Comparable to Michael Holroyd's biography of Strachey, this may
also be a major biography of a minor figure although as Weintraub
wisely points out, the accomplishments of the artist are often
overshadowed by capricious live performances of the man -
"perfectionist, poseur, poet and prophet" - his own worst enemy who
also disposed of most of his friends before he died. This is
corporeally and otherwise a much more substantial book than Roy
McMullen's Victorian Outsider, expanded and enlivened by the use of
infinite contemporary materials, also including a great deal about
his pictures with their casual titles (Arrangements, Nocturnes) and
his epigrammatic theories about painting (paint "should be like
breath on the surface of a pane of glass"). The women in his life
figure in far more prominent relief than in the shorter McMullen
work - the devoted, attractive Jo of six years, the practical,
managerial Maud Franklin of fourteen, and finally Trixie who in her
death elicits a fraught tenderness in Whistler absent in his other
relationships. Then of course there's always his mother, glum save
toward her "Jemie" and pious, who in the words of his friend
Greaves retired upstairs perhaps to be "nearer her Maker." Whistler
in his later, almost psychopathically contentious years, became the
almost legendary coxcomb, more finished than the paintings he so
often failed to complete - the more youthful bohemian/bon vivant
turning into one of those fabulous originals, like Wilde or
Beardsley or Robert de Montesquieu of that mauve decade adding a
page to the yellow book with phrases coined with stunning panache -
"Noblesse Abuse." In any case Mr. Weintraub's commanding work is
likely to be around almost as long as Whistler's mother,
commemorated in white and black. (Kirkus Reviews)
He was the most notorious and misunderstood American artist of his
time, and also the most influential. To this day James Abbott
McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is one of the most recognized names in
painting because of his celebrated (and endlessly satirized)
"Whistler's Mother," one of the treasures of the Louvre. He was, to
say the least, a character. Born in Massachusetts, he claimed to be
a Southerner and wound up living most of his life abroad--in
Russia, France, and England (though he could not tolerate more than
brief periods in France and thoroughly disliked the English).
Whistler's sense of belligerent alienation erupted in ways that
were endlessly fascinating to both Europeans and Americans: his
insatiable urge to take his grievances to court (including literary
and artistic grievances); his feuds and vendettas with such
worthies as Ruskin, Wilde, and Beardsley; his acid wit and libelous
invective; his ability to set fashions in art, dress, even
lifestyle; his love affairs and relentless social climbing--his was
a flamboyant life, told here "with clarity, judgment, and
liveliness" (Leon Edel).
General
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