Skip navigation
London Review of Books

Feast of Darks subscriber-only content

Christine Stansell

  • Whistler, Women and Fashion by Margaret MacDonald and Susan Grace Galassi et al
  • Whistler and His Mother: An Unexpected Relationship by Sarah Walden

The most notorious American painter of the late 19th century, a dandy who used his gift for showmanship and his Paris education to make himself the prototype Victorian aesthete, James McNeill Whistler had started out as a dutiful son, following his father to West Point before turning his back on the Army to pursue the artist’s life in Paris. He arrived there in 1855, at the height of the craze for the vie de bohème, and like many other young men, found the newly minted bohemian identity an easy way to ratify a genius that had yet to find expression in real work.

subscriber-only content Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.

Christine Stansell’s latest book is American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century. She is a professor of history at Princeton.