James McNeill Whistler. his day and against ail with moral purpose

his day and against ail with moral purpose. He called for art to be looked "at" not "through," to be considered for a beauty that was not linked to virtue. He believed that it was necessary for the artist to go beyond a literal transcription of nature. Nature, he felt, merely contained the elements of color and form from which the artist was to pick and choose, arranging a work like a musician would compose "until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony."

Whistler did not invent the idea of "art for art's sake," but he was one of the first to explore the idea in the visual arts, using tone and brush handling expressively to produce evocative "arrangements" from portrait and landscape subjects. At the same time, he had a deep love for nature, for the beauty of misty night skies and atmospheric sunsets. Never creating works that were completely abstract, Whistler explained that nature should always be the foundation lot of a work of art. In the "Ten O'clock Lecture" he slated, "In all that is dainty and lovable the artist finds hints for his own combinations and thus is Nature ever his resource and always at his service, and to him is naught refused."

Whistler was inspired by a range of sources, including the work of Velásquez and Rembrandt, Japanese prints, ancient Greek sculpture, and the English eighteenth-century portrait tradition. However, his works never include obvious references. He simplified his designs, omitting details to create an art of suggestion rather than of reportage. He wanted the expressive nature of tone, line, and form to speak for themselves, and he worked to achieve a look of effortlessness so that the viewer would not be distracted by trying to analyze how an image was created. Whistler expressed his dislike of works that revealed evidence of labor, stating in his 1890 book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, "A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared." Creating economical designs in which every stroke or element of color played a significant role, he produced elegant and refined works that are both decorative and poetic.

The story of how Whistler's famous butterfly signature evolved provides a key to his persona and his art. During the mid-1860s, Whistler's fascination with the potter's marks on the blue-and-white china he had begun collecting gave him the idea of signing his name with his initials. Over time, he molded his, initials into the shape of a butterfly, an abstract, delicate pattern that became his monogram. This inscription evolved again in 1880. While staying in Venice, Whistler impaled a scorpion on a needle he was using to create etchings. Impressed with the way the scorpion continued to strike out viciously in all directions, he combined the tail of the insect, its stinger, with the graceful butterfly.

The resulting symbol, suggesting both fragility and aggression, sums up an art that was extremely gentle and subdued, yet had considerable shock value during an era when art was still judged by its ability to represent reality. The stinging butterfly also reflects Whistler's personal pugnacity, which masked a sensitive nature that responded to poetic qualities in the places he portrayed and was caring toward the people close to him.

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