By James Brewer
The irrepressible James Abbott McNeill Whistler re-wrote the rules of what it meant to be an artist. He pioneered ethereal and sometimes gritty visions of modern life to become one of the most influential artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Deeply inspired by literature, music and developing his own art forms, the irreverent American-born practitioner with a global outlook eagerly experimented with avant garde ideas originating in Paris and Japan. He designed a symbolic butterfly monogram, to highlight his enthusiasm for Japanese art and encapsulate his joy at flitting around both delicate and rough-hewn subject matter.
Acutely alive to the convergence of the visual arts and music, he saw being a painter as akin to performing on stage or composing. To descriptive or narrative titles for his works, he appended terms such as Harmony, Variation, Nocturne and Symphony.
Aligning himself with a Romantic standpoint, he referred for instance when in Venice to the rhythmic silhouette of ships’ rigging. “As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight,” he declared “and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour. The great musicians knew this. Beethoven and the rest wrote music … they constructed celestial harmonies – as harmonies – as combinations. … that is why I insist on calling my works ‘arrangements’ and ‘harmonies.’ “
In the nocturnes he conjured moods associated with tonal impressions. He followed the mission of Aestheticism to win over audience engagement. This was poetry in motion and spirit.
Whistler’s poignant portrait of his mother Anna Matilda Whistler was an “arrangement”; that of eight-year-old Cicely Alexander was “a harmony” although he asked her, the young daughter of a London banker to sit more than 70 times for Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander (1872-74). Whistler later apologised for the trouble he gave “poor Cissie.”
He was stirred by tales of artists of the Romantic age such as in Henry Murger’s 1851 novel Scenes of Bohemian Life. That novel collected vignettes idealising the impoverished but passionate lives of four starving artists in 1840s Paris which prefigured Puccini’s 1896 opera La Bohème. In one illustration Whistler imagined a poor painter’s cluttered Bohemian attic.
Tate Britain, in a masterly exhibition (until September 27, 2026) put together Europe’s largest retrospective of Whistler in 30 years. It pays tribute to a boldly experimental artist, a cosmopolitan celebrity who challenged Victorian society in the pursuit of truth, beauty and artistic progress. We see 150 works, unfurling the breadth of his painting, drawing, printmaking and design.
The exhibition opens with a room conceived as Whistler’s Chelsea studio. There are four self-portraits spanning his career, including The Artist in His Studio 1865-6, two outstanding full-length portraits of fellow painter Maud Franklin, and previously unseen sketchbooks. These are surrounded by Whistler’s collections of East Asian porcelain, Japanese Ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) bought from shops in Regent Street and elsewhere in London, and in Paris. Whistler loved such prints, fans, and ceramics, although he never visited Japan.
“Whistler opened the eyes of artists. Painting is… the harmony of beauty” wrote Hayashi Tadamasa (1853-1906), one of the first promoters of Japanese culture in France. Tadamasa introduced Ukiyo-e (= Pictures of the Floating World) prints widely, selling to Monet, Van Gogh and others.
Whistler’s interest in Japanese embellishments fed into an oil sketch entitled Three Figures: Pink and Grey which includes a blossoming tree and parasol. Its stylisation owed much to his friendship with British artist Albert Moore (1841-1893). Moore, an admirer of the Parthenon sculptures, shared with Whistler an appreciation of Greek Tanagra figurines which were small, terracotta statuettes made from the late 4th to 3rd century BCE. The figurines marked a change in emphasis from gods and heroes to fashionable women draped in thin wraps known as himations. Whistler echoed this in his Three Figures but it remained unfinishedbecause he was dissatisfied with it. It was one of six sketches he produced in 1868 as preparation for a frieze commissioned by the shipowner Frederick Leyland (1831-92). The sketches are now in the Freer Art Gallery, Washington.
Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, known for its canal network which transformed the city into the “cradle of the American Industrial Revolution.” Contrarily, he said at one stage of his life: “I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born in Lowell.” His father was Major George Whistler, a railway engineer who temporarily relocated his family to Russia, where he supervised for Tsar Nicholas I the construction of the 650km Saint Petersburg–Moscow Railway (although the engineer died of cholera two years before completion of the project).
Whistler trained as a cartographer and printmaker, first at the US military academy West Point from which he was expelled, then with the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. He mapped coastlines to help commerce… and the expropriation of indigenous land. Thus, with etchings, began his involvement with rivers and coasts. Prints were popular and in the mid-1850s with his brother-in-law, Francis Seymour Haden, another keen printmaker, he began to make money.
Moving to Paris at the age of 21, Whistler plunged into the bohemian atmosphere of the city mingling with Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Fantin-Latour. They were inspired by the poet Charles Baudelaire’s call in an 1863 essay for a “Painter of Modern Life” who would abandon historical subjects and capture the essence of urban existence. Baudelaire championed the flâneur, the strolling, detached observer. Art for Art’s Sake or Aestheticism, which promoted beauty in all aspects of life was becoming à la mode.
As his style developed, such as in a small-scale representation in 1858 of La Mère Gérard, who sold flowers outside the Bullier ballroom near his Paris quarters, Whistler etched his figures roughly in black ink on brownish-grey chine fabric.
He would go on to produce more than 600 prints, many made with innovative techniques, some etched straight onto the copper plate.
From his Paris period is the self-portrait Whistler Smoking 1856-60, now seen in public for the first time since his death. The artist’s first known self-portrait in oil, it depicts him as an adherent of a bohemian lifestyle, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and wielding a lit cigarette.
With his moustache, monocle and cane, Whistler was easily recognisable and was known for his scathing wit. Admirers and critics alike were engrossed by his social life, disputes, lectures, and opinions.
He developed a lifelong interest in working-class subjects and locales. He spoke of what he called “thousands of floating existences in the underworld of a great city.” Whistler titles included such as Unsafe Tenement and Rag pickers.
He had scant regard for rules, but in 1880 characterised his painting style: “Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like breath on the surface of a pane of glass.” This crystallised his penchant for delicate, atmospheric works rather than those born of heavy layers of paint.
After four years in Paris, he moved to London, where his prints reflected the reality of the Thames, with its polluting factories and gaunt warehouses, and especially the diverse working populations of Rotherhithe and Billingsgate. He showed the bustling scenes by day and the industrial and street lights by night. The Tate curators say: “Whistler had travelled widely and was interested in boats and ships. He made intricate observations of vessels, masts, and rigging.”
Whistler was on top of the action, renting a room overlooking the river. Wapping shows three figures on a balcony in Bermondsey that looks out onto the Thames. He reasoned that his boats looked unfinished on the canvas because they were always in transit.
The 18th century was fading fast. The Last of Old Westminster painted in 1862 records the demolition of Westminster Bridge and the construction of a replacement, with figures on the wooden scaffolding. The scene provides a contrast between the turbid, foggy,, working-class Thames and the background of the looming, newly rebuilt Palace of Westminster. X-rays have revealed beneath the canvas surface a portrait of his girlfriend, the artist and model Joanna Hiffernan, as she is reading.
Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge envisages a section of that bridge as simplified geometry. It was an example of the natural way of looking at things, rather than defining them into sharp lines.
Whistler argued that ‘nature is very rarely right’ and believed that the true artist invents their own harmony of colour and line, which he did by rubbing down and reapplying details, using long-handled brushes, to blur precision.
The portrait of his mother in mourning with its sober tones became one of his headline paintings. Who else would have labelled a painting of their beloved mother Arrangement in Black and Grey ? In a notable loan to the UK, Whistler’s Arrangement in Black and Grey: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother 1871 is presented as part of a family ‘triptych’ between his self-portrait Arrangement in Grey: Portrait of the Painter 1872, and that of his brother, Portrait of Dr. William McNeill Whistler 1871-3.
The Little White Girl, later renamed Symphony in White No. 2, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1864. It features Joanna, with a wedding ring, Japanese accessories, in a bourgeois interior.
Joanna was there again in Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen (1864), which shows her seated in front of a Japanese screen looking at works by Utagawa Hiroshige the master of the wood-block print.
On a life-size scale is Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room 1877, which is now in the Freer Gallery. This is the remodelled dining room of 49 Prince’s Gate, the London home of the shipowner Frederick Leyland.
Whistler started off on good terms with Leyland. For Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink, he even designed the dress worn by Mrs Leyland.
The new commission was to vary the colour scheme of the dining room and showcase the businessman’s blue and white porcelain collection and a painting owned by Whistler, Princess from the Land of Porcelain. While Leyland was away on business, the room was entrusted to Whistler took over the remodelling and appropriated the architecture, shelving and surfaces into his concept. Among other changes, Whistler painted over panels of decorative embossed Spanish leather, creating a sumptuous, intense environment of blue with gold leaf overlays, and worked the feathers of peacock motifs into a parody of his relationship with Leyland. A furious row erupted with Leyland, who refused to pay more than half the bill due.
An even more acrimonious row burst out over Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket, painted around 1875, exhibited at London’s Grosvenor Gallery and now held by the Detroit Institute of Arts. The perfectionist Whistler reworked it tirelessly to deliver the firework effects exactly as he wanted.
Not everyone approved. The leading art critic John Ruskin who was noted for his hauteur lambasted the painting, accused the artist of what amounted to “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face,” and of charging exorbitant prices. Whistler sued him for libel and won but was awarded a derisory farthing (a quarter of a penny) damages.
Despite the calamitous confrontation with Ruskin, Whistler refused to be humbled, nor did he stay his hand. He went on the offensive in letters, booklets and a grand performance named ‘Mr Whistler’s Ten O’Clock’. That was an hour-long public lecture delivered in London, Cambridge and Oxford, to admiring audiences, full of insights, wit and taunts as he set out his theories on art. The bravura endeavour was given the Ten O’Clock title because to ensure a crowd it was staged two hours later than other evening events. He recruited the empresario Richard D’Oyly Carte (manager of the first Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions) and the latter’s manager, Helen Lenoir, to secure the venue in Piccadilly, promote the event, and sell tickets. Oscar Wilde called Whistler’s publicity drive “a masterpiece. Not only for its clever satire and amusing jests will it be remembered, but for the pure and perfect beauty of many of its passages.” Whistler even published a book of some of his retorts against critics and rivals entitled The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.
Luck came his way: he was commissioned by the Fine Art Society for a dozen etchings of Venice, eventually turning out more than 50 prints and many drawings in pastel, chalk and watercolour. Unsurprisingly for Whistler, he was intrigued by the Venetian backstreets and courtyards as much as conventional tourist attractions.
The exhibition hosts the largest assemblage for more than 30 years of Whistler’s Nocturne landscapes, from the first, painted in Chile (Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso 1865–74) to the last, of Italy (Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark’s, Venice 1880). In between, during the 1870s he produced Nocturnes of the Thames.
The curators argue that Whistler’s innovation and public performances influenced later ‘art stars’ such as Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol, in their self-promotion.
Tate Britain collaborated with the Van Gogh Museum and the Mesdag Collection. The exhibition is curated by Carol Jacobi, curator, British Art 1850-1915, Tate Britain, with Isobel Muir, assistant curator, 19th Century British Art; James Finch, former assistant curator, 19th Century British Art; and Edwin Becker, chief curator of exhibitions, Van Gogh Museum, and Renske Suijver, curator at Van Gogh Museum and the Mesdag Collection.
Images:
Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl, 1864. ByJames McNeill Whistler. Tate.
The Last of Old Westminster, 1862, oil on canvas. By James McNeill Whistler. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A Shuman Collection – Abraham Shuman Fund.
Old Battersea Bridge: Nocturne: Blue and Gold, c 1872–5. By James McNeill Whistler. Tate.
Wapping, 1860-4. By James McNeill Whistler. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, 1871. By James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
The Artist in His Studio, 1865-66. By James McNeill Whistler. Art Institute of Chicago. Friends of American Art Collection.
Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter. c 1872. Oil on canvas. By James McNeill Whistler. Detroit Institute of Arts. Bequest of Henry Glover Stevens in memory of Ellen P Stevens and Mary M Stevens.
Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander, 1872-3. By James McNeill Whistler. Tate. Photo (c) Tate.
Whistler Smoking, 1856-60. By James McNeill Whistler. Private Collection.
James McNeill Whistler. The exhibition is at Tate Britain until September 27, 2026.
