William Merritt Chase, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1885, oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).
Want to learn more about Whistler? Check out the latest Scholar in the Library lecture by Professor Margaret Stetz. A description of her talk is below:
Like his contemporary and “frenemy” Oscar Wilde, artist J.M. Whistler has left a lasting cultural legacy that has spread in many unexpected directions. He haunts 20th- and 21st-century fiction, poetry and drama. He has been the subject of recent documentary films. He even turns up in such unlikely places as the world of the culinary arts in Whistler’s Mother’s Cook Book. During this talk, Professor Margaret Stetz surveys Whistler’s varied representations and considers what has made him such a dynamic and long-lasting presence in Western imagination.
This lecture is in conjunction with the exhibition Friends and Enemies: Whistler and His Artistic, Literary and Social Circles, which will be on view during Fall 2020 and Spring 2021.