practice, which we instructors follow to the best of our ability, I have always been suspicious of its integrity. At the same time Whistler was head in drawing, and it may be that Weir forbore in his case. The pen-and-ink, however, must have been his own interpretation of a colour lithograph, and shows such facility that it makes me hesitate. "Whistler did another water-colour of a monk seated at a table by a window writing. This is also a copy of an old print which was used by Weir through successive classes. I think it was ---- who saw the thing and wrote a lot of tommy-rot and hi-falutin about it and Whistler's satiric genius, and his introduction in the monk's face of that of his room-mate, assuming it to have been an original production. As a matter of fact I have copies of the same thing by cadets in the gallery, all touched up by Weir, and I fancy about as good as Whistler's."