Whistler

james mcneill whistler painted weather, not subjects. an american expatriate in london, he treated paintings as 'arrangements' and 'symphonies' — colour first, narrative second — and made aestheticism a cause: art for art's sake. the nocturnes were dusk-and-fog studies pushed almost to abstraction, and ruskin sued him for it, accusing him of 'flinging a pot of paint in the public's face'. whistler won the libel trial and a single farthing in damages; the bankruptcy that followed was almost worth it. nocturne in black and gold — the picture ruskin hated — is in the catalog.