James Fox TV - Tim Marlow TV - Peter Ackroyd TV - John Ruskin - Arthur J Eddy - James Whistler & Oscar Wilde - James Whistler -
Whistler ... set to work on ... paintings all of women in white. Dr James Fox, A History of Art in Three Colours: White III, BBC 2012
In Whistler’s hands white had become the cold and exclusive colour of the artistic elite. ibid.
Whistler is one of the pioneers of modern art ... He was the first great international American artist. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e23: James McNeill Whistler, Sky Arts 2003
At the Piano is a family portrait ... A painting which suggests memory and mourning. A lament for a lost father. ibid.
Whistler becomes associated with the avant-garde ... Whistler has pushed himself to the forefront of the art scene in Paris and in London. ibid.
Whistler v Ruskin: Aside from the drama and notoriety of the event various issues were at stake. Not least Whistler’s belief that Art could and should exist for its own sake ... Whistler won the case but was humiliated by damages of a farthing. ibid.
He was perhaps the man most responsible for the development of modern art in England. Particularly abstract painting. ibid.
Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Cremorne Lights 1872: Whistler is an artist I’ve always had a problem with ... style over substance. Tim Marlow Meets Michael Palin, Tim
The Thames of Whistler is the river of mystery ... Whistler illustrated the working banks of the river from a characteristically low view-point. From this vantage it is a world of mud and banks and bales. Peter Ackroyd’s Thames 2/4, ITV 2008
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. John Ruskin, re Whistler’s Nocturne
He worked with great rapidity and long hours, but he used his colours thin and covered the canvas with innumerable coats of paint. The colours increased in depth and intensity as the work progressed. At first the entire figure was painted in greyish-brown tones, with very little flesh colour, the whole blending perfectly with the greyish-brown of the prepared canvas; then the entire background would be intensified a little; then the figure made a little stronger; then the background, and so on from day to day and week to week, and often from month to month ... And so the portrait would really grow, really develop as an entirety, very much as a negative under the action of the chemicals comes out gradually — light, shadows, and all from the very first faint indications to their full values. It was as if the portrait were hidden within the canvas and the master by passing his wands day after day over the surface evoked the image. Arthur J Eddy, posed for artist 1894
Oscar Wilde: I wish I had said that.
James Whistler: You will, Oscar. You will. L C Ingleby, Oscar Wilde, paraphrased
An artist is not paid for his labour but for his vision. James Whistler