The American Artist Who Introduced French Painting To Britain | Great Artists | Perspective

foreign [Music] November 1878 two giants of the English art World faced each other in a London court of law on one side the critic and theorist John Ruskin on the other a famous american-born painter James Whistler the hearing was prompted by a ruskin's condemnation of a Whistler painting the artist's response was to sue for libel in a showdown that caught the imagination of the London public Whistler emerged Victorious but it was a short-lived Triumph he was awarded just a quarter of a penny in libel damages and the cost of the case left him bankrupt from his earliest years Whistler longed to live the lifestyle of the Bohemian artist he wanted to move in fashionable circles enjoy affairs with beautiful women travel socialize and secure Fame and Fortune by the time of his death at the age of 69 he had achieved his Grand ambitions [Music] whistler's work was steeped in the spirit of his times he was familiar with realist and English pre-raphaelite painting and many of the artists involved in these movements were personal friends Whistler was also fascinated by the Contemporary interest in Japanese art and he brought Oriental style to his life as well as to his work But ultimately he was a true original his nighttime scenes and his stylized portraits were like nothing ever seen before and his achievement as a working artist is now fully appreciated as an artist Whistler had many achievements above all I think that he championed the creative freedom of the artist and he also challenged preconceptions about what is a good painting that it wasn't about just subject matter that it was more about an abstract composition of color and marks on a canvas so in a sense he sort of liberated perceptions of paintings and he took the Critics on in their own arena in the press and fought battles there to Champion the freedom of the independent artist prior to Whistler painting tended to be simply something which Illustrated stories or Illustrated ideas or philosophies or whatever Whistler realized that painting was a pure visual medium he gives you work for how full of Elegance full of visual pleasure that they refined they're very smoothly painted on the whole they have this sense of Tranquility as though you were going into a world removed from daily life and perhaps he embodies that idea of art for art say better than any other painter of the time one of the important things about him is the fact that he [Music] could capture a fleeting moment the the moment when a Catherine wheel explodes as one of his critics said he he could paint air James Abbott McNeil Whistler was born on July the 14th 1834 in Massachusetts USA [Music] he was the second of three children [Music] his mother Anna was a devout woman and his father George a civil engineer in 1843 George was commissioned to work on the construction of a new Railway in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg his family accompanied him and nine-year-old James's travels had begun [Music] James enjoyed life in Saint Petersburg the family home was comfortable and the young boy loved to watch the fireworks displays over the river Nava he also took drawing lessons and he made two long Journeys to London the city that would be his home for much of his adult life [Music] but in 1849 his father died and his mother decided to return to the United States back in America James enrolled in the famous Military Academy at West Point he was a free-spirited mischievous figure who tended to rebel against Authority three years into his training he was discharged but his time at West Point was not completely wasted the curriculum included drawing lessons at which he excelled in his early twenties he became passionate about a recently published book by the author Henry merger it described the lives of four brilliantly creative young men living a Carefree Reckless life as they pursued their artistic dreams the book was called scenes from Bohemian life and Whistler was hooked he decided to become a Bohemian himself to live as an artist and to do this he would have to move to the city described by murder as the global Center of Bohemian life Paris Maurizio's idea was that the Bohemian life was something that that creative artists went through and he quoted vior Homer Shakespeare Moliere as having all of them gone through this stage and that it was important for an artist's development as far as Whistler was concerned I think it made him feel that it was all right so to speak to be slightly unconventional Whistler was very intrigued by murga's book on scenes from Bohemian life I think largely because it represented a kind of release for him he came from a rather straight-laced Bourgeois background a very puritanical background and the image of this gay life in Paris that the Bohemians lived attracted him immensely In 1855 when he was 21 years old James Whistler secured a financial allowance from his mother and left the United States he would never return to his homeland shortly afterwards he arrived in Paris and launched himself into the Bohemian lifestyle that he craved like many would-be artists he studied at the free Studio of the academic painter Sharla glare but he was also interested in the Contemporary Art of the time in this early canvas showing the head of a peasant woman we can detect the influence of a Frenchman who became an inspiration as well as a friend the founder of realist painting Gustav korbe Colby uh emulated the Dutch paintings particularly Rembrandt and Whistler himself in these early period copied this style that Corby had adopted so that once he's very broad effect and rather dark paintings with strong highlight effects but curiously rather than using his ideas he copied the style I don't think Whistler was particularly interested in socialism in the way that Corbett was he was very much more interested in in painting per se Whistler would have first encountered kube's painting when he arrived in Paris in 1855 key examples of crew base work were on display at the Paris Exposition and I think he particularly responded to the social realist subjects and also the emphasis in the realist movement of working from nature Whistler admired corby's controversial peasant scenes he also identified with his deliberate Public Image as a free-spirited man of the times but the young American also sought out the greatest art of the past he studied the Old Masters of the Louvre and developed a special admiration for the works of the Spanish Master Diego Velasquez but it was the contemporary Spirit of realism that is most evident in whistler's earliest substantial work a series of etchings depicting ordinary scenes of urban Landscapes and the working people who lived there these prints became known as the French set together they demonstrate the young etch's enthusiasm for realist subject matter they also revealed something of whistler's personal life at the time this is finet a professional Can-Can dancer and one of the best known figures in Paris she was also one of the artists early mistresses in 1859 Whistler left Paris to visit his sister and Wealthy brother-in-law in London it was here that he began work on this intriguing painting showing his sister and her daughter at the piano Whistler was now 24. and this was the first important canvas of his career at the piano was one of whistler's first oil painting and it's interesting on a number of counts in terms of showing the artist developing it is a very sophisticated composition it shows his Rich color sense we see it in the mixing of The Maroons the Browns the Reds the green the white but also for the complexity of the composition he seems to have been studying Optical effects with his brother-in-law Simo Hayden and also the Whistler always denied that content or subject was of Interest or Merit it does show his sister-in-law Deborah Hayden with her daughter Annie at Seymour Hayden's home where Whistler lived from time to time during those early years so it's a domestic genre piece which perhaps has some underlying theme of mourning or recollection of their father who had died relatively recently and Deborah was a great pianist and the piano seems to have been sent by their mother their widowed mother to Deborah perhaps as a memory for her of The Times They is spent in Russia together with their father you're going to bug me it's that gorgeous or whatever and I believe I can run deep America download v-lean now at the piano is now recognized as an early Whistler masterpiece but contemporary reaction to the work was mixed Gustav kerbe loved it but the painting was rejected by the 1859 Salon the official annual exhibition of French art Whistler reacted in the Hasty tempestuous way that became a characteristic for the rest of his life [Music] he denounced the whole Parisian art establishment and decided to move permanently to London where he established himself at his sister's home in fashionable Sloan Street shortly afterwards Whistler completed a canvas whose name was as revealing as its composition this is Harmony in green and Rose the music room a title that reveals much about the artist's ambition to identify the art of painting with the art of music Whistler wanted people to focus on the pure beauty of his pictures he didn't want them to be too taken in by the subject he felt that he wanted them to just look at them at beautiful effects and this is one of the reasons why he chose musical titles for them he felt that music was about pure sound it was about pure effects of sound why couldn't pictures be about pure Vision about pure images it started with the paintings which he originally referred to as moonlights and his Patron Frederick Leyland suggested that Whistler called them call one particular one a Nocturne rather than a moonlight and Whistler wrote a letter to him explaining how absolutely delighted he was about this that he thought it was a wonderful idea and it really irritated the critics which also gave him pleasure Harmony in green and Rose introduces us to aesthetic concerns that would stay with Whistler throughout his working life [Music] we can also see recurring artistic themes in other images created during the artist's early years in London Whistler loved the River Thames and Riverside scenes featured in his second collection of etchings known as the Thames set he was fascinated by the bustling life of London's docklands and his increasing Mastery in handling line can be seen in this print showing the temside District of rutherhithe despite his dandish image Whistler enjoyed socializing among the semen and workmen of London's docks for this 1861 canvas he chose to paint the river traffic at whopping result was this impressive realist image that again gives us a glimpse into the artist's personal life here we see Alfonso grow whistler's friend from Paris we also see the red-haired Joe hefferman an Irish Beauty to whom the artist was romantically attached at the time [Music] we can also see Joe in this 1862 canvas Symphony in white number one but this is a very different kind of image Whistler had high regard for a bold development in mid-19th century English painting the establishment of the pre-raphaelite Brotherhood whose members included John Everett millet William Holman hunt and Dante Gabrielle Rossetti Whistler knew these artists well e had publicly expressed his admiration for at the piano when it was shown at London's Royal Academy in 1860. but it was Rossetti who became the most significant influence on Whistler foreign the two men became virtual Neighbors when Whistler moved into a house of his own in London's Chelsea the influence of Rossetti is evident in this memorable canvas Symphony in white number one is related to the work of prolaphalite painters in a number of counts and there are these underlying tensions about narrative The Whistler would have denied this as to had something just happened is it about to happen these underlying sexual overtones of the purity of her dress in relation say to the wolf skin on which she stands her Unbound red hair in relation to the single white lily that she is holding one of whistle's friends remarked that that Jimmy was Whistler and the Rosetti lot were thick as thieves and their ideas sparked off one another [Music] Symphony in white number one is now seen as one of the most significant of whistler's early works but as with at the piano before it critical reaction was mixed it was rejected by the Paris Salon of 1863 but that was the year that so many Works were turned down that the Emperor Napoleon conceived the famous Salon of the rejected this was the exhibition where Monet's picnic in the garden caused an outrage Symphony in white was also widely condemned but others saw the value of this haunting canvas including the poet Charles baudelaer and the Paris exhibition succeeded in raising whistler's profile as an artist but he decided to stay in London living near Rosetti and enjoying his affair with Joe hefferman who also posed for this follow-up painting Symphony in white number two here again we see the artist's skillful handling of the white paint but we can also identify important new compositional elements completed in 1864 this canvas is one of the first Whistler paintings to reveal the influence of the Far East [Music] at the time fashionable London was obsessed with Oriental art an 1862 exhibition of Japanese artifacts had been rapturously received and wealthy people began to acquire art and objects from China and especially Japan Whistler like his friend Rossetti became an avid collector of Chinese blue and white pottery and he boasted that all the porcelain that can be seen in this 1864 canvas belonged to him personally [Music] this picture from the same year revealed an even more striking interest in the Far East entitled Caprice in silver and gold the Golden Screen the canvas is full of Japanese objects surrounding a kimono-clad woman who may once again be the artist's mistress Joe but this is an image quite unlike the symphonies in white whistler's enthusiasm for the Japanese Prince that we can see here now worked its way into the heart of his compositional technique if we look at whistler's paintings in relation to particularly Japanese prints we can see straight away how he adopted this method of cutting off the image in strange rather asymmetrical designs sometimes the design being so powerful that it takes a while for you to understand exactly what the image depicts it's the um the way he uses space sometimes the flattening of the picture plane he absorbed these influences and went on to produce these marvelous paintings the spirit of Japanese art would stay with Whistler throughout his career and the Oriental influence would also be apparent in paintings whose subject matter could hardly have been more Western but in the mid-1860s Whistler was still in touch with his first great contemporary influence Gustav korbe [Music] in late 1865 he returned to France to paint alongside Corbett on the coast at tuvil taking Joe with him that Autumn Whistler painted a series of enigmatic seascapes heavily influenced by the French artist [Music] this harmony in blue and silver was especially indebted to an earlier work by the painter who now called himself whistler's master [Music] artistic terms the visit to tuvil was a productive one but personal problems were now beginning to affect whistler's private life his mother had arrived in London in 1863 forcing Joe to find lodgings nearby in 1865 his brother also arrived fresh from action as a Confederate surgeon in the American Civil War it may be that Whistler was unsettled by his brother's War record afterwards he embarked on the most unusual of his many travels on January the 31st 1866 accompanied by his brother and a number of Civil War veterans Whistler sailed from London for the port of Valparaiso in Chile at the time Chile and Peru were at war with Spain and the 31-year-old ex-patriate American had decided to assist their cause but Whistler was no war hero when he eventually arrived at Valparaiso the Spanish bombarded the town and the artist fled to the hills where he stayed until he could secure a passage back to London foreign whistler's visit to Chile did result in the creation of some fine seascapes including this Symphony in Gray and green where we see the Oriental butterfly Motif that the artist now adopted as a signature but the Expedition can still be seen as the irrational decision of a troubled man increasingly whistler's latent aggression began to surface on the journey home from Chile he was detained on board the ship after attacking a fellow Traveler back in London he punched his friend Lago in the face and pushed his brother-in-law through a window sexual jealousy may have contributed to his outbursts in Chile Joe had left him for his old friend Corby and this striking core Bay image depicting Joe as a lesbian lover can hardly have impressed her former lover bitter after falling out with Colby Whistler reacted against his former enthusiasm for realism [Music] in a letter to his old associate fontalatur he despaired for his art in a phrase that reveals much of the confusion he felt at the time oh my friend why did I not study under anger that comment comes at a time when he was searching for a style and in some sort of confusion between the Kirby realism that he had so admired and yet his developing philosophy about Art For Art's Sake and decorative painting and seeking a kind of rarefied beauty he said that he wanted to express himself in his paintings and be what he called viciously French anger in a way was very much more kin to to to the way that Whistler worked and his way of understanding how the line worked was very much more in relation to the way that Whistler painted so he he very rapidly moved away from corby's ideas and influence and adopted Angus Way of working the late 1860s were a troubled time for Whistler and for two years he exhibited nothing but his life was not all gloom and doom he found a new lover Louisa Fanny Hansen and she became the mother of his love child son [Music] he also enjoyed the Friendship of Frederick Leyland a wealthy British ship owner and loyal patron of whistler's work as the 1870s dawned the artist was at the verge of the greatest achievements of his career though actually creating them would prove a tortuous business canvas gives us an insight into whistler's painfully slow technique this is Sicily Alexander the eight-year-old daughter of a London financier the formal title of the work is Harmony in Gray and green but it is intriguing to imagine how the artist maintained a harmonious atmosphere in his Studio no fewer than 70 sittings were required before Whistler was satisfied and this was not untypical throughout his career he was Notorious for rubbing out an entire canvas and starting again [Music] time and again Whistler was not afraid to try the patience of his Sitters in his pursuit of perfection when you look at a picture by Whistler it looks as though it was done in the moment it has that Elegance about it and it is often very smoothly painted and what one forgets is that he would often scrape his canvases down and start again so the laboriousness doesn't come in him piling the paint on and on again it doesn't look as though it's a very heavily labored picture is that he's constantly rubbing out and going back again he wants to get exactly the right effect [Music] this 1872 picture also took a long time to paint here we see the historian Thomas Carlisle in one of whistler's best known portraits again many sittings were required before the canvas was completed it is said that Carlisle grew frustrated but we can be thankful that he allowed the portraitists to complete this subtly harmonious image [Music] the portrait of Carlisle later earned Whistler a substantial amount of money as did this painting completed in 1871 this is a portrait of the artist's old mother though the formal title of the work is arrangement in gray and black number one for many admirers of whistler's work it is this single image that represents the greatest achievement of his working life lessness portrait of his mother is a particularly important painting it shows its remarkable psychological insight into this very devout Protestant Widow grieving she'd lost two children and her husband it was an influential painting in that for example Thomas Carlisle when he saw it said that he was prepared to be painted by Whistler and this was no small decision one didn't say one would be painted by Whistler lightly because it was such an endurance test the picture was bought by Paris by the Louvre in 1891 and this was probably the first major official recognition of Whistler as an international painter and really from that point honors price rises in his work and so on come in so it was critical from that point of view though surprisingly when the picture was first exhibited it had a rather cool critical reaction and since whistler's lifetime it has become an icon of motherhood throughout the world [Music] image was painted Whistler was 37 years old with increasing confidence in his abilities [Music] as this 1872 self-portrait reveals [Music] he continued to enjoy the patronage of Frederick Leyland whom he depicted in this canvas completed the following year portraiture now took up much of whistler's time but he also executed Works in an entirely different genre these were the nighttime scenes of London's River Thames the nocturnes Whistler first had this idea of Twilight painting during his aborted expedition to Chile as this Eerie image of Valparaiso Harbor confirms but it was in London by the banks of the River Thames that he brought this unusual artistic genre to full fruition as with his portraits Whistler sought to express the harmony of color across his canvas and with images like Nocturne in blue and silver he succeeded once again the creative process behind images like this was protracted before taking his brush to the canvas Whistler took great pains over the mixing of his pigments his paint was so diluted that he was compelled to lay the canvas flat on the studio floor the artist referred to his technique as painting with a sauce and the results were among the finest works of his career when Whistler chose to return to the influence of the Orient in this Nocturne depicting London's Battersea Bridge his achievement may have been the greatest of all Whistler was influenced by a Japanese Prince when he was doing his knock turns though the way in which he's perhaps rather different is in the type of color that he's using he's used in central Japanese design but he's given it a tonality all of his own and perhaps what is most striking is this idea of making the everyday beautiful their everyday strange the nocturnes that he did were scenes of parts of London which were not very beautiful they were industrial Parts they were down by Batterson there's lots of warehouses and things like that and by choosing the right composition the right time of day he turns them into poetic referees it's a superb painting the difference between the rather flat picture plane and the suggestion of space given really by the paintwork it's also the rather thin paint I think the very restrained [Music] um color harmonies and one of the interesting things about the picture I think is the tiny bit of red which lifts the whole picture and it's it's a it's a tour de force images like this are now recognized as masterpieces but Whistler struggled to find buyers at the time his early 1870s portraits sold well however and he was able to afford a lavish London lifestyle he found another mistress Maud Franklin and his Chelsea home was well known for its parties and other entertainments Frederick Leyland was also still loyal but in 1876 Whistler pushed his loyalty too far and his life took another downturn Leyland asked Whistler to decorate the dining room of his London home while he traveled North on business in his absence Whistler had worked day and night to create an artistic tour de force dominated by peacocks in Gold Leaf he had also invited the cream of London's art establishment to admire his efforts Leyland was Furious and the undoubted genius of the decoration did nothing to calm his rage The Saga of the peacock room led to a bitter and permanent breakdown in the artist's relationship with his Patron and worse was to come shortly afterwards Whistler exhibited a number of his works at London's newly opened Grosvenor gallery they included this nighttime scene of a firework display Nocturne in black and gold the falling rocket the canvas was offered for sale at a price of 200 guineas it was a sum that one man considered outrageous the critic John Ruskin the result was one of the most famous lawsuits of the 19th century Ruskin was a well-known figure in London's artistic community his championing of Turner's radical paintings was well known but Ruskin condemned whistler's Nocturne as unfinished and said that the artist was asking 200 guineas for the act of flinging a pot of paint into the Public's face [Music] the enraged Whistler decided to respond through the courts he issued a writ for libel against Ruskin and the case was heard in November 1878 amidst huge interest from the London press and public the case pitted two different views of the purpose of visual art against each other found only one side could win really it was about Ruskin on the one hand standing up for subject matter and finish and Whistler in the other Corner championing the right to have a different approach to painting that subject matter was not primary and also that the artist could charge a fair rate it wasn't about a day and a half's work it was about as he called it the experience of a lifetime when whistler's victory over Ruskin was confirmed his sense of vindication must have been strong but the award of a farthing in Damages brought him quickly down to earth with the costs of the case still to be paid Whistler was left bankrupt his home and his many possessions were sold to satisfy his creditors in the end it had been a pyrrhic victory not surprisingly he made up his mind to leave London he secured a commission for a series of etchings of Venice and in September 1879 set off for Italy away from England joined by his mistress Whistler took stock of his circumstances [Music] like many artists before him he found inspiration in the Venetian landscape with this nocturnal image of the Lagoon demonstrating his continuing Mastery of Twilight water scenes [Music] but Whistler created few oil paintings on the Adriatic Coast choosing to concentrate on pastel scenes and the etchings that he had been commissioned to produce unusually I chose to avoid venice's most famous landmarks for his subject matter instead he sought out the back streets as inspiration for a striking body of graphic work [Music] though some critics again leveled the accusation of incompleteness we can now appreciate the Innovative approach underpinning Venetian scenes like these he wanted actually to to to show um parties as a response to the lawsuit the lead um just had that he could draw um very precisely and and um with great economy and I think that this became a a sense within these pictures of the Venetian series that he created he brought a very beautiful line to it he was a marvelous printmaker Whistler and and these are some of the most elegant effects he produced once again rather like in his nocturnes in London taking places that might have been seen to be sorted at the first little back streets with tumbledown buildings and turning them into objects of beauty his Prince convey an idea of Venice as a living place which it is I mean after all people lived there but the the grand views of the Grand Canal one doesn't feel so much that people lived there worse in whistler's prints it conveys the everyday life of the city to a far greater extent Whistler returned to London in November 1880 determined to re-establish himself as a major artistic figure in the years that followed he applied his Mastery of color Harmony to a series of small paintings depicting the fronts of London shops and houses but his real Ambitions were in portraiture and with commissions such as this portrait of lady Muir he proved that his Society connections were still strong he was now confident enough to work with greater Speed without the quality of his work suffering if anything portraits like this 1884 depiction of Theodore demonstrate an increasing Mastery of dramatic color contrasts and there were a number of successful exhibitions of whistler's work during the 1880s his work was now appreciated by many contemporaries including Oscar Wilde and stories of the two men's conversations were widely published Whistler was still a dandish figure with a distinctive white lock of hair hanging over his forehead [Music] he was now one of the best known figures in London and his lifelong Ambitions were being fulfilled in 1888 his personal life brought him more happiness when he married Beatrice Godwin the subject of this lamplet portrait appropriately titled Harmony in red [Music] his difficulties of the 1860s and 1870s were now behind him as well as being a famous man Whistler was now increasingly well rewarded financially in 1891 his portrait of Thomas Carlisle was purchased for the huge sum of 1 000 Guinness in the same year the French State paid 4 000 francs for the portrait of his mother at times the artist bemoaned the fact that these riches had not arrived sooner but the early 1890s can still be seen as the happiest period of his life in 1892 he was awarded France's Legion of Honor and shortly afterwards he returned to Paris to set up a new home with Beatrice he continued to move in Bohemian circles he also began to explore the print medium of lithography and continued to travel whenever he had the chance in the summer of 1895 he was back in England staying at the southern Resort of Lyme Regis where he painted this moving child portrait entitled the little rows of Lyme Regis Whistler now in his early 60s was still a master of color Harmony but when he created this enthralling image he found himself facing another personal disaster which he could do nothing about his beloved wife had become seriously ill and the visit to the English Coast was made for the sake of her health but Beatrice was suffering from cancer and this lithograph created by her husband in early 1896 reveals the extent of her sickness she died in May that year and her husband was devastated [Music] this was the biggest tragedy of whistler's life and though he lived for another seven years Beatrice's death effectively marks the end of whistler's great achievements as an artist he was increasingly afflicted by illness himself but he continued to travel and in the first year of the new century he visited North Africa hoping that his health would improve but any benefits were short-lived and after a final relocation back to London he died of a heart attack on July the 17th 1903. foreign of a remarkable life [Music] from his earliest years he had sought to be a man of his times and he succeeded in becoming one of the best known figures of his age an artist as famous for his character and lifestyle as for his work but it is that work that remains with us today it is through famous images like these that we can still appreciate the achievement of James Whistler foreign [Music] foreign

Channel: Perspective

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Keywords: history documentaries, art history documentaries, art and culture documentary, TV Shows - Topic, art history, Documentary movies - topic, tv shows - topic, james whistler, whistler, ruskin, James McNeill Whistler

Id: 3peWb4h34FQ

Length: 47min 33sec (2853 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 16 2023