James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1834 - Birth of James McNeil Whistler 11 July at Lowell, Massachusett
1843 - His father, an engineer in railway construction, headed the team building the railway between Saint-Petersbourg and Moscow, so the whole family moved to Russia.
1848/49After the death of his father from cholera, Whistler left Russia and settled in London with his half-sister Deborah and her husband Francis Seymour Haden.
1851 - Joined the West Point Military Academy. After three years he left without obtaining a single grade. After that he went to work for a cartographic service in Washington where he learnt the technique of etching.
1855 - Having inherited a small sum, he decided to travel to Paris to study painting. He never went back to the US again.
1856 - Followed a course of study in Paris with the Swiss academic painter Marc Charles Gabriel Gleyre, from whom he learnt the technique of oil painting.
1857 - Visited the 'Art Treasures' exhibition in Manchester where he discovered twenty paintings and eighty watercolors of Turner.
1858 - Met Gustave Courbet whose Realism inspired him. Together with Fantin-Latour and Legros, they founded the ‘Société des Trois’.
1859 - Traveled to London during the summer and began a series of etchings of the Thames. Three of these were accepted in the Paris Salon but, his painting having been rejected, he felt not altogether accepted by the Paris art circles and returned to London.
1860 - Painted the frozen Thames in December and made his first painting of the Thames in fog.
1861 - Painted ‘The coast of Brittany’ and started a long series of engravings.
1862 - His Thames etchings were shown in the Martinet Gallery in Paris and were praised by Baudelaire. He showed great technical ability in his etchings and befriended the poet Algernon Swinburne as well as painter Dante Gabriele Rossetti, forming a circle of Pre-Raphaelite friends with whom he shared his passion for Japanese prints and blue-and-white porcelain. His 'Symphony in White No. 1: The White Girl’ shows the influence of this circle.
1863 - He moved to the Chelsea district of London, with a view of the Thames near Turner’s home in Cremorne Road. Here he painted views of the river from his window or from Cheyne Walk (e.g. his paintings 'Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge', and 'Gray and Silver: Old Battersea Reach'). His ‘The White Girl’ was refused in Paris and London but was finally exhibited along with Manet’s ‘Luncheon on the green’ at the ‘Salon des Refusés’.
1864 - His painting ‘Wapping’ was shown in the Royal Academy.
1867 - Under the influence of Albert Moore, his style reflected that of Puvis de Chavannes. He began to distance himself from the ‘Realist’ movement of Courbet and replaced Legros by Moore in his ‘Society of Three’. Exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London as well as at the Salon and the Universal Exhibition in Paris. His signature was replaced by a butterfly, suggestive of his intuitive symbolism.
1871 - He started a series of paintings of views of the river during the night which he entitles ‘Moonlight’ e.g. his painting 'Moonlight in blue and silver-Chelsea'. In the Spring he published sixteen etchings of the ‘Thames Suite’. In the Autumn he exhibited his first ‘Moonlight’ series of the Thames at the Dudley Gallery. At the same time, he painted portraits of his mother (now in the Louvre) and of Carlyle.
1872 - On the suggestion of a friend he gave his moonlight pictures the musical name of ‘nocturnes’. Attacked Ruskin who had claimed that Whistler’s ‘nocturnes’ were not worth their price.
1873 - Turned down the invitation of Degas to take part in the first Impressionist exhibition of the ‘Société Anonyme’.
1877 - Exhibited several paintings in the Grosvenor Gallery, including ‘Nocturne in black and gold: the falling rocket’. Whistler sued Ruskin for libel for his criticism of this painting in ‘Fors Clavigera’ .
1878 - Won his libel suit against Ruskin but obtained only a symbolic farthing.
1879 - As a result of bankruptcy, sold all his belongings and in September of that year left for Venice, where he stayed until November of 1880. During this stay he made over a hundred pastels, etchings and paintings of the city (including the pastel 'La Salute: sunset' and the etching 'Nocturne: palace') which made his fame and fortune once again.
1880 - In December he showed his series of etchings of Venice at the Fine Art Society of London.
1881 - In January, he showed his pastels of Venice at the Fine Art Society.
1882 - Taught William Sickert in his studio.
1883 - Won a third-class medal in the Salon of Paris for the portrait of his mother, and exhibited at the ‘Georges Petit’ Gallery in Paris.
1885 - On 10th February gave his first ‘Ten O’clock’ aesthetic creed conference in London.
1887 - Collective exhibition with Monet and other artists at the ‘Georges Petit’ Gallery in Paris, and in return invited Monet to exhibit at the Society of British Artists.
1888 - In January Monet presented Whistler to poet Stéphane Mallarmé and in the following May Mallarmé’s translation of the text of the ‘Ten O’Clock’ conference was published. Whilstler befriended both Mallarmé and Oscar Wilde. He married Beatrice Godwin.
1889 - In Autumn of this year he was nominated chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.
1890 - In June a collection of his writings was published under the title ‘The Gentle Art of Making Enemies’.
1891 - Thanks to Mallarmé and other personalities, France bought one of his masterpieces, the portrait of his mother, for the Luxembourg museum (now kept in the Orsay Museum).
1892 - In January he was promoted ‘officier of the Légion d’honneur’. In March of the same year a retrospective exhibition of his work was held in London’s Goupil Gallery. In April of this year, he left London to settle in Paris and made a lithograph portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé that was used as the frontispiece of the latter's verse and prose collection.
1896 1896 - From January to March he stayed at the Savoy Hotel in London with his wife and made several lithographs from the Hotel window, including a lithograph of his wife 'Near the balcony'. On the 10th May of this year he lost his wife Beatrice.
1903 - Death of Whistler in London on 17 July.


Source for biographical data: catalogue of the exhibition.