Whistler on Art

Whistler James McNeill

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was a central figure in the artistic life of mid-nineteenth-century Paris and London. His distinct aesthetic, with its emphasis on appreciating a work of art as an arrangement of colours, lines and shapes, can be seen as the forerunner of the abstract art of the twentieth century.

"Whistler on Art" brings together a selection of his letters, interviews and other writings, many previously unpublished. In letters to other artists, family, patrons – even Queen Victoria – Whistler discusses his principles of composition, his use the terms "Nocturne" and "Symphony" as titles, the rights of dealers and owners, and his celebrated libel suit against John Ruskin. The collection illuminates not only the work of a major artist, but a whole artistic milieu at a point of change.

About the Author

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), the American-born painter and etcher, became a crucial link between the Paris and London art worlds of the mid-nineteenth century. Influenced first by Courbet's realism, he evolved his own distinctive aesthetic, stressing "an arrangement of line, form and colour first". His "Nocturnes" are among the most highly-regarded of his works.

He wrote more than 5000 letters which, with his published writing and conversations, illuminate his work and his contentious relations with the art world of the time. "Whistler on Art" includes seventy-five items: letters (many not published before) and material recording his disillusionment with English approaches to art and his response to the French, Scottish and American art worlds.

Whistler was a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites and enjoyed a fruitful dialogue with Swinburne and with Wilde (whom he later accused of plagiarism) and emerged at the centre of the Aesthetic Movement. Against Ruskin (who attacked him) he won a libel suit and a farthing's damages. The trial sharpened Whistler's polemical gifts, and he wrote stinging pamphlets and letters to the press. In his "Ten O'Clock Lecture" he attacked Ruskin's view of the moral purpose of art. A friend of Mallarme and other French writers and painters, he is (with Monet) one of the models Proust drew on for the character of the painter Elstir.

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