James McNeill Whistler was an American artist. He was born in Massachusetts, and studied art in Paris from 1855 to 1859. He spent most of the rest of his life in London. As an art student, he was particularly interested in Spanish art and 17th Century Dutch art, and also by the work of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). His first success was as an etcher, and he drew prints of working class people in the French countryside and in London. Later, he painted scenes of working class people in the Courbet style.
Whistler changed his style in the 1860s, shifting to the flat plane style which is found in Asian porcelain and Japanese prints. Whistler was an admirer of Japanese art, and collected Oriental blue and white porcelain. Some of his collection may be seen at the Freer Gallery in Washington, DC.
Whistler painted in what was known as the “Tonal” style, using successive thin layers of color. His most famous work in this style is Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, painted in 1872. The full title of this painting was first titled Arrangement in Gray and Black: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother. This painting is in the collection of the Louvre Museum in Paris. This painting is composed as a Japanese print would be, on a flat plane, without use of perspective.
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