Literature, Music, Science, and the Arts

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Ivan Andreevich Krylov, fabulist, who died in St. Petersburg in November 1844

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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevskii, whose first novel, Poor People, appeared in 1846

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Vissarion Grigorievich Belinskii, literary critic, who died in St. Petersburg in June 1848

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Reverend Legh Richmond, whose edifying tales of English village life James and Willie Whistler read

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Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake, whose book Letters from the Shores of the Baltic, which included a record of her sojourn in St. Petersburg, Anna Whistler had read before coming to Russia

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Anna Whistler read and quoted from Dr. John Wilson’s memoir of his wife Margaret (Baine) Wilson, both missionaries in India.

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Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, English geologist, who personally delivered a copy of his book on Russian geology to Nicholas I just after the death of Grand Duchess Aleksandra Nikolaevna

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Dr. Edward Jenner, discoverer of the process of vaccination, to whom Charlotte Leon was purported to be related

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Andrei Ivanovich Shtakenshneider, favorite architect of Nicholas I from the 1840s until the latter’s death

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Aleksei Fyodorovich L’vov, director of the Imperial Chapel Choir, which moved Anna Whistler to tears

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Antonio Tamburini, baritone soloist of the Italian Opera in St. Petersburg, whom the Whistlers heard sing in 1845 at the annual performance celebrating the defeat of Napoleon

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Giovanni Battista Rubini, tenor soloist of the Italian Opera in St. Petersburg, whom the Whistlers heard sing with Tamburini in 1845

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Polina Viardot-Garcia, soprano soloist of the Italian Opera in St. Petersburg, whom the Whistlers heard sing with Tamburini and Rubini in 1845, shown here in 1844 in the role of Amina in La Sonambula by Vincenzo Bellini

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Clara Schumann, pianist, whom Debo heard play two concerts in 1845

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Robert Schumann, composer, who accompanied his wife to St. Petersburg

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The Whistlers heard Herman’s orchestra play in the Pleasure Garden in Pavlovsk, the terminus of the St. Petersburg–Tsarskoe Selo–Pavlovsk Railway, in May 1844.

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Professor Richard Risley and his sons, John and Henry, American aerialists, performed in St. Petersburg.

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The communicants of the English Church and of the British and American Congregational Church contributed generously in February 1847 to aid the Irish and Scottish famine sufferers.

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Karl Briullov’s Last Day of Pompeii, like Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, represented the current mainstream of historical painting.

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Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

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This painting is an example of Briullov’s striving for “effect” through deliberate exaggeration of colors.

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Johann Heinrich Füssli’s The Lazar House, which Francis Seymour Haden bought a print of for James in 1849, thus starting him as a collector

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Thomas Wright, who made a watercolor drawing of Anna Whistler in 1845 in St. Petersburg

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William Boxall, who painted the portrait of the fourteen-year-old James Whistler in London

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Charles Robert Leslie, whose art lectures in London in 1849 James Whistler attended

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“Blue Gown,” by Ethel Traphagen, descendant of John Stevenson Maxwell, was inspired by James Whistler’s Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge.

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Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge by James Whistler, the inspiration for Ethel Traphagen’s “Blue Gown” design

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While the Hadens were on their honeymoon in October 1847, Anna Whistler visited their home at 62 Sloane Street, where she saw, adorning the walls of Deborah’s boudoir, watercolors made by Seymour during his travels in Italy in 1843 and 1844. While she does not describe those watercolors, images 213–222 include most of the extant images from those trips.

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