Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps Whistler would never, in any case, have
acquired the professional touch in writing. For we know that he never
acquired it in the art to which he dedicated all but the surplus of
his energy. Compare him with the other painters of his day. He was a
child in comparison with them. They, with sure science, solved roughly
and readily problems of modelling and drawing and what not that he
never dared to meddle with. It has often been said that his art was an
art of evasion. But the reason of the evasion was reverence. He kept
himself reverently at a distance. He knew how much he could not do,
nor was he ever confident even of the things that he could do; and
these things, therefore, he did superlatively well, having to grope
for the means in the recesses of his soul. The particular quality of
exquisiteness and freshness that gives to all his work, whether on
canvas or on stone or on copper, a distinction from and above any
contemporary work, and makes it dearer to our eyes and hearts, is a
quality that came to him because he was an amateur, and that abided
with him because he never ceased to be an amateur. He was a master
through his lack of mastery. In the art of writing, too, he was a
master through his lack of mastery.
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