Report from Europe.(exhibitions)(Biography)

Whistler centenary

James McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834 and died in London in 1903. Eight years of his youth were spent in Russia where his father worked as a consultant for building the railroad from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. The young Whistler attended drawing classes before completing his schooling in England. Although originally intended for a military career, he left the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, after failing chemistry in 1854. There he had studied drawing under Robert W Weir. He subsequently learned etching as a cartographer in the drawing division of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington, D. C., and soon began serious art studies. In 1855 he went to Paris where he was exposed to, and become a devotee of, Japanese prints. He was also greatly influenced and inspired by the realism of Gustave Courbet.

Four years later Whistler settled in London where be enjoyed great success. Gradually shedding Courbet's realism he found his own style, which combined elements of Japanese art, PreRaphaelitism, and impressionism. He spent the rest of his life mainly in London and Paris.

To mark the centenary of his death, the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow is holding a number of exhibitions. Although he only went to Scotland once, Whistler was proud of his Scottish connections: his mother, Anna Matilda McNeill, was of Scottish stock as was his wife, Beatrice Philip Godwin, and in 1903 he received an honorary degree from the University of Glasgow. For these reasons his sister-in-law and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip, bequeathed his estate to the Hunterian, which is part of the University of Glasgow It now has one of the largest holdings of Whistler's works on public view.

The centenary celebration is sponsored by the bank Lloyds TSB Scotland. Its centerpiece is Whistler's portrait of his mother, on loan from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. The museum's permanent collection of Whistler's work is being redisplayed, and there are smaller shows devoted to Anna McNeil Whistler, to Whistler's depictions of women (entitled Beauty and the Butterfly), and to his career as a printmaker (entitled Copper into Gold: Whistler and Nineteenth Century Printmaking).

All the exhibitions open on June 21 and most continue until October 4, although Copper into Gold continues until December 24. The centenary lecture will be delivered on July 17 by Charles Saumarez Smith, the director of the National Gallery in London, and an academic conference devoted to Whistler will be held at the University of Glasgow from September 3 to 6. For more information consult the Web site (www.whistler2003.com).

There are a number of publications associated with the centenary exhibitions. Whistler's Mother: An American Icon, edited by Margaret E MacDonald with contributions by other scholars, is distributed in North America by Ashgate Publishing and can be ordered by telephoning 802-865-7641. Beauty and the Butterfly by Pamela Robertson and Copper into Gold by Peter Black have been published by the University of Glasgow Press and can be ordered by telephoning 44-141-330-2767.