Whistler took the utmost care in the tones used on the floor and walls of his studios, in the dresses worn by his sitters, and even went so far as to redecorate a room in the house, at Knights bridge, of F. R. Leyland. This room has been transferred to the Freer Museum, Washington. In 1886, Whistler was elected Presi dent of the Royal Society of British Artists. His failure to be re elected caused no surprise. He remarked that "the artists had come out and the British had remained." But the British Museum bought his etchings and he was the re cipient of honours from nearly every foreign Government. A deep religious sympathy is evident in his paintings of "Miss Alexander" and "Carlyle." He died in London on July 17, 1903, at the age of 69 years.
To Whistler must be credited the full realization of the anal ogy between music and colour in their powers of expression. He described his pictures as symphonies, harmonies, nocturnes and so forth, instead of adopting the story-telling titles or dog gerel verse then usually employed. This new nomenclature caused at first much resentment and derision, but is to-day accepted as perfectly natural and appropriate. The values, or degrees of tone were, to this sensitive painter, almost the beginning and end of art. He was painfully aware of his weakness as a draughts man, which deprived his drawing of that sureness which pro claims a master of line. Whistler held that a good arrangement of simple masses provides the most important features of a pic ture, and that attention to tone values ensures serenity, which a study of Velasquez, who always used a severely restricted palette, will reveal. He may also have been attracted to Vermeer of Delft, whose work possesses the same quality of quiet dignity. He considered, too, that to avoid completely any feeling of interruption, pre-Raphaelite detail must be shunned ; and that, even in tone arrangements, extremes were not advisable for fear of over-accentuation. Thus many of his first paintings are exe
cuted in a middle key. Towns, where the atmosphere is often slightly thick and quiet greys prevail, have been the source of inspiration for many a "tone-painter" since Whistler produced his delightful Thames pictures.