Morris, though greatly overpraised during his life, had hardly any message for the men of his time.

He went for his ideals to an imaginary past and what he taught and praised was often totally unsuited to modern conditions.

Whistler on the other hand was a modern of the moderns, and a great artist to boot: he had not only assimilated all the newest thought of the day, but with the alchemy of genius had transmuted it and made it his own.
Before even the de Goncourts he had admired Chinese porcelain and Japanese prints and his own exquisite intuition strengthened by Japanese example had shown that his impression of life was more valuable than any mere transcript of it.

Modern art he felt should be an interpretation and not a representment of reality, and he taught the golden rule of the artist that the half is usually more expressive than the whole.

He went about London preaching new schemes of decoration and another Renaissance of art.