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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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James McNeill Whistler
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(1834–1903)
American artist, based in London from 1859 (he had over the years no less than eight different addresses in *Chelsea). As a student in Paris he had been influenced by the new fashion for everything Japanese, and there is an oriental elegance in the muted paintings to which he gave titles such as 'symphonies', 'arrangements' or 'nocturnes'; the best known is the portrait of his mother, now in the Louvre, which he called Arrangement in Grey and Black (1871).
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He was an important influence on the *Aesthetic movement; it was *Ruskin's hostile response to one of his paintings at the *Grosvenor Gallery which led to a famous lawsuit and Whistler's damages of one farthing. He was known both for a quarrelsome nature and a brilliant wit (answering Oscar *Wilde's 'I wish I had said that' with 'You will, Oscar, you will'). The apt title which he chose for a collection of his own writing was The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890).
Chelsea and the Thames formed an important element in both his life and his art. Largely because of his living there, this became London's bohemian quarter. Under his influence a local waterman, Walter Greaves (who first met Whistler in the 1860s through rowing him on the Thames), developed into an accomplished artist.
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