= Excellent impression printed with delicate brown plate tone, taken from the deluxe edition of the work by Mortimer Menpes, Whistler as I knew him (London, 1904), as first issued (with the etching as a frontispiece).
Mortimer L. Menpes was, together with Walter Sickert, one of the most devoted of Whistler’s followers and for many years the two artists were close friends. However, Whistler became resentful of Menpes’ personal success as an artist and abandoned him, taking his followers with him. Despite this, Menpes went on to produce this standard work on Whistler’s life, published shortly after “the Master’s” death, using (as frontispiece) the plate which had been etched of his children shortly before his separation from Whistler’s group