James McNeill Whistler
Signed photograph
The American born artist James McNeill Whistler is famous for his paintings of nocturnal London, his striking and stylistically advanced full-length portraits, and for his brilliant etchings and lithographs. A prominent public figure and dandy of Victorian London, this photograph was taken in January 1879 at a time when Whistler was facing bankruptcy after his ruinous libel case against Ruskin; he would shortly retreat to Venice to work on etchings. Beneath the autograph is Whistler's distinctive butterfly signature; this developed from the monogram 'JW'. The photograph comes from the major archive which was donated to Glasgow University by Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, Whistler's sister-in-law.
Image courtesy Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department.