The Steps

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) · 1880

Aesthetically conservative reviewers condemned Whistler's pastels for their lack of conventional "finish." The reviewer for the World, for example, concluded that Mr. Whistler is "too soon satisfied with mere intimations and suggestions; he holds his hand while completeness is yet afar off; his impressions are slight, or he indicates them too faintly, vaguely, and incoherently. How many of these pastels suffer from the vacant spaces 'to let' of plain untinctured brown paper, from indecision of line, from lack of foreground, from the absence, indeed, of industry and conscientious workmanship!"