James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Afternoon Tea (or La Conversation)

1897

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American artist active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. Whistler was born on July 11, 1834, in Lowell. During his formative years in Paris in the 1850s, Whistler was influenced by the injunctions of the poet and theorist Charles Baudelaire that artists should take subjects from modern life and seek a new beauty in the teeming cities. Whistler's first major suite of prints, his French Set brought critical acclaim but disappointing sales. Seeking more generous patrons, he moved to London in 1859. Initially, under the influence of his brother-in-law Francis Seymour Haden, a pioneer of the etching revival, he began a series of superbly observed and finely detailed views of the River Thames with its shipping, thriving wharves and picturesque characters. In his Thames Set etchings, Whistler often introduced the figures of workmen, boatmen or loungers in the foregrounds. Whistler died on July 17, 1903, in London.