James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Born – Lowell, USA 1834
Died – London, England 1903
From 1851 to 1854 Whistler studied at West Point Military Academy in New York State and worked as a Navy cartographer before going to study painting in Paris in 1855. He became one of a circle of Realist artists after meeting with Fantin-Latour and Courbet in 1858. He made copies in the Louvre and developed an enthusiastic for Oriental art and decoration, being particularly impressed by Japanese prints. He brought these interests with him when he settled in London in 1859. Rather than perpetuate an English tradition of narrative painting he concentrated on the aesthetic formulation of pictorial composition itself as the subject of his work. Such arrangements came out of the harmonious juxtaposition of tones and colours; the comparison with music was intentional and made clear in the titles of his paintings. Nocturne in Blue and Gold is described in subtle tones and simple, flat forms in an unmistakably Japanese manner. Ruskin was appalled by Whistler’s work accusing him of “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”. However, Whistler’s belief in “art for art’s sake”, expounded in his Ten O’Clock Lecture, first delivered in 1855, was taken seriously and his painting was emulated by successive generations.
Masterpieces:
- Arrangement in Grey and Black
- Symphony in White No II
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About james abbott mcneill whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler: Pastels
James McNeill Whistler
Buy on Amazon
James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours: A Catalogue Raisonne (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in Britis)
Margaret F. MacDonald
Buy on Amazon
James Abbott Mcneill Whistler a Life
G H Fleming
Buy on Amazon