( music ) all petty and exacting details vanish and i see thing as they are in greattrong masses. the buttons are lost but the garment remains. the sitter is lost but the shadow remains. the shadow is lost but the picture remains.

anthat, night cannot efface from the painter imagination-- james mcneill whistler. narrator: painter, printmaker, designer, and critic whistler was one of the most original and controversial artists of his time. he was born in 14, in the industrial town of lowell, massachusetts. when he was nine years old his father was hired to oversee construction of a railway in russia the family moved to st. petersburg. whistler later claimed that cosmopolitan city as his birthplace. i shall be born when and whe i want and i do not choose to be born at lowell. after eight years in russia, the fami returned and settled pomfret, nnecticut.

( rapid drumbeats ) in 1851, whistler entered the military academy at west point. whistler was often in my room and there made skches in india ink. there were those who divined the dawning of genius, but self-denial and obedience to orders were the requirements for success at west point. whistler was discharged the 15th of june, 1854 for deficiency in conduct and chemistry-- general loomis l. langdon, fellow cadet. the following year whistler arrived in paris to make his name as an artist. his first series of etchings known as "the french set," was well received. but the french salon showcase for grand hisrical and mythogic pictures, rejected his first important painting, "at the piano." ( piano music ) nonetheles the picture's straightforwarfocus

on a modern, domestic scene, won the praise of gustave courbet, leader of the realist school. whistler soon entered the most advanced circles of parisian art, making friends with the painters edouard manet and henri fantin-latour, and the poet charles baudelaire. fantin-latour's group portrait, "homage to delacroix," indicates whistler's place in this world: he appears at the center closest to the romantic painter. ( violin music ) at the age of 24 whistler moved to london. true to courbet's example, he depicted subjects om everyday life. mr. whistler showed the banks of the thames, wonderful tangles of riing, yardarms d rope farragoes fogfues and rkscre of oke,

profound and intricate poetry of a vastapital-- charles baudelre. whistler soon met the painters john everett millais and dante gabriel rossetti both leaders of the pre-raphaelite school. the leading art critic john ruskin, praised the pre-raphaelites' moralizing paintings of historical, literary, and biical subs, rendered in painstaking deta from london, whistler traveled regularly to paris, forging a link between the two artistic worlds. in 1863, along with manet's "d'jeuner sur l'herbe," whistler's "the white girl" was the sensation of the salon des refuse. portraying his mistrs joanna hifrnan the painting seemed neither pre- raphaelite

nor realist. it bfled critics and artists alike. whence comeshis white apparition? no one canay-- critic #1 it's a picture of a bride on the morng after her dding-- critic #2 it's a portrait of a iritualist a medm-- critic #3 the critic paul mantz perhaps understood it best: it is a symphony in white. whistler concurred and later added "symphony" to the title, wel to a seriesf paintis. as music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or color.

in the 1860s, japanese objects flooded western europe and japonisme quickl became the fashion. whistler's house in chelsea brimmed with his collection of textiles, prints and porcelain. are you interested in old china? this artistic abode of my son jamie is ornamented by a very rare collection of japanese and chinese. he has for the last fortnight had a irsetting as a jese ud a very beautifulicture for ich he is to bpaid 100 guineas-- mr wstler whistl's fascitionr japanese art led him to adopt his diinctive ate. yowi see my mark on pictures and fres. it is a butterfly that does as a monogram for j.w. 'characteristic,' you will say, 'in more ways than one.'

whistler admired the decorative refinement and restraint he saw in eastern art. but his attempts to meld this new influence th his o weste training caused a crisis leading him toejt courbet's tehings. whatriul educatn fe i've had! courbet and his influence was disgusting. that damned realism made an immediate appeal to my vanity as a painter. whistler aed his mother to pose for him in 1871, and began a portrait that reconciled these conflicting influences. powerfrasp of his mother's protestant chter recalls the art of courbet but whistler now ingrated realism with a japanese sense of design. he simplified the composition

and carefully arranged his subject to emphasize purely aesthetic qualities, transforming the portrait into a spare, exquisite harmony of pattern, texture, and tone. i insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.' take the picture of my mother, exhibited as 'arrangement in gray and black.' that ishait i to me it is interesting as a picture of my mother but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait? his portrait of the philosopher-historian thomas carlyle the most eminent man of letters in victorian england s titled simply, "aangement igrayd blacnuer two." arsh be dendt clara shldtalo and appealthe artiic seof eye or ear outh with otionsntely fon it,

suchs tion ve, or priotm. "har in gray and gen," his portit of six-year-old cicely alexander undermined victorian conventions for depicting little girls as angelic beings. whistler portrayed instead a scowling child tid of posing for more than 70 sessions, but he rendered her with the delicacy of a japanese watercolor on silk. in 1876, his patron, the shipowner frederick leyld,asked whisero vise cor scme ihis london townhou to complement the artist's "princess of the land of porcelain." but while leyland was out of town, whistler--without permission-- transford the tire room with a desn based on the plumage of golden peacocks.

leyland was rious and refused to pay the fee whistler demanded. your vanity has completely blinded you to civilized usages, and your swaggering self-assertion has made you an unbearable nuisance-- leyland. whistler replied but not in words. at one end of the room two angry peacks fight over silver coins. ( piano music ) whistler often went out on the thames at dusk, fascinated by the watery reflections. as twilight gave way to darkness, his boat would drift past the lights of cremorne gardens

under the battersea bridge and down to the houses of parliament. later, he painted these scenes from memory. when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanile, and the wahouses are palaces in the nht and the whole city hangs inhe heavens na who f once s sun tune sis exquisite songthe arst alone whistler ctud the misty moonlight with oil paints so thinned with turpentine that he worked on the floor to keep his liquid colors from running off the caas. cald these works "nrnes." e meurneas a tie for my moonlights--

you have no idea what an irritation it proves to critics and consequent pleasure to me. besides, it does so poetically say all i want to say, ore th w in877, wstler exhibited "nocturne in black and gold: the falling rocket." to him, it captured the atmosphere of a london pleasure garden at night, the black sky flecked with a shower of golden fireworks. but to the victorian public, accustomed to sentimental genre scenes and pompous neoclassical paintings whistler's nturnes looked unfinished. mr. whistler has arrived at the outermost mgins of formalized painting. one step more and there would be nothing on the canvas except a foress blob-- theodore duret, critic.

john ruskin dismissed whistler as an insolent dandy: i have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now but never expected to hear a cockscomb ask 200 guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face. ruskin's critism of "nocturne in black and gold: the falling rocket" inflamed whistler, who sued him for libel. at the trial, the defense mocked his painting. now, mr. whistler, can you tell us how long it took you to knock off that 'nocturne?' how long did i take to 'kck o that nocturne?' i habetter say that i was two days at work on it. oh, two days-- the lar of two da then. is that for which you ask 200 guineas?

no, i ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime. ( applau ) whistler won his case, but the judge awarded him only a farthing's damages and ordered him to pay his own costs. ( olinusic ) bankrupted from the trial, iser departed for venice. the fine arts society had commissioned him to make a series of prints. most artists before him had depicted the famous tourist sites but istler instead sought out backwater canals quiet courtyards and local marketplaces. i have learned to know a veni in venice

thatthers em never to have perceid. working on the st, hereth er's need directlyn the copper p t bothering wi preparatory sketches. but as winter approached unusually cold temperatures led him to trade his icy etching plates for pastels. whistler wouldoad his ndola, which was virtually his studio and the old gondolier would take him to vious sketching points. he alwaycaied tw boxes of pastels ana w touches could produca remarkable fect-- to bacher, student ( violin music ) morehan a year lat wh rned to london. he adopted a pose suave contempt for british artists and critics, playing e part of proud peacock with his trademark quiff of white hair, monocle, and cane.

popularity is the only insult which has not yet been offered to mr. whistler. he is a miniature mephistopheles injoty-- oscawie inler devere s fame"ten o'clo" lecture, in which he asserted the periority of art over nature. seldom, he said, does a picture occur naturally. artists should seek the beautiful in all conditions and a tim nature cons the elements, in color d rmof all pictures, he kboard containsthtes ofllic. the artist is born to pick and choose and bring forth fromhaos glorious harmony.

toward the end of his life whistler published "the gentle art of making enemies," attacking his critics with arbic wit. critics are not a necessary evil but an evil quite unnecessary. much as he relished the pose of misunderstood outsider, his work was rapidly gaining wide acceptance. in 1891, the french government purchased "arrangement in gray and black: portrait of the painter's mother," which later entered the louvre. whistler never returned tohe united ates but heirectee sale of his work to america. industrialist charles langreer amassed a huge collection, including "the peacock room." by the time of whistler's death in 1903, his reputation was secure. whistlerdead d there goes with m one of the greatest te ane of t mosorinal rsalies e- arthur

symonds, poet and critic. agt thorian belief that picture tell a stororesibe nature whistler established an art of refinement and abstraction that helped prepare the way for the innovations of 20th-century painting. like a wks of geni their lauage is thrown and untranatable. they remain in the memory as few other pictus do: the lyrics of pictorial art. ( violin music )

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