|
From
a youth in Tsarist Russia, military training
at West Point and a bohemian lifestyle in 1850s
Paris, Whistler went on to embody the image
of the cosmopolitan artist. His friendships
with Courbet, Fantin Latour, Rossetti, Manet,
Monet, Degas, Baudelaire, Wilde, and Mallarme
mark him as a crucial player in the larger art
movements of the nineteenth century and as a
pivotal figure between the British and French
art scenes.
As an impressionist, Whistler never adopted
the broken strokes and the sunlit effects developed
by his former French associates. He worked instead
more and more in a muted palette of grays and
blacks, softly blended, painting the misty tonalities
of evening or gray days, sometimes flecked or
splashed with red or golden lights, with strong
reference to Japanese prints or Oriental ink-wash
drawings with there simplification and their
subtle, colorless gradations.
|
