int, or, as we believe he expresses it 'knock off' three
or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'--or perhaps he might try his hand at
a Set of Quadrilles in Peacock Blue?--and a week's labour will set all
square." Then there is this priceless revelation of his art when
questioning his class in Paris. "Do you know what I mean when I say
tone, value, light, shade, quality, movement, construction, etc.?"
_Chorus_, "Oh, yes, Mr Whistler!" "I'm glad, for it's more than I do
myself." More serious was the verdict of Sir George Scharf, keeper of
the National Gallery, when (in 1874) there was a proposal to purchase
the portrait of Carlyle. "Well," he said, icily, on looking at the
picture, "and has painting come to this!"

High place, it would seem, did not always conduce to an appreciation of
high art. Here is the opinion of Sir Charles Eastlake, F.R.I.B.A., also
keeper of the

[Illustration: PLATE XLIX.--J. M. WHISTLER

LILLIE IN OUR ALLEY

_In the possession of John J. Cowan, Esq._]

National Gallery, published in 1883, on one of Rembrandt's pictures in
the Louvre:--

"_The Bath_, a very ugly and offensive picture, in which the principal
object is the ill-proportioned figure of a naked woman, distinguished by
flesh tones whose colour suggests the need of a bath rather than the
fact that it has been taken. The position of the old servant wiping the
woman's feet is not very intelligible, and the drawing of the bather's
legs is distinctly defective. The light and shade of the picture, though
obviously untrue to natural effect, are managed with the painter's usual
dexterity."

V

THE ROYAL ACADEMY

The last revolt of the nineteenth century was effected in a peaceable
and business-like, but none the less successful manner, by the
establishment, in 1886, of the New English Art Club as a means of
defence against the mighty _vis inertiae_ of the Royal Academy. As an
example of the disadvantage under which any artist laboured who did not
bow down to the great Idol, I venture to quote a few sentences from the
report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to
inquire into the administration of the Chantrey Trust, in 1904:----

"With five exceptions, all the works in the collection have been bought
from summer exhibitions of the Royal Academy."

"It is admitted by those most friendly to the present system that the
Chantrey collection regarded as a national gallery of modern British art
is incomplete, an