In 1882, Sickert went to help Whistler in his studio as a printing assistant. Mortimer Menpes considered himself and Sickert to be Whistler’s ‘only two genuine pupils’, and remembered a time when ‘we used to travel all round London painting nature from the top of hansom cabs’. According to his friend and biographer Robert Emmons, Sickert’s interest in etching ‘was first aroused by the example of his master […]. In his earliest plates, indeed, it is difficult to distinguish the chrysalis from the butterfly.’ He added that these early plates were ‘bitten and printed in Whistler’s studio’