The most notorious American painter of the late 19th century, a dandy who used his gift for showmanship and his Paris education to make himself the prototype Victorian aesthete, James McNeill Whistler had started out as a dutiful son, following his father to West Point before turning his back on the Army to pursue the artist's life in Paris. He arrived there in 1855, at the height of the craze for the vie de bohème, and like many other young men, found the newly minted bohemian identity an easy way to ratify a genius that had yet to find expression in real work.

LRB 23 October 2003 | PDF Download