James abbot mc neill whistler biography

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903)

The artist James Abbott Whistler, known from 1881 as James McNeill Whistler, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. His parents were George Washington Whistler, civil engineer, and his second wife, Anna Matilda McNeill.

Youth

G.

W. Whistler’s work took the family to Russia from 1843 to 1848. The young James Whistler studied art with an art student, A. O. Koritskii, and at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg. While convalescing from illness, he studied a book of Hogarth engravings that made a lasting impression on him.

James abbot mc neill whistler biography

In London, he saw Raphael cartoons at Hampton Court and Rembrandt etchings owned by his brother-in-law, Francis Seymour Haden.

After his father’s death in 1849, the family returned to America. In 1851, Whistler entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, studying art under Robert W.

Weir. Lessons included copying from European engravings in the West Point collection, and topographical drawing, at which he