Whistler in Venice

This article was originally published on December 1, 2012

Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice by Margaret F. McDonald is a fascinating look at the period in the artist's life that immediately followed the infamous Ruskin trial. Bankrupt and with his reputation as an artist seriously damaged, Whistler was forced to leave England for a sojourn in Venice where he sought to fulfill a commission from the British Fine Arts Society for a series of etchings depicting the famous locale. Though he had originally planned to stay in Venice for only three months, he eventually remained for more than a year and then brought back to London a stunning assortment of graphic works and pastels.

It is one of art's great ironies that Whistler is today known in America primarily for his almost photo realistic portrait of his mother (originally titled Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1) and not at all for the revolutionary style of painting he introduced in his nocturnes nor for his accomplishments as a graphic artist. This book goes a long way to correct that misapprehension, not only by lavishly reproducing the Venetian work almost in its entirety, but also by providing insight into Whistler's work habits and the actual methods he used in creating his art. This includes a detailed exploration of the etching process itself. 

Whistler's work in Venice had a profound effect on pictorialist photography, most particularly upon the work of Alvin Langdon Coburn as well as Stieglitz' Photo Secession. As Eric Denker notes in his review of the Corcoran exhibit Whistler and His Circle in Venice:

"Whistler's approach to Venetian subjects also had an important influence on photography. The American photographer Alfred Stieglitz admired Whistler's work and took an interest in his re-definition of Venetian subjects. Stieglitz visited Italy in the summer of 1887 and returned to Venice seven years later in 1894. His photographs of this period demonstrate a clear understanding of Whistler's interest in the picturesque canals and abstract formal elements of Venice. In several cases, the Stieglitz photographs bear an uncanny resemblance to Whistler's formats and presentation."

Palaces in the Night, of course, only deals with one particularly productive interval in Whistler's life. Anyone interested in the entire tumultuous career of this irascible artist might first want to read Stanley Weintraub's excellent biography. As for Venice itself, John Julius Norwich in Paradise of Cities writes engagingly of the time spent there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by a wide array of eccentric figures, including Byron and Wagner.