James McNeill Whistler
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James Abbott McNeill Whistler (July 14, 1834 – July 17, 1903) was an American-born, British-based painter and etcher. Averse to sentimentality in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". He took to signing his paintings with a stylized butterfly, possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol was apt, for Whistler's art was characterized by a subtle delicacy, in contrast to his flamboyant public persona.
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[edit] Early life
Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in the United States; the house is now preserved as the Whistler House Museum of Art. His father, George Washington Whistler, was invited to Russia in 1842 to build a railroad, and James learned French in school while there. At the Ruskin trial (see below), Whistler claimed Russia as his birthplace: "I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born in Lowell," he declared. He also attended the United States Military Academy at West Point for several years. His departure from this academy seems to have been due to a failure in a chemistry exam; as he himself put it later: "If silicon were a gas, I would have been a general one day." In European society, he later presented himself as an impoverished Southern aristocrat, although to what extent he truly sympathized with the Southern cause during the American Civil War remains unclear.
[edit] Career and controversy
Whistler is best known for the nearly monochromatic full-length figure titled Arrangement in Gray and Black: Portrait of the Artist's Mother, but usually referred to as Whistler's Mother. The painting was later purchased by the French government. Though American, Whistler lived and worked mainly in Britain and France.
Whistler's painting The White Girl (1862) caused controversy when exhibited in London and, later, at the Salon des Refusés in Paris. The painting epitomizes his theory that art should essentially be concerned with the beautiful arrangement of colors in harmony, not with the accurate portrayal of the natural world.
[edit] The Peacock Room
In the 1870s Whistler painted full length portraits of F.R. Leyland and his wife. Leyland subsequently commissioned the artist to decorate his dining room; the result was Whistler's Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, now in the Freer Gallery of Art. Artist and patron quarrelled so violently over the room and the proper compensation for the work that their relationship was terminated. The entire room was later purchased by industrialist and aesthete Charles Lang Freer, and installed in his collection. The published communications between Freer and Whistler reveal how Whister's interest in those collecting his work in his native country (The United States) transitioned over many decades.
[edit] Worldwide recognition
Despite seemingly courting controversy wherever he went, Whistler achieved worldwide recognition during his lifetime. In 1884 he was elected an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In 1892 he was made an officer of the Legion d'Honneur in France and he became a charter member and first president of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, & Gravers in 1898.
[edit] Ruskin trial
In 1878 Whistler sued the critic John Ruskin for libel after the critic condemned his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, writing:
- For Mr. Whistler's own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay [founder of the Grosvenor Gallery] ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of willful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face
Though suing for one thousand pounds plus costs, Whistler won a mere farthing in nominal damages. The cost of the case, together with huge debts from building his residence, "The White House" in Tite Street, Chelsea, (designed with E.W. Godwin, 1877–8) bankrupted him.
[edit] Other relationships
Friendly with various French artists, he illustrated the book Les Chauves-Souris with Antonio de La Gandara. He also knew the impressionists, notably Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, and was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement. As a young artist, he maintained a close friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Whistler's lover and model for The White Girl, Joanna Hiffernan, also posed for Gustave Courbet. Historians speculate that Courbet's erotic painting of her as L'Origine du monde led to the breakup of the friendship between Whistler and Courbet.
He was well-known for his biting wit, especially in exchanges with his friend Oscar Wilde. Both were figures in the café society of Paris at the turn of the 20th century. Whistler's famous riposte to Wilde's statement, "I wish I'd said that", "You will Oscar, you will", is sometimes attributed to Wilde himself, and may be apocryphal.
[edit] Printmaking
A supremely gifted engraver, Whistler produced numerous etchings, lithographs, and dry-points. His lithographs, some drawn on stone, others drawn directly on "lithographie" paper, are perhaps half as numerous as his etchings. Some of the lithographs are of figures slightly draped; two or three of the very finest are of Thames subjects — including a "nocturne" at Limehouse; while others depict the Fauburg St Germain in Paris, and Georgian churches in Soho and Bloomsbury in London. The etchings include portraits of family, mistresses, and intimate street scenes in London and Venice.
[edit] Legacy
Whistler's influence was significant, and has been the subject of museum exhibitions and publications. A trip to Venice in 1880 to create a series of etchings not only reinvigorated Whistler's finances, but also re-energized the way in which artists and photographers interpreted the city. His tonalism had a profound effect on many American artists, including John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase. Famous proteges included Oscar Wilde and impressionist painter Walter Sickert; Whistler fell out with both Wilde and Sickert. He successfully sued Sickert in the 1890s over a minor legal issue in France. When Wilde was publicly acknowledged to be a homosexual in 1895, Whistler openly mocked him. Another significant influence was upon Arthur Frank Mathews, whom Whistler met in Paris in the late 1890s. Mathews took Whistler's Tonalism to San Francisco, spawning a broad use of that technique among turn of the century California artists.
Once, after he had suffered a heart attack, a Dutch newspaper incorrectly reported Whistler dead. He wrote to the newspaper, saying that reading his own obituary induced a "tender glow of health".
Whistler published two books which detailed his thoughts on life and art: Ten O'Clock Lecture (1885), and The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890).
Whistler's belief that art should concentrate on the arrangement of colors led many critics to see his work as a precursor of abstract art.
He is buried at St Nicholas's Church in Chiswick, London.
[edit] Selected works
 Portrait of Whistler with Hat (1858) |
 La Vieille aux loques (1858) |
 At the Piano (1858-1859) |
 Brown and Silver Old Battersea Bridge (1859) |
 Etching of Whistler's beloved, Joanna Hiffernan (c.1860) |
 Harmony in Green and Rose The Music Room (1861) |
 Grey and Silver Battersea Beach (1863) |
 La Princesse du Pay de la Porcelaine (1863-1864) |
 Symphonie in White No. 2, Girls in White (1864) |
 Harmony in blue and silver: Trouville (1865) |
 The Beach at Selsey Bill (1865) |
 Symphony in White No 3 (1866) |
 Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso Bay (1866) |
 Variations in Pink And Grey Chelsea (1871) |
 Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Artist's Mother (1871) |
 Symphony in Grey and Green The Ocean (1866-72) |
 Arrangement in Gray, Portrait of the Artist (Selfportrait) (1872) |
 Arrangement in Gray and Black no 2 (Portrait of Thomas Carlyle) (1873) |
 Harmony in Grey and Green Miss Cicely Alexander (1873) |
 Harmony in Yellow and Gold The Gold Girl (Connie Gilchrist) (1873) |
 Arrangement in Gray and Black No2 (1873) |
 Nocturne in Gray and Gold, Westminster Bridge (c. 1871-1874) |
 Nocturne in Black and Gold, The falling Rocket (1874) |
 Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge (c. 1872-1875) |
 Chelsea Wharf Grey and Silver (1875) |
 Grey and Gold - Snow in Chelsea (1876) |
 Nocturne Trafalgar Square Chelsea Snow (1876) |
 Arrangement in White and Black (1876) |
 Arrangement in Yellow and Grey Effie Deans (1877) |
 Venetian Scene (1879) |
 The Staircase Note in Red (1880) |
 Nocturne in Pink and Grey, Portrait of Lady Meux (1881-1882) |
 Arrangement in light pink and black, portrait of Théodore Duret (1883) |
 An Orange Note (1884) |
 Pink Note The Novelette (1884) |
 Mother of Pearl and Silver The Andalusian (1888-1900) |
[edit] External links
- Centre For Whistler Studies, Glasgow University
- Artcyclopedia entry
- Artchive entry
- An account of the Whistler/Ruskin affair
- Whistler House Museum of Art official web site
- Whistler at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, Connecticut
[edit] Further reading
- James McNeil Whistler by Lisa N. Peters. ISBN 1-880908-70-0.
- Whistler: A Retrospective by Robin Spencer. ISBN 0-517-05773-5
- Whistler in Venice by Eric Denker. ISBN 1-85894-200-4
- After Whistler: The Artist and his Influence on American Painting by Linda Merrill, et al. ISBN 0-300-10125-2
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
