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Artist: James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903)
British-American painter and printmaker. Proponent of art for art’s sake in the period leading up to the first Modernist movement. Known for his paintings of nocturnal London, his full-length portraits, and his black-and-white etchings and lithographs. Influenced at different points in his career by Courbet’s realism, seascapes, townscapes, River Thames, Pre-Raphaelite movement, and Japanese prints, calligraphy, etc. Appreciated Eastern art and Hellenistic earthenware Tanagra figurines. His Aesthetic portraits, marked by simple forms and muted tones, were shaped by attraction to Diego Velazquez’s paintings. High priest of bohemianism and won a libel suit against John Ruskin for attack on Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket (1875). Out-of-step with his contemporaries in later years as he was not interested in Impressionistic-styled colorful landscapes.