human
The grammar of expression was a constant stumbling block to him, hence his slowness in producing. For let it not be supposed his pictures, which looked so simple in their execution, were produced with facility. The late Mr. Leyland told me that when he was sitting for his portrait, a standing full-length, Whistler nearly cried over the drawing of the legs and bitterly regretted that he had not learned something of the construction of the human form during his student years. He once spoke of himself as a 'soiled butterfly.' Surely this is the first recorded instance of a butterfly being an aggressive and vindictive insect. This however was a mere pose of Whistler's, the result of a well considered determination to exalt himself, which he found in the long run paid, even as all judicious publicity is said to bring in a sum percentage of profit.
gpt
He soon made me feel that I was talking to an artist of great taste and refinement, full of love for his work and a ready wit, and, in spite of an academic training just received in Paris, I became that moment devoted to him and his art. The little I had seen of it at the Grosvenor engendered a desire to learn more regarding the mysterious technique of which he was such an undoubted master and confirmed my predilection in favour of painting the scene of life surrounding in preference to the making up of the conventional subject so much in vogue. I who knew him for the last twenty years of his life always found him most simple in his tastes, firm in his convictions, generous and open-hearted to those whose friendship he relied on and always ready to help and oblige any one in whom his interests had been awakened. A more brilliant and staunch friend one could not wish to have had.
human
I have never known a man of more sincere and genuine impulse even in ordinary human relations and I am convinced that no man existed who could have been more easily controlled on lines of response to a fair and square apprehension of his genuine qualities. When off his guard he was often a pathetic kid and I have spotted him in bashful moods, although it would be hard to convince the bourgeois of this. Wit, pathos, gentleness, affection, audacity, acridity, tenacity were brought instantly to the sensitive surface, like a spark by rough contact.
gpt
He was a man who could never bear to be alone. Through his own open door strange people drifted. If they amused him he forgave them, however they presumed, and they usually did succeed. Whistler seldom painted men except when they came for their portraits, and the models drifting in and out of the door of Linsey Row, were mostly women. He liked to have them with him. Mr. Thomas thinks he felt it necessary to see them about his studio, for, as he watched their movements they would take the pose that he wanted, or suggest a group, an arrangement. He lived at a rate that would have killed most men, and at an expense in details that was fabulous.
human
No one can realize who has not watched Whistler paint the agony that his work gave him. I have seen him, after a day's struggle with a picture when things did not go, completely collapse, as from an illness. His drawing coat gave him infinite trouble. Whatever his friends charge against him it seems to me that Whistler's faults and weaknesses sprang from an unbalanced mentality; he was a _deséquilibré_, the common defect of great painters. Yet, underneath all his vagaries and eccentricities, one felt that indefinable yet unmistakable being--a gentleman.