So this damned Realism made an instinctive appeal to my painter's
vanity, and deriding all traditions, cried aloud with the confidence of
ignorance, "Back to Nature!" _Nature!_ ah, my friend, what mischief that
cry has done me. Where was there an apostle apter to receive this
doctrine, so convenient for me as it was--beautiful Nature, and all that
humbug? It is nothing but that. Well, the world was watching; and it saw
"The Piano," the "White Girl," the Thames subjects, the marines ...
canvases produced by a fellow who was puffed up with the conceit of
being able to prove to his comrades his magnificent gifts, qualities
which only needed a rigorous training to make their possessor to-day a
master, instead of a dissipated student. Ah, why was I not a pupil of
Ingres? I don't say that out of enthusiasm for his pictures; I have
only a moderate liking for them. Several of his canvases, which we have
looked at together, seem to me of a very questionable style, not at all
Greek, as people want to call it, but French, and viciously French. I
feel that we must go far beyond this, that there are far more beautiful
things to be done. Yet, I repeat, why was I not his pupil? What a master
he would have been for us! How salutary would have been his guidance!
_Whistler._