More to Him Than His Mother: Rethinking James Whistler

A review of the book Whistler A Life for Art's Sake

How refreshing to read a life of an artist who was talented but not self-destructive. And what a subject James Whistler is for his latest biographer, Daniel E. Sutherland. Whistler virtually leaps off the pages of this book, so vibrant a personality was he. This is an outstanding portrait of one of the most important figures in the history of art. Moreover, it is an absorbing case study of self-fashioning and how one went about becoming a celebrity in the 19th Century. Andy Warhol and Whistler probably would have a lot to talk about on the subject of generating buzz. Even if you have no interest in the fine arts, you should read this book in order to understand the art and science of generating personal publicity.

Who Was Whistler?

Let’s start with the basics—for even the question of what his name actually was tells us a good deal about how much the matter of public presentation preoccupied Whistler (1834–1903). Sometimes he is known as James McNeill Whistler and in other places James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Sutherland explains the various reasons for the ways Whistler referred to himself. Many of them had to do with family reasons such as wanting to associate himself with his mother’s supposedly more dashing, aristocratic southern heritage as opposed to the less romantic New England portion of his descent.

Around 1869, Whistler began using a butterfly as his signature. It was a clever marketing ploy, since the signature began to stand for the man and artist himself. Whistler even poked fun at his reputation for stinging repartee and combativeness by adding a scorpion’s tail to the butterfly in some of his letters.

Let’s place Whistler in time. Given that he was born in 1834, that made him slightly older than W. S. Gilbert (b. 1836), Arthur Sullivan (b. 1842) and Henry James (b. 1843) and 20 years older than Oscar Wilde (b. 1854) but quite a bit younger than his nemesis, John Ruskin (b. 1819) and the subject of one of Whistler’s best known portraits, Thomas Carlyle (b. 1795). Among artists, he was roughly the same generation as Paul Cézanne (b. 1839), Edgar Degas (b. 1834), but older than John Singer Sargent (b. 1856) and younger than Gustave Courbet (b. 1819)

How great an artist was Whistler? Rather oddly, Sutherland early in his book makes ambitious claims for Whistler, even suggesting that he was the greatest artist of his generation. I am not an art critic, but I very much doubt most critics would go that far. And Sutherland himself seems to drop that position soon enough in the book in favor of making less dramatic but persuasive cases for Whistler’s skill in such forms as etching, lithography, oils and so on. Whistler was quite innovative in some of his techniques and rather secretive about them at times when need be.

Interestingly, unlike Sargent or Mary Cassatt Whistler was not known for portraying children nor was he particularly skillful at doing so.

How American Was Whistler?

I was very surprised to learn from this book how little time Whistler actually spent in the U.S. His father was a well-known engineer and the family spent much of Whistler’s childhood in Russia, where his father worked for the Czarist government on railway projects. As a young man, Whistler spent many years in France learning his craft and again much later when he got fed up with battling philistines in Britain where he lived many years. He seems to have been quite comfortable in the French language and managed in German. One of the most delightful features of Sutherland’s book is his employment of the many accounts of Whistler’s contemporaries of their encounters with “Jimmie.” To many Americans he sounded affectedly British, apparently, whereas to British and continental Europeans he came across as a drawling Yank, rather in the Mark Twain fashion.

Speaking of Twain, it is puzzling that Sutherland did not compare the public images of Twain and Whistler. Twain (1835-1910) was Whistler’s almost exact contemporary and was as much a master of public image as Whistler was. It also would have been interesting to compare their financial struggles as artists in a cutthroat era. Indeed, the expense of his lawsuit against John Ruskin was one of the factors (living beyond his means was another) that led to Whistler's bankruptcy in 1879. Sutherland’s account of that humiliating period in Whistler's life is outstanding as indeed his handling of Whistler’s finances is overall.

Whistler’s Finances

Indeed, this is by far one of the best depictions of how an American artist of the Victorian era went about making his living and marketing his works. Sutherland details Whistler’s relationships with dealers, galleries, patrons, art societies etc. and his cultivation of the American nouveau riche who found rich pickings in Britain in the late 19th century. He used entertaining (he was known for his breakfasts) to network as adroitly as any celebrity ever has. He sponged off others unapologetically when strapped and was generous when he was flush.

Whistler had a strong sense of the value of his work and was adamant on high prices for it—not only out of the need to support the lavish lifestyle he preferred but out of genuine conviction that he was an artist to be taken seriously. And indeed, he was not the wisecracking mountebank that people like Ruskin took him for, but someone who thought, if not deeply and least with conviction, about the techniques and purposes of art and the role of the artist in society. His famous libel action (which he won, though it helped ruin Whistler financially—for a time) was based not only on the fact that Whistler had to protect his reputation as a serious artist for purely commercial reasons but also out of his strong belief in the value of his own art and the need to stand up for artistic expression against carping critics such as Ruskin.

Sutherland points out that as shrewd a businessman as Whistler could be at times, he tended bring in less of an income than peers such as Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Leighton and John Everett Millais.

The Libel Battle With Ruskin

One can hardly blame Whistler for finding Ruskin insufferable and his sneers at Whistler’s work insupportable. There is also the fact that Ruskin, supposedly the working man’s champion, used snobbish language in his dismissal of Whistler’s painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. Ruskin wrote in 1877 in his periodical Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain, “I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.” It is a shame that Sutherland does not discuss the use of “Cockney” as a term of opprobrium by critics. It was used to denigrate Keats, for example. It was odd that Ruskin chose to use it to characterize the American Whistler (who was inordinately proud of having attended West Point—though he did not graduate from it due to low grades—and so was very personal honor-minded).

Whistler evidenced his stage managing of his public image during the lead-up to the trial, telling his lawyers that he was the well-known Whistler and that it would be tactically best to stick to that character.

Given the diminishing role of the professional critic in our own era of the closure of magazines and the declining number of newspapers and thus the number of mainstream venues for cultural criticism, it is fascinating to read of a time when a rising artist like Whistler put his financial standing at risk to sue Ruskin, then the leading critic of his day, for libel. And, again, it was Whistler who won—though the public reaction was mixed. Some felt that it was unhealthy for art and freedom of expression for the “upstart” Whistler to have taken the aging, respected Ruskin to court. Others sided with the tenacious Whistler for wittily defending his position in court and taking a stand of his own for freedom of expression and being the artist David against the critic Goliath.

It is a pity that Sutherland doesn’t compare Whistler’s litigiousness with that of W.S. Gilbert who also had a habit of taking people to court (he does mention that Gilbert kibitzed with some Whistler’s other supporters during the preparations for the Ruskin trial). What differentiated Whistler from Gilbert is that Whistler often resorted to physical assault in the form of several episodes of undignified fisticuffs. He seemed to have regarded that as what a southern gentleman (though he seems to have spent hardly any time in the South) did when insulted. Notably, though, unlike his younger brother William who served in the Confederate army as a medical doctor, Whistler could not be bothered to set aside his artistic career to actually fight for the South. Not that doing so would have been admirable, of course. It is just that Whistler was a notably combative person but not when it came to actual combat except in petty brawls. I was surprised to learn from the book that Whistler stood only about five foot three, smallish even for his day.

Whistler as Celebrity

What comes across beautifully in Sutherland’s book is how charming and engaging Whistler was. There are countless accounts in the book of his gregariousness, wit and energy. (Sitting for a portrait by him was another matter—many of his subjects complained of the hours of sitting motionless as best they could and being snapped at by an absorbed Whistler if they moved from position.). An example of Whistler’s wit that Sutherland provides is his reaction to a woman who gushed that some of his work rivaled that of Velasquez. Whistler replied, “Why drag in Velasquez?"

And given the recent fad for monocle wearing, it was fun to read how Whistler used his as a prop--fixing it in his eye with exaggerated intensity, flourishing it flamboyantly, dangling it languidly or rapping it on a tabletop alarmingly.

He was also one of the great dandies of his day and it is odd that Sutherland doesn’t compare him in that respect to Disraeli in his early years or to Dickens (whose works Whistler loved), both of whom loved a flashy waistcoat and both of whom struggled at times financially as Whistler did. He carried a long cane that came to be known as his “wand” that added to his panache, as did the grey lock in his hair that made him instantly recognizable.

Touchingly, his friends knew Whistler was declining physically when he lost his zest for elegant attire.

Whistler’s monumental ego itself is rather charming. The man had no self-esteem problems. Greeting a group of art students, he said to each, “Whistler is charmed…” and to an interviewer, “…I—who, of course as you know, am charming...” He wrote notices about his own shows—and quoted in the catalogs of such the denigrating comments of critics of the works on display. The man had chutzpah. It probably would have been hard to get a word in edgewise when he was holding forth. But he was such a skillful raconteur that interrupting him would probably have been frowned upon by others at the table. He also had a habit of warding off anyone who did try to interject by inserting a formidable, “And…” He lived for the limelight. The better to sell his art and make it as an artist, so who would begrudge him that?

Winningly for us women, unlike many male artists certainly in his own day and even now, Whistler encouraged female artists and enjoyed the company of women in social gatherings and actually listened to what they had to say and respected it.

The list of those who liked him included Carlyle (who, I imagine, did not like most people). Proust admired him. William Merritt Chase and Walter Sickert both fell out with him. Whistler, rather reactionary at times in his politics (not surprisingly, given that he spent his life catering to the idle rich), regarded William Morris as a dangerous radical. He was quite hardhearted in his attitude towards Wilde’s fall.

Strangely, Sutherland does not mention another near exact contemporary of Whistler’s: Winslow Homer (1836 –1910).

Should You Read This Book?

Should you read this book? Absolutely. It is one of the best biographies in years. Sutherland makes us feel we are Americans in Britain at its cultural, economic and political zenith or struggling artists in Paris in the mid and late 19th century. He shows us not only Whistler the artist, but Whistler the public lecturer (for a time), Whistler the teacher (a caring, somewhat imperious one late in his life) and the active correspondent and literary figure. He was a loving husband, sibling, uncle and parent to several illegitimate children that he stashed away but supported financially to a certain extent but was not especially involved with emotionally. He was, for all his public rows (and indeed because of them, given that many were based on principle), a rather lovable person. I was sorry to finish the book. If you are interested in transatlantic cultural history and in reading an excellent biography this is the book for you.