"The young James Whistler, recently arrived from the United States to study art in Paris, told an artist friend that Courbet was his new hero, announcing, "C'est un grand homme!" ("He is a great man!")."

Having done a passable Courbet, I had to do something better with his colleague. I vowed then to do something about it. I found a reasonable image to work with, and made a screen capture. Then I got involved in other things, while the capture waited.

This morning, the CBS Sunday morning show featured an artist who says he 'channels' the spirits of President Lincoln and others when he paints them. Hmmm, says I! So I pulled up my screen capture, enlarged it hugely, and said in low tones, "Ka of Whistler, come to me!" I'm not sure his Ka bothered. His Ka may be on some other incarnation, and really rather busy this morning. But as I looked at the photo, I could get a sense of a man almost arrogant in his determination to do things as he saw fit.

Indeed, as we examine his history, Whistler was well acquainted with _The Gentle Art of Making Enemies_! He regarded John Ruskin, a prominent art critic, as an 'enemy' for the inflammatory things he said:

"For Mr. Whistler's own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of willful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never have expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas (Whistler's asking price for the painting) for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."

Well, Whistler wasn't going to just let him say that without much reaction. He sued him. He won the suit, but bankrupted himself in the process.

In his "Ten O'Clock Lecture" in London, 1885, he explained his aesthetics:

"Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful as the musician gathers his notes. And forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony."

I am ever trying for that harmony, no doubt much more progress to be made before it ever becomes 'glorious'. But I think I can say I am making progress: