Reviews (1)

The artist as the perfectionist
This book does an excellent job of exploring the many contradictions of the life and career of an artist who was both his own biggest fan/promoter and his own harshest critic. The book presents the many talents (artist,etcher,interior designer to name a few) and his many flaws (vain, arrogant, bitter and self serving attitude) while still showing the human side of the artist . The illustrations are complete and a glorious showing of both his popular works as well as his less known pieces. The triad of this book, "Diabolical Designs" and "Beyond the Myth" reveal an artist who deserves much more critical and popular attention. ... Read more

Book Description

In September 1879, James McNeill Whistler boarded the Venice-bound night train in Paris. He was forty-five years old and bankrupt. What was to be a three-month stay in the Italian city-long enough to complete a set of twelve etchings-stretched to fourteen months. When Whistler returned to London, he brought back over fifty magnificent etchings and a hundred pastels, far in excess of the original commission. In Palaces in the Night, Margaret F. MacDonald looks at this key period in Whistler's career, examining his unique vision of Venice and his development of the medium of etching. She shows how he reestablished himself in the art world of London and Paris, turning disaster and disgrace into profit and prestige. Lavishly illustrated with some of the most beautiful and intriguing images Whistler ever produced, this book provides a fascinating account of a pivotal period in the artist's long and complicated career.

Whistler's aim was to restore both his fortune and reputation with the Venetian etchings. To that end he included views of familiar sights like the Riva degli Schiavoni and San Marco, but he also captured quiet backwaters, secret gardens, and lantern-lit windows that did not appear in any guidebook. His selection of views and compositions, plus the expressiveness of his line and printing, differentiated his work from that of others, and MacDonald shows the process by which Whistler selected, shaped, and edited his Venetian corpus. He drew figures in distinctively Italian costume, each an individual, moving, gesturing, and interacting with other real people.

An appendix of Whistler's letters from Venice provides an entertaining account of his time there and also deepens the reader's understanding of how the city challenged and inspired him. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The artist as the perfectionist
This book does an excellent job of exploring the many contradictions of the life and career of an artist who was both his own biggest fan/promoter and his own harshest critic. The book presents the many talents (artist,etcher,interior designer to name a few) and his many flaws (vain, arrogant, bitter and self serving attitude) while still showing the human side of the artist . The illustrations are complete and a glorious showing of both his popular works as well as his less known pieces. The triad of this book, "Diabolical Designs" and "Beyond the Myth" reveal an artist who deserves much more critical and popular attention. ... Read more

Book Description

Whistler and His Circle in Venice is a landmark publication, offering a fresh examination of one of the most influential turn-of-the-century artists on the 100th anniversary of his death in 1903.

This stunning new survey focuses on a little-documented period of Whistler's career: his stay in Venice from 1879 to 1880. Arriving in the footsteps of such renowned artists as Canaletto and Turner, whose enthusiasm for representing the city was shared by so many Grand Tourists, Whistler was determined to do more than simply capture its popular views. He wanted to penetrate further - to achieve a greater understanding of the nature of Venice itself.

Whistler and His Circle in Venice explores Whistler's struggle to find a "Venice of the Venetians," through a sumptuous collection of his pastels, etchings, watercolors, and oil paintings. It goes on to examine in detail the significance of Whistler's etchings in terms of his technical and compositional innovations.

As this book reveals, Whistler's new approach to Venice was profoundly significant, challenging and redefining the ways in which others viewed the city. It also traces the remarkable breadth of his influence, on numerous artists in the US and Europe, including Walter Sickert, and most notably on American artist John Singer Sargent, whose lifelong association with Whistler-begun during this stay in Venice-receives a new and in-depth appraisal. Whistler's impact on pictorial photography - and especially on one of the great American masters, Alfred Stieglitz - is explored here for the first time.

Whistler and His Circle in Venice offers new insight into the career of one of the period's most important figures. Packed with Whistler's beautiful evocations of one of the best-loved cities in the world, this book will appeal as much to lovers of Venice as to those fascinated by Whistler himself. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A VOLUME TO BE TREASURED
Second only to visiting Washington's famed Corcoran Gallery to view the magnificent exhibit of the same title is this lush volume published in association with Corcoran's show. With some 150 full color illustrations readers see Venice through Whistler's eyes.

It was Degas who supposedly said to the artist, "Whistler, if you were not a genius you would be the most ridiculous man in Paris." Genius he was - not only witnessed in his paintings but also in his influence on fellow artists: Rossetti, Sargent, and the photographers Edward Steichen and Alfred Steiglitz.

During his tenure (1879 - 1880) in one of the world's loveliest cities Whistler did not choose to paint the most popular scenes, such as those immortalized by Canaletto or Turner but he sought to capture the "Venice of the Venetians." In effect, what his work there has done is enable others to see the city of the canals from entirely different perspectives. It is his gift to the world.

With its sumptuous illustrations and enlightening text "Whistler and His Circle in Venice" is a boon for those interested in the artist and those who love the city itself.

- Gail Cooke ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Another title from The Crown Art Library, the most useful monographs available on a wide range of significant artists. Each volume is written by an internationally recognized authority and is generously illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artist's paintings and two-color reproductions of sketches and line drawings. ... Read more

Book Description

This gorgeously illustrated book tells the history of the Peacock Room, decorated by James McNeill Whistler for wealthy London shipowner Frederick Leyland and currently on display at the Freer Gallery of Art. The history offers fascinating insights into nineteenth-century British culture-taste, patronage, attitudes toward Asian art, origins of art nouveau, and relation to American culture.

Copublished with the Freer Gallery of Art,Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Whistler's Aesthetic Interior
"Remember," wrote the British art critic John Ruskin in 1853, "that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance." When a peacock unfolds its plumage, the eyespots on its feathers form exact logarithmic spirals, like those in a daisy, a pinecone, and a sunflower. Twenty years later, Ruskin's remark inspired the Aesthetic Movement ("Art for art's sake"), of which the chief proponents were the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and the American painter James A.M. Whistler. Wilde sometimes wore a sunflower in his lapel; and Whistler, as is documented in this thoroughly researched and richly illustrated volume (with 250 illustrations, nearly half in color), created an opulent dining room for London businessman Frederick Leyland, with peacocks as the main motif. Completed amid controversy in 1877, Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room was dismantled and sold after Leyland's death, and, in 1923, reconstructed in the U.S. at the Freer Gallery of Art, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, where it remains on view. A key event in design history, it was restored physically in 1989 through 1992; and now this book restores it historically, thereby "dispelling some of the myths and misconceptions that had settled over the story like mantles of aging varnish." As a cultural biography, the book's greatest virtue is its breadth of focus: Just as Whistler's interior served as an elaborate setting for Leyland's Chinese porcelain collection, Merrill provides a rich wide factual setting for the Peacock Room. (Copyright © by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 14 No. 3, Spring 1999.)

incisive view into the life style of Frederick Leyland
This is an erudite investigation into the life styles of both Whistler and his patron Frederick Richards Leyland. Whilst being essentially an art book, it deals with its subject matter in a lively mannner which could well form the basis of a movie script. ... Read more

Book Description