James McNeill Whistler as a Portraitist, 1860s–1890s

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) is often discussed as an avant-garde artist strongly interested in the formal aspects of painting and producing highly original works such as the Nocturnes and Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1: The Artist’s Mother. This thesis aims to reveal a different side of Whistler by focusing on his portrait practice. Whistler painted nearly forty full-length and life-sized portraits throughout his life; however, due to his keen interest in art for art’s sake as well as their musical titles, his portraits tend to be seen as arrangements in line and colour rather than as portraits. Therefore, even though numerous studies discuss his works, there has been no attempt to explore his career as a portraitist, with his achievement in this genre represented almost exclusively by The Artist’s Mother. Because of their scale, Whistler’s portraits can be associated with grand manner portraiture, but their connection with this tradition has not been sufficiently explored, raising the question: How did Whistler develop his portrait practice in the context of this authoritative format originally used for portraits of aristocrats? This thesis aims to argue for Whistler as an accomplished portraitist through detailed case studies of his figure paintings and portraits from the 1860s to the 1890s, his most productive period. I will analyse Whistler’s portraits by comparing them to portraits by other artists, including old masters, his contemporaries in London and Paris, and his followers. In so doing, I wish to trace the development of Whistler’s portrait style and to establish his place in the history of modern portraiture.