Whistler, James (Abbott) McNeill 1834-1903
US artist

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, he spent five years of his boyhood in St Petersburg (Leningrad), where his father, an engineer, was engaged on a railway project for the tsar. After briefly returning home he left the USA, never to return, and went to study art in Paris. His teacher, Charles Gleyre, had little influence on his subsequent work, but he was deeply impressed by Gustave Courbet and later by the newly-discovered Katsushika Hokusai, and he exhibited at the Salon des r�fus�s. London subsequently became the centre of his activities, and he became celebrated as a portraitist. John Ruskin's vitriolic criticism of his contributions to the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition of 1877 (Ruskin accused him of 'flinging a pot of paint in the public's face') provoked the famous lawsuit in which Whistler was awarded a farthing damages. His feelings on the subject are embodied in his Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890). A recalcitrant rebel at a time when the sentimental Victorian subject picture was still de rigueur, Whistler conceived his paintings, even the portraits, as experiments in colour harmony and tonal effect; the famous portrait of his mother (1871-72), now in the Louvre, was originally exhibited at the Royal Academy as An Arrangement in Grey and Black, and evening scenes such as the well-known Old Battersea Bridge (1872-75, Tate Gallery, London) were called 'nocturnes'. If there was little emphasis on draughtsmanship in his painting technique, the reverse is true of his etchings, especially his 'Thames' set, which succeed in imparting beauty to some of the more unpromising parts of the London riverside.