Report from Europe

Magazine Antiques, June, 2003 by Miriam Kramer

Whistler centenary

James McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834 and died in London in 1903. Eight years of his youth were spent in Russia where his father worked as a consultant for building the railroad from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. The young Whistler attended drawing classes before completing his schooling in England. Although originally intended for a military career, he left the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, after failing chemistry in 1854. There he had studied drawing under Robert W Weir. He subsequently learned etching as a cartographer in the drawing division of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington, D. C., and soon began serious art studies. In 1855 he went to Paris where he was exposed to, and become a devotee of, Japanese prints. He was also greatly influenced and inspired by the realism of Gustave Courbet.

Four years later Whistler settled in London where be enjoyed great success. Gradually shedding Courbet's realism he found his own style, which combined elements of Japanese art, PreRaphaelitism, and impressionism. He spent the rest of his life mainly in London and Paris.

To mark the centenary of his death, the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow is holding a number of exhibitions. Although he only went to Scotland once, Whistler was proud of his Scottish connections: his mother, Anna Matilda McNeill, was of Scottish stock as was his wife, Beatrice Philip Godwin, and in 1903 he received an honorary degree from the University of Glasgow. For these reasons his sister-in-law and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip, bequeathed his estate to the Hunterian, which is part of the University of Glasgow It now has one of the largest holdings of Whistler's works on public view.

The centenary celebration is sponsored by the bank Lloyds TSB Scotland. Its centerpiece is Whistler's portrait of his mother, on loan from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. The museum's permanent collection of Whistler's work is being redisplayed, and there are smaller shows devoted to Anna McNeil Whistler, to Whistler's depictions of women (entitled Beauty and the Butterfly), and to his career as a printmaker (entitled Copper into Gold: Whistler and Nineteenth Century Printmaking).

All the exhibitions open on June 21 and most continue until October 4, although Copper into Gold continues until December 24. The centenary lecture will be delivered on July 17 by Charles Saumarez Smith, the director of the National Gallery in London, and an academic conference devoted to Whistler will be held at the University of Glasgow from September 3 to 6. For more information consult the Web site (www.whistler2003.com).

There are a number of publications associated with the centenary exhibitions. Whistler's Mother: An American Icon, edited by Margaret E MacDonald with contributions by other scholars, is distributed in North America by Ashgate Publishing and can be ordered by telephoning 802-865-7641. Beauty and the Butterfly by Pamela Robertson and Copper into Gold by Peter Black have been published by the University of Glasgow Press and can be ordered by telephoning 44-141-330-2767.

The romance of weddings

June is the month for weddings, which are the subject of the annual exhibition at Goldsmiths' Hall in London. Entitled Love Story, the show is on view until July 12. It consists of objects associated with weddings made between the 1890s and the present The curator is Paul Dyson of the Goldsmiths' Company.

The most obvious nuptial objects included in the show are engagement and wedding rings, but there axe also tiaras to secure the bride's veil, posy holders, menu card holders, and gifts for the couple's attendants.

Included in the exhibition is a brooch given by Queen Victoria to her bridesmaids, a porcelain and gold brooch (illustrated at left) possibly designed by Prince Albert as a wedding gift for his daughter Victoria, the Princess Royal, and the magnificent Castle Howard tiara designed by Cartier in the 1890s. There are also objects by such contemporary makers as Kevin Goates and Elizabeth Gage. There is no catalogue for this exhibition.

Paxton's bicentenary

Sir Joseph Paxton, the son of a Bedfordshire farmer, was a Victorian polymath. Today he is best known as the designer of the Crystal Palace, which was built in 1851 as a major feature of the Great Exhibition in London. His original field of endeavor was gardening, and when only in his early twenties he became head gardener to William Spencer Cavendish, sixth duke of Devonshire, at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. He retained this position and that of managing agent and a business adviser to the duke throughout his life, while at the same time undertaking other work

These additional activities included designing houses for wealthy families (including the Rothschilds); inventing engineering machinery to facilitate building his projects; publishing periodicals; speculating in railways, thus ensuring his financial security; and serving as a member of Parliament.