biography
| name: |
Whistler, James (Abbott) McNeill
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1834–1903)
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| biography:
| Painter and etcher, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA. The son of an engineer who was employed by the Russian Tzar, after his father's death in St Petersburg, Russia (1849), he returned to America and attended West Point (1851–4) but failed academically. He moved to Paris (1855–9), then to London where he spent most of the rest of his life. (He never did return to the USA.) By 1862 he was showing his ‘White Girl’, a portrait of his mistress, Joanna Heffernan, the first of many controversial works that increasingly depended on subjective colouring and spatial relationships and which he called ‘symphonies’ or ‘nocturnes’. The most famous of these was ‘Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1’ (1871), more familiar to millions as ‘Whistler's Mother’. In addition to his many oils, watercolours, and pastels, he did several fine series of etchings, including ‘The French Set’ (1858–9), ‘The Thames Set’ (1859–71), and ‘The Venice Set’ (1880, 1886). He also painted the interior of the exotic Peacock Room for the London home of F R Leyland (1876–7). After the noted British critic John Ruskin cast aspersions on his art and character, Whistler sued for libel; he won the case for a farthing but was left bankrupt, making some money from his book about the trial, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890). His flamboyant and acerbic manner often distracted from the genuine artistry behind his work, but in later years the latter has come to be recognized. |
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