Merit its own reward, or, The best man leads off the squad

Satirical drawing showing a cadet lining up three men in civilian clothes. Drawn when Whistler was a cadet at West Point. Probably from the Alexander Webb album.

Signed: J.W.
On front, in pencil, lower right, in unknown hand: J. McN. Whistler, 1852.
On back: red collector's stamp of J & ER Pennell (Lugt Suppl. 874a).
Cream wove paper, slight cockle finish; no watermark.
James McNeill Whistler : drawings, pastels, and watercolors : a catalogue raisonné / Margaret F. MacDonald. New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, 1995, no. 104 (p. 32)
Purchase; Pennell Fund; 1944; (44038-2).
Forms part of the Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection of Whistleriana.
Published in: Eyes of the nation : a visual history of the United States / Vincent Virga and curators of the Library of Congress ; historical commentary by Alan Brinkley. New York : Knopf, 1997.