Viewing page 115 of 510

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

90
✓

33 Ferry Avenue,
Detroit, Michigan,
September 28th, 1905.

P e r s o n a l.

My dear Mr. Benedict:-
Your good letter of the 22nd instant, written on board the "Caronia", is received, and I am pleased to know of your comfortable homeward voyage. I returned on the same ship, and although the weather was rough during the greater part of the voyage, I look back upon it as one of the pleasantest crossings I have ever made.

Concerning the life-size portrait of Mrs. Val Prinsep. I wish I could write you more enthusiastically about it. Like all of Whistler's work, it has much of real interest, but I feel this particular specimen somewhat lacking in aesthetic charm. The coloring is very interesting, and in the Master's most mysterious manner. I considered purchasing the picture myself, and I think in the end, would have done so, had I not been the possessor of another picture of the same subject probably painted immediately after the one you saw. The title of mine is "Arrangement in Black and White, No.1.", and there is a full-page reproduction of it in Theodore Duret's book on Whistler, of which you doubtless have a copy. If you are without the book, you can probably purchase it at Brentano's.

"Arrangement in Black and White, No.1." is now on