In America, Whistler is best known for his painting Whistler's Mother or Arrangement in Gray
and Black, but in Paris, according to legend still told in the art world, he once was more famous
for singing off-key in his bath and the bizarre demise of his pet fish.
Arrangement in Gray and Black, No. 1, also known as
Whistler's Mother, 1977, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Though born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834, James Abbott McNeill Whistler spent his
boyhood in Russia, where his father built railroads fo the Czar. At one point the acerbic painter
claimed he was born in St. Petersburg. In fact he had spent some time in the Imperial Academy
of Fine Arts.
Although his Southern mother wanted him to become a minister, he came back to the U.S. to
enter West Point, which he quickly quit. At 19, determined to become an artist, he moved to
Paris, where his obnoxious voice brought more immediate fame than his painting.
Whistler stayed in France only four years. Briefly he was allied with the formidable Gustave
Courbet (1819-1877), but the only thing they had in common was an unflagging hostility
towards authority. A closer friend was Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), a painter his own age,
but they had a falling out. He was influenced by Poet Charles Baudelaire and Novelist Théophile
Gautier, whose ideas of music and art influenced Whistler.
To his neighbors, Whistler's raucous rhapsodizing was unbearable. The worst moments came
when the painter bathed. Being undressed and immersed lifted the final feather of restraint.
They pleaded with him for peace. No avail. They begged for consideration. Deaf ears. The more
they protested, the more often he bathed.
Finally the neighbors conspired to avenge their persecution.
Whistler had a pet goldfish. He loved it dearly, perhaps because it couldn't talk back. On
pleasant days he put it on his balcony to enjoy the sun. He did so one day and retired to his bath.
He expected his neighbors would pound the walls and ceiling. As always, he was indifferent to
the noisy protest.
This day while he sang, the angry people above lowered a fishing line to his balcony. They
caught Whistler's pet fish. Minutes later they dropped it back into its bowl.
Singing a regaling cadenza, Whistler pranced from the bath to the balcony to serenade his fish.
He saw it and exploded in rage.
His pet fish had been French fried!
Whistler moved permanently to London, and many years later he wrote The Gentle Art of
Making Enemies.
Lawrence Jeppson is an art consultant, organizer and curator of art exhibitions, writer, editor
and publisher, lecturer, art historian, and appraiser. He is America's leading authority on
modern, handwoven French tapestries. He is expert on the works of William Henry Clapp, Nat
Leeb, Tsing-fang Chen, and several French artists.
He is founding president of the non-profit Mathieu Matégot Foundation for Contemporary
Tapestry, whose purview encompasses all 20th-century tapestry, an interest that traces back to
1948. For many years he represented the Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie and
Arelis in America.
Through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the American Federation of
Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, and his own Art Circuit Services he has been a contributor to
or organizer of more than 200 art exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan.
He owns AcroEditions, which publishes and/or distributes multiple-original art. He was co-founder and artistic director of Collectors' Investment Fund.
He is the director of the Spring Arts Foundation; Utah Cultural Arts Foundation, and the Fine
Arts Legacy Foundation
Lawrence is an early-in-the-month home teacher, whose beat is by elevator. In addition, he has spent the past six years hosting and promoting reunions of the missionaries who served in the French Mission (France, Belgium, and Switzerland) during the decade after WWII.
