<p>Costume and fashion were a lifelong obsession for James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). His exquisite depictions of women and the details of their clothing contributed to his career as one of the most accomplished and successful—if controversial—artists of the nineteenth century. This lavishly illustrated book focuses on fashion in Whistler’s art as a key to understanding his life and work and as a new means of exploring his relationship with women and his portraits of them. The book offers new insights into some of Whistler’s most beloved masterpieces in the context of art and fashion in the Victorian period. </p>
<p>Illustrated with paintings, pastels, prints, and drawings by Whistler, the book also presents photographs of his sitters, contemporary costumes, works by other artists of the period, and artifacts from Whistler’s studio. These illustrations, with new material drawn from the Centre for Whistler Studies, illuminate the interaction between the artist and the women he portrayed during his fifty years in Paris and London—mistresses, family members, artists, actresses, aristocrats, and many others.</p>

Whistler, Women, and Fashion

MacDonald, Margaret F.

Ribeiro, Aileen

Galassi, Susan Grace

De Montfort, Patricia

Arts & Photography

Yale University Press

<p>In the 1860s and 1870s Whistler produced a body of work based on Battersea Bridge, London. Pivotal to his career, this beautiful group of paintings permits a detailed examination of his approach to composition, subject and technique. The earliest pieces, notably Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge, produced soon after his arrival in London, mark one of his most profound and successful challenges to the art establishment of the time and his influence on the aesthetics of the day. This comprehensive and handsomely illustrated study presents the definitive examples of Whistler's radical new approach to the time-honored subject of the city and river. The works reveal to us Whistler's world – the exhibitions, personalities, buildings, style and atmosphere which inform his art and root this American cosmopolitan securely in the ranks of noted artists inspired by London and the Thames.</p>

An American in London: Whistler and the Thames

History & Criticism

Philip Wilson Publishers

<p><div>The Anglo-American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834 - 1903) is a household name - a man who inspired and astonished the Victorian world. Less well known, though, is the influence of nature on Whistler's work. This innovative and compelling study reconsiders Whistler's work from the context of his military service and his relationship with 'nature at the margins,' showing how Whistler's observation of nature and its moods underpinned his haunting visions of nineteenth-century life. This innovative and compelling study reconsiders Whistler's work from the context of his military service and his relationship with 'nature at the margins.' Whistler came from a family of soldiers and engineers; his father, Major George Washington Whistler, was originally a US military engineer. Drawing and mapmaking were important components of the military training that Whistler acquired as an officer cadet at West Point Academy in 1851-4 and subsequently in the Drawing Department at the US Coast and Geodetic Survey, where he attempted to realize his father's hopes that he would make engineering or architecture his profession. These influences in turn shaped Whistler's attitude towards nature, as expressed in works ranging from his celebrated London 'Nocturnes' to his French coastal scenes - all of which were created after Whistler moved permanently to Europe in 1855. Whistler's close observation of nature and its moods underpinned his powerful and haunting visions of nineteenth-century life. His images explore the contrasts between the natural and man-made worlds: rivers and wharves, gardens and courtyards, the ideal and the naturalistic. And his singular vison was always defined by his enduring affinity with the makers of railways, bridges, and ships, the cornerstones of Victorian wealth and trade. Influenced by Rembrandt, Whistler's early etchings of London are notable for their focus on line and topographical accuracy. From the 1860s, his enthusiasm for Japanese art, too, influenced his attitude to perspective and spatial relations between objects. This led him, in his London Nocturnes, to reduce the external world before him to its bare bones. Whistler's smoky images of warehouses, bridges, harbours and tall ships were designed to showcase a new kind of productive, wealth-generating landscape. It is a view of nature constrained by man-made structures: the shadowy outline of the warehouses and chimneys on the far shore; the mast and rigging of a Thames barge in the middle distance. This absorbing book reassesses a familiar and notoriously colorful artistic figure in a fascinating and pertinent new light, and is an important new contribution to our understanding of the Victorian art world and its physical context.</div></p>

Whistler and Nature

Willsdon, Clare

Individual Artists

Paul Holberton Publishing

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