MEN I HAVE PAINTED
Whistler, a Bohemian malgré lui, stood for his own Art, and was looked upon as a sort of pariah by Philistines, both high and low.
Time sweeps away the excrescences, reduces all men, not to the forked radishes of Carlyle, but to a bag of bones, any two pairs of which are interchangeable.
Both men left their impression upon the world. The painter Leighton was also a great sculptor. The sketch for the man stretching—"The Sluggard" he called it—is a master-piece, hardly excelled in mediæval or modern Art. If his painting was too conventional, too academic, his design was full of grace and charm, and when he confined himself to such subjects as The Garden of the Hesperides and The Summer Moon he was at home, and could display his full, if limited, power. When he attempted the tragic, he failed. Whistler understood the limitations in Art and in himself, and was content to trifle in a masterly manner with subjects that Leighton would have disdained to consider. But he trifled seriously; his fame will be endless. It is sometimes easier to describe a man by contrasting him with another whose unlikeness is more a matter of degree than of plane.
After several visits to Leighton House I began to like Lord Leighton, and he became more friendly to me. I often wondered if he suspected me because I was an American. Americans do not, as a rule, address Englishmen in America with, "Oh! you're an Englishman!" Why are Americans in England not taken for granted? Among artists they have been fairly numerous and very conspicuous. Benjamin West arrived in London from Philadelphia and became President of the Royal Academy. John Copley, a Bostonian, lived in London and painted
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