James McNeill Whistler
From Free net encyclopedia
Image:Whistler-painter.jpg Image:Whistler Selbstporträt.jpg James Abbott McNeill Whistler (July 14, 1834 – July 17, 1903) was an American-born, British based painter and etcher.
Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in the United States. His father, George Washington Whistler, was invited to Russia in 1842 to build a railroad and James learned French in school while there. 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.
He is best known for his nearly black-and-white full-length portrait of his mother, titled Arrangement in Gray and Black: Portrait of the Artist's Mother, but usually referred to as Whistler's Mother. 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 epitomises 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, as recommended by the critic John Ruskin.
In 1878 Whistler sued Ruskin for libel after the critic condemned his painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, calling the artist a "coxcomb". Whistler won a 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.
Image:Whistler.white.393pix.jpg
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 was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement.
Whistler shared his lover, Joanna Hiffernan, with Gustave Courbet, as a model. Historians speculate that Courbet's 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.
Whistler had two main proteges. Wilde is the most famous, but the other was impressionist painter Walter Sickert, who was later suspected of being Jack the Ripper. Whistler had a falling 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 publicly 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's belief that art should concentrate on the arrangement of colors led many critics to see his work as a precursor of abstract art.
Image:Whistler Portrait of his Mother.jpg
A gifted engraver, Whistler produced numerous etchings, lithographs and dry-points. His lithographs, drawings on the stone in many instances, and in others his drawings 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 Faubourg St Germain in Paris, and Georgian churches in Soho and Bloomsbury in London.
He is buried at St Nicholas's Church in Chiswick, London.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition{{#if:{{{article|}}}| article {{#if:{{{url|}}}|[{{{url|}}}}} "{{{article}}}"{{#if:{{{url|}}}|]}}{{#if:{{{author|}}}| by {{{author}}}}}}}, a publication now in the public domain.
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) |
 Symphony in White no 1 (The White Girl) (1862) |
 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 und 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 und 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) |
External links
Template:Wikiquote Template:Commons
Further reading
- James McNeil Whistler by Lisa N. Peters. ISBN 1880908700.da:James McNeill Whistler
de:James McNeill Whistler es:James McNeill Whistler fr:James Abbott McNeill Whistler it:James Abbott McNeill Whistler nl:James McNeill Whistler ja:ジェームズ・マクニール・ホイッスラー no:James McNeill Whistler pl:James Abbott McNeill Whistler pt:James Abbott McNeill Whistler ru:Уистлер, Джеймс Эббот Мак-Нейл fi:James McNeill Whistler sv:James McNeill Whistler