Whistler as I knew him . metimes I have persuaded him to talk and giveme reasons for the changes in his methods, and haveasked him to tell me how he produced certain printing in those days became a passion with had possession of me, and I was never weary ofquestioning Whistler with regard to his would look, perhaps, at some proofs of the earlyFrench set of 1858 and 1859 — proofs which had inall probability been printed by Delatre. They mightbe proofs from the plate called The would look at them, and say: Well, well,well! Not bad, not bad! But I hav
Whistler as I knew him . metimes I have persuaded him to talk and giveme reasons for the changes in his methods, and haveasked him to tell me how he produced certain printing in those days became a passion with had possession of me, and I was never weary ofquestioning Whistler with regard to his would look, perhaps, at some proofs of the earlyFrench set of 1858 and 1859 — proofs which had inall probability been printed by Delatre. They mightbe proofs from the plate called The would look at them, and say: Well, well,well! Not bad, not bad! But I have learnt some-thing since then, I think, Menpes. At that time Istruggled to get tone with my etchings in a labouredway. Delatres printing, Whistler always main-tained, was far finer than that of any English pro-fessional printer. Delatre, he would say, had thewit to work for a flatted surface, instead of theghastly, glassy varnish so loved here in explained to me how that Delatre, to procure BATTERSEA BRIDGE. THE ETCHER 97 this effect, always used nnburnt oil; but, he said,• good as these proofs undoubtedly are, they have onegrave fault, which applies to the printing of nearlyevery professional, and that is the struggle to procurethat terrible quality which is called richness. Theynone of them can resist retroussage — they all mustneeds drag the copper with the muslin to form whatthey call a full line. Every printer, even Delatre,overdragged. Then, perhaps, in turning over theproofs, we would come across one of the Masters ownprinting, a dry-point looking like a fair beautiful pas-tel in quality. This interested him. Ha, ha! hewould say. Now, here is a proof that could only havebeen printed by one man — myself, looking at mewith an encouraging smile as if to say, You aredoing very well. With great care he would placeit on a large sheet of Whatmans paper, in order byits whiteness to give full value to the golden tone ofthe Dutch paper on which the proof was pr
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