Date of Submission

Spring 2024

Academic Program

Art History and Visual Culture

Project Advisor 1

Julia Rosenbaum

Abstract/Artist's Statement

This project studies how James McNeill Whistler presented his art in the early 1880s, the time in which, after having declared bankruptcy, he resurrected his career. Whistler's presentation strategies were adapted from contemporary Victorian theater. He made his seemingly audience agnostic art-for-art's-sake works with a deep awareness of his audience and how it would be received. The first chapter addresses Whistler's choices of medium and material in his time in Venice and their interaction with audience expectations. The second chapter focuses on his exhibition design with an analysis of his one-man show "Arrangement in White and Yellow." The third chapter discusses his connections and influence from theatre, particularly looking at his "Ten O'Clock Lecture" and the work of actor-manager Henry Irving as a point of comparison. The analyses of this project reveal the awareness Whistler had of the newly shifting relationship between artist and audience, where in order to thrive an artist had to become a showman and develop a legible public personality and "brand."

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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