James McNeill Whistler, artist, performer, and self-publicist – was a leading figure of the Aesthetic Movement and one of the most influential figures in the arts of the nineteenth-century.
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As one of the first artists who deliberately constructed his own conditions and methods with which to engage the art community, Whistler was a flamboyant public figure associated with the dandies of his time. Not only did he pave the road for abstract painting – and “art for art’s sake” – but he also assumed a public persona that challenged the art communities, theories, critiques, habits, and conventions of his time.
As well as bold experiments in colour, subject and technique, Whistler took control of how his work was presented. He created special environments in which to display his art: from shades of paint on the walls and a patented ‘Velarium’ system to diffuse light in a room, to the yellow outfits that, on one occasion, he asked exhibition attendants to wear. He actively engaged in debate around the value and role of art and artists, as exemplified in his ‘Ten O’Clock Lecture’ and numerous legal entanglements, and re-worked criticism to his own benefit, often publishing his worst reviews together with his own clever and scornful retorts.