The Gentle Art of Making Enemies Part 15

19.--UPRIGHT VENICE.

"Little to recommend them save the eccentricity of their t.i.tles."

20.--LITTLE VENICE.

"The Little Venice is one of the slightest of the series."--_St.

James's Gazette._

"In the Little Venice and the Little Lagoon Mr. Whistler has attempted to convey impressions by lines far too few for his purposes."--_Daily News._

"Our river is naturally full of effects in _black and white and bistre_. Venetian skies and marbles have colour you cannot suggest with a point and some printer's ink."--_Daily News._

"It is not the Venice of a maiden's fancies."--_'Arry._

21.--LITTLE COURT.

"Merely technical triumphs."--_Standard._

22.--REGENT'S QUADRANT.

"There may be a few who find genius in insanity."

23.--LOBSTER POTS.

"So little in them."[25]--_P. G. Hamerton._

[Note 25: The same Critic holds:

"The Thames is beautiful from Maidenhead to Kew, but not from Battersea to Sheerness."]

24.--RIVA No. 2.

"In all his former Etchings he was careful to give a strong foundation of firm drawing. In these plates, however, he has cast aside this painstaking method."

_St. James's Gazette._

25.--ISLANDS.

"An artist who has never mastered the subtleties of accurate form."[26]--_F. Wedmore._

[Note 26: Elsewhere Mr. Wedmore is inspired to say--

"The true collector must _gradually_ and _painfully_ acquire the eye to judge of the impression."]

[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_

_This_ is possibly the process through which the preacher is pa.s.sing.

[Ill.u.s.tration]]

26.--THE LITTLE LAGOON.

"Well, little new came of it, in etching; nothing new that was beautiful."--_F. Wedmore._

27.--NOCTURNE s.h.i.+PPING.

[Sidenote: "Amazing!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]]

"This Archimago of the iconographic aoraton, or graphiology of the Hidden."--_Daily Telegraph._

"Popularity is the only insult that has not yet been offered to Mr.

Whistler."--_Oscar Wilde._

28.--TWO DOORWAYS.

"It is trying to any sketch without tone to be hung upon a wall as these have been."--_P. G. Hamerton._

29.--OLD WOMEN.

"He is never literary."--_P. G. Hamerton._

30.--RIVA.

[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_

Like Eno's Fruit Salt or the "Anti-mal-de-Mer."

[Ill.u.s.tration]]

"He took from London to Venice his happy fas.h.i.+on of suggesting lapping water."--_F. Wedmore._