Most Popular Books by James McNeill

"With Kindest Regards records the extraordinary friendship between the American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and his most significant patron, Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919). By the time the industrialist from Detroit met the artist in 1890, Whistler was as notorious for his irascibility as he was famous for his artistic productions. Freer, however, would always maintain that he had never met a truer, nobler man. Their correspondence reveals a warmth and generosity in Whistler that has gone largely unobserved." "The eighty-nine letters, telegrams, cablegrams, and calling cards chronicle the growth of Freer''s Whistler collection, the largest and most important in the world. Linda Merrill sets the correspondence in context and traces the contacts between the two men during their long acquaintance. She observes how the previously unpublished letters cast new light on Freer''s aesthetic education and expand the history of Whistler''s later years. Even Freer''s outstanding collection of Asian art began with the keen interest in Japanese art he shared with Whistler." "Illustrated with works from the Freer collection and vintage photographs from the Freer Gallery Archives, With Kindest Regards makes important original documents accessible for the first time, augments the legends of Whistler''s personality, and reveals the foundation of Charles Freer''s legacy to the United States."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

James McNeill Whistler was one of the most misinterpreted creative talents of his age. While devoted to the expression of the beautiful, he was among the first to recognize that popularized arts and commercialized leisure were complex, interrelated phenomena that made urban life "modern." Whistler''s showmanship had far greater impact than countless imitations of his The White Girl and Portrait of the Painter''s Mother might suggest. His purposeful use of past art; his intermingling of private and public spaces; his ability to tailor his work to the realities of the Victorian marketplace; his understanding and exploitation of shifting economic, class, and gender roles; and his clever use of fashion and decoration all lead us to a richer understanding of "modernism" and a broader assessment of his contribution to it. Whistler''s emphatically aesthetic pictures, made the more inscrutable by purposefully confusing titles, remain uneasy pieces to the present time. Probing some of these tensions, Dr. Curry explores the intersection of Whistler''s determined aestheticism with the commercial art world. Key examples of Whistler''s paintings, drawings, and prints are set against related images from both fine art and popular culture drawn from the past two hundred years. Approximately 250 color and monotone illustrations.