From the collection of:
Clara M. Eagle Gallery, Murray State University || VAM Home

While he is best known for his paintings, James Whistler was also an accomplished and prolific printmaker. This lithograph depicts the interior gallery of the Louvre Museum in Paris. Known for his eccentric and flamboyant personality, Whistler called himself “the Butterfly” and used an image of a butterfly as his signature. This insignia is visible in the lower right-hand corner of The Long Gallery.

About the Artist

James McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. When James was 9, his father took a job designing the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway, and the family relocated to Russia. It was there that young James began his education in art, at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. At the age of 14, he moved to England, where he spent most of his time at his home in Bristol and in the city of London. As he attended lectures at the National Academy and socialized with art enthusiasts and collectors, Whistler found his own interest in art growing.

After his father’s death in 1849, the family returned to the United States, and Whistler entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1951. He was expelled in 1854. After working briefly in the drawing division of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington, D.C., he sailed for Europe in 1855 to study art. He would never return to the U.S., although he retained his citizenship.

In Europe, Whistler studied at the École Imperiale et Speciale de Dessin in Paris and soon entered the circle of Realist leader Gustave Courbet. Some of his etchings were displayed at the Salon and Royal Academy in 1859. He then moved to London, where he was soon established at the forefront of the etching revival.

Whistler’s love of color soon drew him to painting, and over the remaining decades of his life he would be a prolific and sometimes controversial artist. (He once sued an art critic for criticizing the high price Whistler had put on a painting.) He painted portraits, landscapes, seascapes, street scenes, self-portraits, and interiors, selling them along with pastels, sketches, and etchings. His portrait of his mother, one of the most famous American portraits of all time, was painted in 1871. All of this work was dominated by Whistler’s ideas about the importance of color; he felt that an artist should be more concerned with the beautiful arrangement of colors in harmony than with an accurate portrayal of the natural world.

In 1890, Whistler published a collection of letters and pamphlets on art titled The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. His last self-portrait, Brown and Gold, was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exposition, but he continued to rework it until his death in 1903.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: Describe this work. What style is it? What feeling does it give you? Compare this work to other drawings and paintings by Whistler. What do you see as the main characteristics of his work? Is this a “typical” work by Whistler?

Activities: Attend an activity in your community or school and sketch it.

Whistler’s “butterfly” signature changed over the course of his career. Why do you think he chose a butterfly? Design your own symbolic artistic signature.

Links

Explore an extensive array of Whistler resources, including images of works, personal correspondence, a look at the evolution of the butterfly signature, and biographical information, at the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Whistler Studies.
[www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk]

See other works by Whistler at these web sites:

• National Gallery of Art (50 works)
  [www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/psearch?Request=S&imageset=1&Person=33100]
• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
  [search.famsf.org:8080/search.shtml?artist=whistler]
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
  [www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/woa_searchResults.asp?collection=entire&Era1=AD&Date2=&Era2=AD&Artist=Whistler]

The Artcyclopedia includes an extensive list of links to other online resources about Whistler.
[www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/whistler_james_mcneill.html]

The Wikipedia article on Whistler includes a biography and numerous images of works.
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McNeill_Whistler]