James McNeill Whistler: The Complete Story
James McNeill Whistler was the American dandy who tried to turn painting into music, the man behind the picture everyone calls Whistler's Mother and one of the most famous courtroom fights in art history. Witty, combative and obsessed with harmony, he believed a painting should please the eye the way a tune pleases the ear, and he titled his works like pieces of music.
Whistler cared less about telling a story than about getting the colors to sing. That idea was so new it landed him in court.
Art for art's sake
Whistler had no patience for paintings that preached or told tales. Art, he said, should stand free of all claptrap. So he called his pictures Arrangements, Symphonies and Nocturnes, borrowing the language of music to insist that color and mood were the real subject.
Whistler's Mother
His best known work is not really called Whistler's Mother at all. He titled it Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, and meant it as a study in tone, his mother simply the shape that held the colors. The public adored it as an image of devotion, and it quietly became one of the most reproduced paintings in the world.
The trial over a pot of paint
When the powerful critic John Ruskin saw one of his misty Nocturnes, he accused Whistler of flinging a pot of paint in the public's face. Whistler sued him for libel and won, but the jury awarded him a single farthing in damages and no costs. The case made his name and broke his bank, sending him into bankruptcy.
The Peacock Room
Hired to make small tweaks to a patron's dining room, Whistler instead covered the whole thing in blue and gold peacocks while the owner was away, then sent a large bill. The furious patron paid only half, so Whistler painted two fighting peacocks into the design as a portrait of the quarrel. The entire room now sits in the Smithsonian in Washington.
Why he still matters
Whistler dragged art toward the modern idea that a painting can be about beauty itself, not a sermon or a story. His portraits and night scenes influenced the Symbolists and the early abstractionists, and his sharp tongue made him a legend in two countries.
Quick answers about James McNeill Whistler
Who was James McNeill Whistler? An American painter who worked mainly in London.
When was he born? In Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834.
When did he die? In London, in 1903.
What is he famous for? Whistler's Mother and his Nocturnes.
What is the real title of Whistler's Mother? Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1.
Where can I see his work? The Musee d'Orsay holds the Mother; the Peacock Room is at the Smithsonian.
Whistler won his case against Ruskin and was handed one farthing, the smallest coin in the realm, which he wore on his watch chain ever after. The lawsuit ruined him financially and made him immortal, which is about the most Whistler ending imaginable.