James McNeill Whistler

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and spent part of his boyhood in St Petersburg, where his father was engineering the railway to Moscow and where he enrolled at the Imperial Academy of Arts at eleven. After leaving West Point and a spell as a draughtsman, he went to Paris in 1855, studied briefly at the atelier of Charles Gleyre, and from 1859 made London his home. He was a leading advocate of art for art's sake, avoiding sentiment and moral message, and he borrowed his titles from music, calling pictures arrangements, harmonies and nocturnes to stress tonal harmony. When John Ruskin attacked his Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, Whistler sued for libel. He won, but was awarded a farthing in damages, and the costs of the case helped bankrupt him by 1879. Here: Whistler's Mother, formally Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, his most famous painting. He began it in 1871 when a model failed to appear and he asked his mother to sit instead; she first stood, but that proved too tiring, and the seated pose took dozens of sittings.