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 :. | The girl in white | Wapping | Whistlers Mother | Portrait of Painter-s Mother | Brown and Silver Old Battersea Bridge |
Related Artists:
Birch, William Russell
American, 1755-1834
Antonino Leto
painted I Funari di Torre del Greco in 1883
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke
1856-1942 Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (October 28, 1856?C1942) was American portrait and genre painter born in San Francisco, California, United States. She is perhaps best known for her portraits of famous women including Rosa Bonheur and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1889). Her father, John Gerald Klumpke, born in England or Germany , was a successful and wealthy realtor in San Francisco. Her mother was Dorothea Mattilda Tolle. Anna was the eldest of eight children, five of whom lived to maturity. Among her siblings were the astronomer Dorothea Klumpke-Roberts, the violinist Julia Klumpke, and the neurologist Augusta D??jerine-Klumpke. At age three, Anna fell and suffered a fracture of her femur. She fell again at age five and suffered osteomyelitis with purulent knee arthritis. It handicapped her, and her mother took extraordinary means to remeded the problem by taking Anna and three siblings to Berlin for treatment by Dr. Bernhard von Langenbeck. The treatments lasted 18 months, including thermal baths at Kreuznach, but unfortunately they were not successful, and she would remained hobbled all her life. While in Europe, her mother ensured that all of her children had excellent tutoring. The time away in Europe placed a strain on the relationship of her parents. When Anna was fifteen, her parents divorced. She and her siblings (now numbering five) moved with their mother to Göttingen, Germany, where they lived for a time with Mattilda's sister, who had married a German national. Anna and her sister Augusta were sent to school at Cannstatt, near Stuttgart. At age seventeen, the family moved to Clarens, near Lake Geneva in Switzerland where she spent two years in boarding school. She studied art at home for the next few years, and in October 1877, moved with her family once more to Paris, where she was later enrolled in the Julian Academy (1883-1884), under the tutelage of Tony Robert-Fleury and Jules Lefebvre. At one point she also studied under Vuillefroy. She presented her first work at the Paris Salon in 1884, while still at the Academy, and she won the grand prize for outstanding student of the year. She showed regularly at the Salon for several more years.