Of course, this realism of execution brought forth much criticism from the members of the so-called old-school artists, and among the leaders in denouncing Courbet (while alive) was that classic authority, Tony Fleury. He considered this type of art worthless and all wrong and, if I mistake not, expressed his opinion of the modern man in the newspapers.
On the opening day of the Courbet show (there was a smart crowd, as there always is at these affairs) I noticed the attention was suddenly turned in one direction and people seemed to be following some one. Sure enough, with his hands behind his back under coat tails was that notorious enemy of the dead painter, the venerable Tony Fleury, pottering around the room and examining each picture with great care. Then a striking thing happened—so theatrical and so French.
Whirling and facing the audience, he spoke:
“Gentlemen and ladies, for many years I have said that this man was a bad painter. I was mistaken. He was a genius!”
Whistler was a well-known figure at all Salons, but I first met him in London, where I visited him with a letter of introduction from my aunt Fanny, who had trotted him on her knee when he was a baby. He was charming, said there was something he had to do, and, if I could wait for him, the day was mine. He handed me a portfolio of drawings to look at while he was gone, saying:
When he came back I told him, with the arrogance of youth, that I hadn’t cared at all for some of the etchings and wondered why he had bought them. He was very curious to know which ones I meant, but never told me, what I found out later, that they were all his own! The well-known Venetian etchings!
We lunched at the Hogarth Club and back to his studio to look at his work—me to drink in fountains of knowledge and he to be much amused at my untrained conversation. The studio was large, dignified, and very bare. I remember multitudes of little galley pots in which to mix colors. His painting table had a glass top, and I made a mental decision to have one like it. Whistler always had his own canvas made for him and was extremely careful about all his materials.
His accent was very English and he was full of mannerisms, constantly fooling with his eyeglass or the lace at his throat. He asked about Paris, and I told him of the first show of the Impressionists, held on the Boulevard des Capucines; of Monet, Sisley, etc. The pictures had looked crazy to the people of the day. Whistler said: