American Painter and Printmaker, 1834-1903 James Abbott McNeill Whistler's deft brushwork and mighty ego made him one of London's best-known painters in the second half of the 1800s. Born in Massachusetts, Whistler spent most of his adult life in England and France, in an era when an American artist in Europe was something of a rarity. He specialized in landscapes and (especially later in his career) portraits; stylistically he is often linked with Claude Monet and August Renoir, though he was not exactly part of the Impressionist movement. His etchings also are highly regarded. Witty, cranky and a bit of a devil, Whistler was a regular gadabout in British society. He had a famous long-running feud with the playwright Oscar Wilde, each of them trying to outwit the other with cutting public remarks. Some critics of the era considered Whistler's work to be smudgy and too radical; after viewing Whistler's 1875 study of fireworks over the Thames, Nocturne in Black and Gold: the Falling Rocket, John Ruskin wrote: "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." Whistler successfully sued Ruskin for libel but was awarded only a farthing in damages,  Related Paintings of James Mcneill Whistler :. | Brown and Silver Old Battersea Bridge | The girl in white | At the Piano | The Little White Girl Symphony in White no.2 1864 | Whistler-s passion for all things oriental is presented here in his the princess from the Land of Porcelain |
Related Artists:
Ange Tissier
1814-1876
Lebasque, Henri
French Painter, 1865-1937 was born in 1865 at Champign (Maine-et-Loire). He started his education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Angers, and moved to Paris in 1886. Here, Lebasque started studying under Leon Bonnat, and assisted Humbert with the decorative murals at the Pantheon. Around this time, Lebasque met Camille Pissarro and Auguste Renoir, who later would have a large impact on his work. Lebasque's vision was coloured by his contact with younger painters, especially Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, founders of the The Nabis' Group and the Intimists who first favoured the calm and quietude of domestic subject matter. From his first acquaintance with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, Lebasque learnt the significance of a colour theory which stressed the use of complementary colours in shading. Lebasque was a founding member of the Salon d'Automne in 1903 with his friend Henri Matisse. Two years later a group of artists exhibited there including Georges Rouault, Andre Derain, Edouard Vuillard and Henri Matisse while keeping solid links with other artists such as Gustave Rouault, Raoul Dufy, Louis Valtat and especially Henri Manguin, who made him discover the south of France. His time in South of France would lead to a radical transformation in Lebasque's paintings, changing his colour palette forever. Other travels included the Vendee, Normandie and Brittany, although Lebasque would always prefer the small idyllic villages of the South of France. Lebasque had some commercial success during his lifetime. He worked on the decorations at the theatre of the Champs-Elyses and of the Transatlantique sealiner.
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1829-1908,English painter. The second son of Yorkshire landed gentry, he was educated at Rugby and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1850 he studied in London with G. F. Watts, through whom he entered the artistic circle at Little Holland House, where he met D. G. Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. In 1857 Rossetti invited him to paint at the Oxford Union (Sir Gawaine and the Damsels at the Fountain), and in 1858 Stanhope occupied a studio next to Rossetti's at Chatham Place, Blackfriars (London), where he painted Thoughts of the Past (London, Tate); a modern-life subject indebted to Rossetti, it shows a prostitute recalling her former life. Stanhope's close friendship with Burne-Jones proved a more decisive influence on his work that, in the 1860s, consisted of dreamlike poetic and mythological subjects often set in quaint, enclosed spaces, as in I Have Trod the Winepress Alone