Sickert certainly took note, even if he did not immediately embrace Moore’s vision. In the spring of 1884 the influence and example of Whistler’s work remained paramount. Sickert was still engrossed in making sketchy etchings in the style of Whistler of London courts and thoroughfares. At the end of May, when he went down to Ramsgate, where Ellen was staying with her sisters, it was with the Whistleresque intention of doing ‘some seas’;102 and on a visit to his old Munich friends the Fowlers at Broadway, in Worcestershire, he made pictures of corn stooks and rural slums.103 It was only in August, when he joined the rest of the family in Dieppe, that he seems to have taken stock. He produced a small etching of the circus rider Leah Pinder. It was his first attempt at depicting a popular theatrical subject – such as Degas (or ‘Thompson’) might have tackled.104
Back in London after the summer, Sickert discovered Tite Street in a state of upheaval. Whistler had taken a lease on a new purpose-built studio at the top of the Fulham Road. He was also looking for a new home. (He and Maud, though their relationship was deteriorating, eventually settled on a house in The Vale, a little rus-in-urbe cul-de-sac off the King’s Road.) In the midst of these practical arrangements the business of his election to the SBA was coming to a head. The committee was still nervous, but Sickert acted to assure Ludovici as to Whistler’s good faith and he, in turn, swayed the havering committee members.105 On 21 November Whistler was duly elected, just in time to lend the cachet of his name and work to the society’s winter exhibition. It was not necessary to be a member in order to submit work for the show and Sickert, following in his master’s wake, sent in his small ‘portrait sketch’ of Théodore Duret, which was accepted. The debt to Whistler was apparent in both the picture’s style and its subject.106
Whistler’s appearance in the ranks of the Society of British Artists created consternation amongst the public, and excitement amongst his followers. The circle of Whistler’s young disciples had been growing. Sydney Starr, an accomplished and rather dashing painter from Hull (and a former room-mate of Brandon Thomas’s), became a regular at the studio, as did William Stott, who had recently returned from several years’ studying and working in France.107 A Canadian-born artist, Elizabeth Armstrong, then living in London with her mother, also gravitated to Whistler’s circle, anxious to learn more about etching.108 For Sickert, Menpes, Harper Pennington, and the other established followers, these were new friends and allies. Their common enthusiasm for Whistler – and their common ambition to exhibit alongside him at the SBA’s gallery in Suffolk Street – obliterated, for the moment, all rivalries.
They banded together into what Sickert called ‘the school’ of Whistler.109 They met at each other’s studios, and dined together at cheap restaurants.110 They discussed the Master, his works, and his methods. They undertook to fight his battles and to promote his name. They had, too, their own ambitions. ‘Severally and collectively,’ Menpes recalled, ‘we intended to be great.’111 But it was not to be an ordinary greatness. They despised their more conventional artistic contemporaries, those ‘young men of the eighties’, as Sickert later characterized them, ‘admirably tailored with nothing of Vandyck about them but the beard, playing billiards for dear life with the Academicians at the Minerva Club!’112 Their greatness was to be achieved by following the precepts of Whistler; and Sickert, as a designated ‘pupil’ of the Master, was placed right at the heart of this unfolding project.
In the New Year he assisted with the next phase of the Master’s planned assault on the established art world: the Ten o’Clock Lecture. Jealous of Wilde’s successes on the platform, Whistler had determined to mount a lecture event of his own, and Richard D’Oyly Carte, the promoter of Wilde’s American tour, had agreed to produce it. Whistler worked hard arranging his argument and polishing his paradoxes, and Sickert worked hard with him. Some manuscript sheets of the lecture survive in Sickert’s hand, suggesting how active his role was.113 He also played a part in the practical arrangements, liaising with D’Oyly Carte’s assistant (and later wife) Helen Lenoir. He visited her office many times, and amidst the demands of work even found time to produce an ambitious etching of her sitting at her lamp-lit desk poring over her paperwork.114 When the lecture was given at Prince’s Hall on the evening of 20 February 1885, Sickert caught some of the reflected glory. His significant contribution to the event was certainly recognized by Ernest Brown of the Fine Art Society and Mr Buck of the Goupil Gallery. They invited him to lunch, together with Whistler, in gratitude for a ‘much enjoyed’ evening.115
Whistler was in the ascendant and Sickert rose with him. The portrait that Whistler had made of the Spanish violin virtuoso Sarasate was the main attraction of the SBA’s spring exhibition. At the same show, Sickert exhibited no fewer than four pictures – a view of Ramsgate, two Cornish scenes, and a small flower piece.116 There was, of course, danger as well as opportunity in the association. Critics, although gradually accustoming themselves to taking Whistler seriously, found it convenient to do so at the expense of his imitators and disciples. And the throng of these was ever increasing. Artists beyond the close coterie of Whistler’s studio were beginning to adopt his manner – or, more often, his mannerisms. ‘The power of strong artistic personality,’ remarked the critic from The Academy, ‘has probably never been more plainly shown at an English exhibition than at the present collection in Suffolk Street. Mr Whistler is not only there in force, but the effect of his influence on the younger exhibitors is very plain.’ It was considered a not entirely beneficial force: ‘You can have too much Whistler and Water.’117 Following the same line, the Pall Mall Gazette thought Whistler’s little landscapes ‘vastly amusing’ in themselves, but ‘so bad for the young’. Menpes alone was excused from this general criticism.118 As a further mark of distinction, the Australian was also the first disciple whom Whistler sought to bring with him into the SBA. He was elected at the beginning of June as a ‘member in water colour’.119
These incidents served to remind Sickert how much he still had to achieve. He also began to perceive that the pleasure of being one of the ‘young lions of the butterfly’ was touched with the possibility of being lumped together with various inferior talents. In what was perhaps an attempt to raise himself above the crowd of Whistlerian ‘imitators’, he allowed himself to look beyond the confines of Suffolk Street. That summer he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy with his etching of Miss Lenoir. Along with Menpes he also showed at the Society of Painter-Etchers – a body of which Whistler disapproved (its president was his brother-in-law, Seymour Haden, with whom he had fallen out). The move can hardly have been made without Whistler’s permission, but it marked a first small assertion of self-will. Significantly,