THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
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Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
James McNeill Whistler, 1834-1903, was an extraordinary American artist, primarily based in the UK. He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA and died in London, England.
As the founder of ‘Tonalism’, in the 1880s, Whistler painted the atmospheric tone and quiet intimacy that we associate the artist with in his reflective canvases. His painterly approach went on to influence the American abstract, stain-and-spray, Color Field painters in New York, during the 1940s and ‘50s, increasingly making abstract expressionism the subject, in itself.
This is the largest Whistler retrospective in Europe for 30 years, featuring 150 artworks that show the full breadth of his painting, drawing, printmaking and design. Don’t underestimate his widespread, major, contribution to the art world. From his iconic Portrait of the Artist’s Mother to his celebrated Nocturnes, the exhibition spans Whistler’s most famous, and infamous, works.
Arrangement in Black and Grey, No. 1 (known as Portrait of the Painter’s Mother and popularly as Whistler’s Mother) is on display at Tate Britain for the first time in 20 years, making its return to the city where it was painted in 1871. Whistler’s 66-year-old mother sat for her portrait after another model failed to arrive. This huge painting has since become an enduring symbol of motherhood, strength and resilience. (And, do you remember this great picture featuring in the comedic Mr Bean film of 1977, Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie?)
This exhibition also includes four previously unseen pocket sketchbooks, on display for the first time. Whistler carried them with him on his travels, to always sketch, draw and capture those fleeting moments of daily life he encountered, across many, many, countries. These small, intimate volumes, though never intended for public view, reveal his constant urge to record what he saw. As he said, “No day without a line”. They include scenes from his travels in the USA, Britain, Europe, Chile and Algeria, as well as a self-portrait made, at age 11, in St Petersburg, Russia.
Whistler was a fashionable, cosmopolitan, celebrity who challenged Victorian society time and time again with his bold, experimental and increasingly defiant approach to artistic innovation. Whistler anticipated modern art in his pursuit for truth and beauty as his artwork became more atmospheric, and increasingly more abstract. Shaped by his subtle, controlled, handling of oil paint, he wasn’t constrained by his palette, but was instead freed by the liberties he took with the slick, transparent medium. Tackling everything. Fearing nothing.
After moving to Paris aged 21, Whistler engaged with his contemporary artists, including Degas. Developing an interest in working-class subjects and urban spaces, he helped pioneer and establish Impressionist techniques and took to painting landscapes, en plein air, outside, on the French coast, through to Battersea and Chelsea and along the industrial River Thames in central London.
And in Britain, Whistler transformed nighttime scenes, of factories and ‘pleasure gardens’ along the Thames, lit by streetlamps and fireworks, into timeless, atmospheric paintings. He advocated a new minimalist style, arguing that “nature is very rarely right”, and believed that artists should create their own harmony of color and line.
This now is where we witness the bringing together the largest display of Whistler’s Nocturnes ever assembled. Wow!! Yes, I’d say, it’s a wower!! From the first, painted in Valparaiso, Chile, to the last, painted in Venice. As Whistler said, it was as if they were painted “like breath on glass”. So delicate, mysterious and enigmatic. Among them is Nocturne, c. 1870-76, on rare loan from the White House Collection. It was originally gifted to President John F Kennedy in 1962, and has not left Washington, DC since. Until now, under President Donald Trump. Don’t miss your chance to see it and other magnificent masterpieces.
Another must-see is, Nocturne: Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket, c. 1875. It captures fireworks at night, and sparked a fierce debate among artists, patrons and critics and a famous court case between Whistler and the leading Victorian critic John Ruskin.
It was after seeing this abstract canvas, that Ruskin wrote that the artist was, simply, “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”…and showing “cockney impudence” by asking 200 guineas for it! In the trial, 1878, Whistler sued Ruskin for libel. At the Old Bailey, the artist was asked, how he could charge so much for a painting completed in two days? He replied that he was charging not for two days’ labor, but for “the knowledge of a lifetime!”.
Whistler won his case, but received only a farthing (a quarter of a penny) in damages. The legal costs bankrupted him, though the case secured his place in how he changed the course of modern art history. This feud, and its legacy, is seen as one of the earliest and most defining battles of Modernism, exposing the clash between detailed Victorian Realism and Whistler’s “art for art’s sake” vision of Expressionism and Abstraction.
Now, for the first time in 120 years, Whistler’s early oil portraits are reunited, unseen together since his memorial exhibition in 1905. The attribution of Head of a Peasant Woman (1855; Hunterian Museum, Glasgow) was once uncertain, but now, with new research and conservation it’s duly confirmed as an artwork by Whistler, painted in Paris, in his early twenties. It is therefore his oldest surviving finished oil portrait. It hangs aside his striking full-length portraits, which were repeatedly rubbed back and reworked until they became almost ghostlike. See the enigmatic Portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell (1883) and the Rembrandt-inspired Gold and Brown: Self-Portrait c. 1896–98.
The elegant Butterfly Cabinet, 1877 reflects Whistler’s bold approach to interior design, most notably seen in Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, 1877 (Freer Gallery of Art, Washington). And you can see Whistler’s personal collection of East Asian ceramics, Japanese prints and artist-designed furniture, alongside his easel, palette and brushes.
Whistler’s Finish: Research and Conservation Project, supported by The Lunder Foundation, is a year-long collaboration between Tate, the Colby College Museum of Art and the Hunterian Art Gallery, shedding new light on his methods and techniques.
With Tate offering us this fresh view of how Whistler made his astonishing paintings, this exhibition is particularly eye-catching, entrancing and fearless.
Must-see, 10/10.
