James McNeill Whistler (1834—1903) was an influential American painter belonging to the American Gilded Age and, more properly, to European Aestheticism.
James McNeill Whistler Summary
- Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, he had a formative period in St. Petersburg, Russia
- Lived most of his life in London and was interred in Chiswick Old Cemetery in west London
- Experimented with etching and photography; educated to be, first, a minister, then, a military map-maker
- Considered his painting emotional compositions and often defined them as music
- His portrait of his mother has become possibly the most famous of its kind
- Parodically depicted by Oscar Wilde in the guise of Basil, the painter in The Picture of Dorian Grey
James McNeill Whistler’s Famous Paintings
- Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862)
- Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl (1865)
- The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (1865)
- Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1 (1871)
- Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874)
- Nocturne in Gray and Gold, Westminster Bridge (1874)
- Nocturne (1877)
- Nocturne in Pink and Gray, Portrait of Lady Meux (1881)
- Blue and Coral The Little Blue Bonnet (1898)
- Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian (1900)