After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting - Hardcover

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) left the United States for Europe at the age of 21, never to return, and his style developed independently of American art currents. Nonetheless, he left an indelible mark on the art of his native land, for his modernist aesthetic influenced the work of a generation of American painters. This illustrated book, published to commemorate the centenary of the artist's death, addresses Whistler's extraordinary legacy and establishes his pivotal place in the history of American art. "After Whistler" juxtaposes 14 of the artist's most important works with an array of pictures by 38 other American painters - including Henry Ossawa Tanner, William Merritt Chase, and John Singer Sargent - to demonstrate how Whistler's American contemporaries were affected by his techniques, colour palette, compositions and subject matter. The introduction to the book provides an overview of Whistler's association with American artists and the reception of his work in the United States. The essays that follow discuss Whistler's Venetian sojourn and its effect on the American artists who flocked to that city, his relationship with Philadelphia's art community, the Whistler Memorial Exhibition held in Boston in 1904, and much more.

Linda Merrill is a former curator of American art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Marc Simpson is associate director of the graduate programme in art history and lecturer on American art at Williams College; Sylvia Yount is curator of American art at the High Museum of Art; John Siewert is assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history at The College of Wooster, Ohio; Robyn Asleson is a former research associate of the National Gallery of Art and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens; Lee Glazer is an independent scholar specializing in turn-of-the-century American painting; and Lacey Taylor Jordan is an art historian based in Washington, D.C..