The Whistlers As They Were in the 1840s

James Abbott Whistler (Jemie)

James Whistler (see Images 24–29), the child and adolescent, nine to fourteen years old, suffered from poor health. In July of 1843, when Anna Whistler (see Images 1–5) was attending a wedding in Geneva, New York, she received the news that James, left in Stonington, was close to death, this on the eve of their departure for St. Petersburg.1 He had had an attack of rheumatic fever. In St. Petersburg, he battled many colds and sometimes made himself sick by foolishly getting wet in winter. But rheumatic fever was his personal scourge. The pain of an attack was excruciating. It caused a nervous irritability, which weakened him,2 and “however he [might] suffer pain … his nervous debility magnified it.”3 He would become hysterical. Even when it was alleviated, he “could not be touched without screaming for days after.”4 In April 1844, he had a brief attack that made Anna Whistler think there was going to be a repeat of July 1843.5 He did in fact have two further serious bouts of rheumatic fever in St. Petersburg. In 1847, it confined him to his bed for nine weeks. In 1848, he had had it for a month when the cholera outbreak created a further danger.6 In 1843, the sea voyage to Russia improved his health;7 in 1847, the sea air of Scarborough (see Image 463) and jaunts in rural Lancashire (see Images 462, 465–466) restored him to health again;8 in 1848, despite the sea air of the Isle of Wight (see Images 489–496), he remained frail. His failure to fully recover prompted Anna Whistler’s decision to leave him in England. Consideration for his delicate health was always paramount.

He was beautiful to look at.9 Maxwell was struck by the beauty of both James and Willie (see Images 24–30) on first seeing them at the customs house in St. Petersburg.10 Dessain’s portrait of them confirms this assessment (see Image 27).11 Others reacted only to James, perhaps because of the vivacity that accompanied his beauty. Dr. Thomas Whitaker of Kirkby Lonsdale, who had no children of his own, was drawn to him,12 as was “Lady D” on the Isle of Wight, who said “his was a countenance never to be forgotten.”13 Mrs. Ropes spoke of him as luminous (“that bright boy”).14 The exquisite pencil portrait of him – a curly-headed boy with “a gentle, elfin face” – drawn in 1845 or 1846 by an unidentified artist is proof of the women’s words (see Image 26).15

In temperament he was high-strung,16 sensitive, excitable, impatient, cheerful, undisciplined, indolent, careless, and a procrastinator. Anna Whistler felt that he had inherited his excitability from the McNeill side of the family.17 He was exuberant and noisy, joined in many of these moments by Willie. Maxwell, who took them to Admiralty Square at Shrovetide, pompously described their antics among the silent Russian crowds as American spiritedness.18 But compared by their mother to “little Russian children” and to English boys, they were decidedly inferior in their manners. She felt they would “have both pleasure & profit in such companions as the Druries.”19

James’s impatience was another aspect of his excitability. When news came of the arrival of Aunt Alicia (see Image 39) in St. Petersburg, he wanted to rush out of the yard to the customs house before the carriage was ready. When he heard that an estate they saw on the Peterhof Road belonged to young Count Stroganov’s father, he immediately wanted to visit them. He was not present when his mother attended the feast Count Kushelev (see Image 302) gave for his peasants, but would probably have reacted again with great excitement when young Count Stroganov (see Image 299) was pointed out among the guests.

His extensive hero-worship – of John Stevenson Maxwell, William Hooper Ropes, George Henry Prince, Dr. Thomas Whitaker, Carl Hedenschoug, Aleksandr Koritskii (see Images 167–170), and William Boxall (see Image 209) – was also highly enthusiastic.

A calmer aspect of his excitability was the “unbounded cheerfulness” with which he was blessed.20 He was blessed as well by “an elasticity of spirits,” had “a contented temper,” was “so grateful for every kindness,” “scarcely ever expressed a complaint,” and was “free from envy.”21 Bedridden, he expressed no jealousy when Willie went alone to children’s parties or to Carnival. Kept at Monsieur Jourdan’s school until 5:30 as a punishment, he would not allow Willie to wait there for him, but insisted he go home without him at 2 p.m., their usual time of release on Saturday. He willingly gave up even his favorite pastime of drawing when sick, acknowledging that it might cause further injury to his health. He found it “‘first rate’ to be among fifty other boys”22 at Monsieur Jourdan’s school and was not homesick like Willie. His father said that “boys – and especially boys like James, are happier at school – than in a family – the only reason … for preferring the family is, if it in any way be thought better for his health.”23 But one had to be careful not to suggest that such a temperament meant lesser love of home. Anna Whistler reduced James to tears when she made the mistake of saying to him that he could not know what the homesick Willie felt.

His parents cautioned him not to exert himself in his studies lest he fall sick, but they also urged him to improve his habits of study and carry all efforts through to the end,24 “not to be a butterfly sporting about from one temptation to idleness to another.”25 This gave him a mixed message and supported his bad habits.

James frequently exhibited manly behavior, which always impressed his mother. For example, during the outdoor festivities (see Image 98) celebrating the return of Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna (see Images 420, 424) from Palermo, he persuaded his mother to go into the streets with him as her protector. His conduct pleased her more than the spectacle.26

James loved to talk. He talked a great deal27 and asked a great many questions. His “eagerness to attain all his desires for information & his fearlessness, often ma[d]e him offend [his parents] because [they] love[d] him too tenaciously to be reconciled to his appearing less amiable than he is.”28 The seeming rudeness of his insistence for answers embarrassed them when non-family members were present, but some visitors found his manner amusing rather than troublesome. Similarly, in making comments as he looked at an art book, he demanded that he have an audience for his remarks. Anna Whistler complied, especially when he was ill and isolated from others, giving him her undivided attention.29

He was undisciplined, indolent, and a procrastinator. He read in bed under the covers long after he was supposed to be asleep and had to be removed to his mother’s room. He failed to prepare his drawings for the Academy and was forced sometimes to do his assignments seated by his mother’s desk. Even Miss McMaster, the Wood children’s governess, talked to him “playfully … about his better application to study and greater perseverance in cultivating his talent for drawing.”30 Mr. Eastwick (see Image 233) felt “it would be of service to James if he was put under a pretty rigid master for a year or two, [as he] is too much inclined to play for a boy of his age and requires checking.” He assessed James as “a very clever boy who may be made of great service to the world.”31 James was unconcerned about conforming to institutional rules. After presenting his recitation at Monsieur Jourdan’s, he ambled back to his desk chatting to classmates along the way and was kept after school. His parents’ letters to him in England show they were aghast at the late hours he kept at Mr. Phillott’s school, so injurious to his health; they warned of placing him elsewhere.32 They were not amused that he had engaged in painting scenery for a private theatrical.33 He failed to be the exemplary young Christian his mother hoped he would be,34 although he wrote her to send him some prayers.35 His parents were deeply disappointed that in England he was drinking wine after having taken a temperance vow.36 He pled as his justification the social embarrassment he felt at being different from the other boys.37 His mother characterized his general lax behavior by calling him a “saunterer” and likening him to Adeodatus in The Dark Mirror, who “was bright and joyous, and thus tempted to wish to revel among the world’s charms, but whenever reminded of duty … tried to keep the straight path, and would make no turnings from it – which was the more remarkable, for he delighted in the flowers of the broad road, and required repeated warning!”38 After her husband’s death, Anna Whistler refused Dr. Palmer’s proposal that she and the boys settle in Stonington. She felt she had to have the “courage to look for a home among strangers,” as “New York, or Baltimore” would present “too much distraction for an excitable lad like Jamie,” who was “very much the votary of novelty.” She felt that “only [her] greatest precaution [could] ever confine his attention to the cultivation of his mind for the coming 4 or 5 years.”39 Anna Whistler thought that James had inherited all his faults from her: if both of them “could take time to think before [they] act, or speak, how much mortification [they] should save both” the Major and themselves.40

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Both parents viewed James’s choice of a profession in terms of its usefulness rather than his passion for it. Major Whistler thought that James “could be most useful” in the profession of “Engineer and Architect.” He felt that James’s “natural inclination or taste for the fine arts – if … not allowed to become too poetical, [would] certainly be of much service to [him] in any profession connected with arts and sciences.” He urged him to “cultivate now as an artist … an acquaintance with, and a taste for works of art – useful works,” assuring him that later “the study of sciences with a view to a practical application of such works will be a delight instead of a task to you.”41 He encouraged James to express his opinion on the works of art he saw, but he did not want him to be an artist. His mother seconded his father’s thoughts, pointing out that, although he, too, had once wanted to be an artist, he had come to apply “his talents … more usefully.”42 She felt that James would similarly “experience how much greater [his] advantage, if fancy sketches, studies etc. are meant for [his] hours of leisure.” Not wishing, however, to seem unfeeling towards her son’s aspirations, she did not close the door completely, asking that he simply try at this point “to enlarge his views by improving [his] mind first.”

His father died soon after expressing his opinion about what James’s profession should be. His mother, who wanted to honor her husband’s wishes, took James and Willie back to the United States for their education and continued to hope for a time that James would “bend his talent to architecture,” even when he “was full of thoughts of going to West Point.”43

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James’s ability to draw came from his father. Major Whistler had taught drawing at West Point. His St. Petersburg drawings of engines, however, had to be corrected. In criticizing James’s sketches, he felt that more detail was needed in them rather than less and that, as he himself had not seen the places James had sketched, “a few more touches would make them a much better illustration of what [James] had seen.”44 In his comments he anticipated a later critic, who assessed James’s nocturnes as “clever, sketchy and incomplete, like everything he has done.”45

James’s love of beauty came from his mother, who “never [lost] a chance to make the impression of the beautiful on [her] mind.”46 His appreciation of color also came from her. The beauty of natural phenomena that she described in her letters to him – “for you enjoy beautiful scenery”47 – he would later paint. She “delight[ed] in the glories of the firmament” provided by “the goodness of our Great Creator” to mix “exquisite delight” with earthly trials.48 James was the child and adolescent, ecstatic over “the beautiful dissolving views”49 closing the performance at the children’s theatre in St. Petersburg, taking in the fire of burning illuminations and bursting fireworks, the playing water of fountains, “the vapours overhanging the fields and woods … mak[ing] them look as if covered with hoarfrost,”50 the fog on the river, the reflection of buildings and bridges on the river and canals, the reflection of shadowless buildings during the white nights – unconsciously taking in the idea of transformation.

Images of the Neva and the canals of St. Petersburg, the fountains of Peterhof, the Baltic Sea, and the Gulf of Finland dissolved in his memory with other images of water: the Merrimack Falls and Merrimack River in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was born; the sound at Stonington, Connecticut, ceaselessly crashing; the Connecticut River, which they traveled on by sloop with their furniture during their move to Springfield, Massachusetts;51 the Atlantic, on whose waves he traveled to encounter Europe for the first time; the sound and the ocean encircling the Isle of Wight that he was too frail to bathe in; and the Thames, only glimpsed on several trips until he was left in London for close to a year. Later, he would fix permanently on canvas the fleeting life of the ephemeral and the power of natural phenomena to transform their surroundings, and would depict in several mediums the river, the sea, and the canal.

His ability to express in writing his ideas about art also came from his articulate mother, who first talked to him of her impressions of nature, light, and color, and then put them down on paper when distance separated her from her son. Her insistence on “the daily morning recital” of scripture “equipped him … with a high literary standard, familiarity with good English, and a useful supply of appropriate quotations.”52

James drew constantly. He drew in his books (see Image 166).53 The diaries and letters of family and friends confirm likenesses attempted or taken: of Maxwell; the shipboard passenger, Hindus Kissan das Beirage; three maids working for Elizabeth and Richard Picard; little John Picard; aunts Alicia McNeill (see Image 39) and Eliza Winstanley; a monk; a street sweep; his niece, Annie; and others. Some portraits and drawings were given to the sitters; others he sent to his parents and to friends in letters. The Petersburg sketchbook contains some portraits, but also biblical subjects (see Image 164), figures from Russian life (see Image 165), and scenes on the Isle of Wight.54

James drew without instruction, as an amusement, until he went to St. Petersburg. Here, he briefly took drawing lessons at home with a Monsieur Vaney for a few months before the family moved to a rented dacha on the Peterhof Road in May 1844 for the summer. The turning point in his artistic life was his meeting with Sir William Allan (see Image 320), who was brought to tea at their dacha by William Miller, a fellow Scotsman, on 29 June 1844. Allan’s flattering comment about James’s “uncommon genius,” on examining his largely untutored drawings, was the impetus for his first serious formal drawing lessons, both privately with a student of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts and in a class at the Academy. But, as his parents did not want him to be an artist, to Allan’s concerned comment that they “not urge him beyond his inclination,” Anna Whistler replied that James’s drawing “had only been cultivated as an amusement and that [she] was obliged to interfere or his application would confine him more than [they] approved.”55 The subsequent drawing lessons they permitted did not change their minds, although, having consented, they constantly urged James to apply himself.

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Some time after the family’s return to the city in September 1844 – and probably well before 26 March / 7 April 1845 – James began to take private drawing lessons from Aleksandr Osipovich Koritskii (see Images 167–170), who was both an officer in the Construction Division of the Main Administration of Transport and Public Buildings and an advanced student at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a protégé of the famed Karl Pavlovich Briullov (see Image 173).

Koritskii (pronounced “Kahreet′skee”) was twenty-six or twenty-seven years old and James was ten. Still, Koritskii, mindful of the fact that he was teaching Major Whistler’s son, may have addressed James as Iakov Egorovich (pronounced “Yah′kuff Yeegor′uhveech”): i.e., James, son of George. This is a mode of address used by Russian adults to one another in a formal relationship, but not used to children. Or perhaps Koritskii used James’s first name and patronymic only when speaking to Major and Anna Whistler about him. In any case, Anna Whistler was amused by Koritskii’s formality.56 As for James, we know only that in his letters he spoke of his teacher as “Mr. Karitzky,” and sometimes simply as “Karitzky,” in the latter instance as his parents did.

It is a matter of conjecture whether Koritskii was hired for the purpose of tutoring James or of preparing him for entrance to the Academy. When James began to attend the drawing course at the Academy, the Whistlers kept Koritskii on. In this way, James’s class instruction was supplemented by a private lesson at home on Saturdays from someone familiar with the teaching procedures in the Academy’s drawing courses.

The teaching of drawing at the Academy was divided into three levels, where the models were (1) drawings, engravings, and lithographs; (2) plaster casts; (3) and live models. The first level was divided into two groups: in one, the models were heads; in the other, figures. A similar division into two groups existed in the second level. This created five drawing classes, with the following numbers and titles: (1) “Drawing from Originals of Heads”; (2) “Drawing from Originals of Figures”; (3) “Drawing from Plaster Casts of Heads”; (4) “Drawing from Plaster Casts of Figures”; (5) “Life Drawing.”57 The Russian word “original” in this context means “a drawing, engraving or lithograph of outstanding quality, which serves as a model for others to copy.”58

James did not meet the age requirement of fourteen for admission to the Academy, but it was probably waived for him because of his father’s important position.59 James was ten years and eight months old when Koritskii paid the nine-ruble fee on 26 March / 7 April 1845, and signed the receipt book for ticket No. 355, issued to “Uistler (Iakov),” “the son of an American,” to attend drawing classes (see Image 159).60 James was the last of nineteen students who signed up for them in March 1845,61 and four hundred fifty tickets were issued for that year.62 His name was also registered in a book where the ticket number, to whom issued, documents submitted in order to register, and home address were recorded. The entry for James (see Image 160) reads: “355. Uistler (Iakov), in Ritter’s house on the English Embankment.”63 Judging by the dash in the “documents submitted” column, this requirement was also waived for him. Finally, he was also registered in a book listing Academy pupils from 1845 through 1849, where the number of the drawing class each student was assigned to appears (see Image 162).64 There was some difficulty in spelling his surname in Russian the first time it was registered (see Image 159).

James began to attend his course on 2/14 April and “seem[ed] greatly to enjoy going to a class.” He stood “next a youth of 16 (Caslett),”65 which was probably Anna Whistler’s version of Cazalet, a prominent English merchant family in St. Petersburg.66 He was “entered at the second room,”67 meaning the auditorium in which the first level of drawing classes was held. He was placed in “Drawing from Originals of Heads,” as the number 1 next to his name in the “Inspector’s Class Journal” attests.68

A first-hand explanation of what being in the first class entailed is to be found in the memoirs of a full-time Russian student, who entered the Academy in 1847:

Drawing comprised the chief subject of study … I went into the first class, i.e., drawing from originals of heads … Soon I received No 2 for my first head, and for my second No 1 …

Here’s what receiving No No meant: classes were divided into morning ones, from 9 to 11 o’clock, and evening ones, from five to seven. During the morning classes everyone worked on his own particular specialty, but in the evening everyone, no matter what class he might be in, drew using a French pencil. When the month was up, the drawings were exhibited in the classes for the professors to look at. This was a kind of examination. In addition, every week figures and plaster casts of heads were presented and the requirement was that the outlines of them should be faithfully reproduced [in the pupils’ copies] even if the shading was not a finished piece of work. At the monthly inspections, or examination, the pupils did not have to present these weekly assignments because the professor had looked them over during the week, but some pieces of work, which were prepared exclusively for the monthly examination, had to be presented by a deadline.

After a month the Council of professors would visit all the classes and, for example, in the class for drawing from plaster casts of heads, they would look at [and decide] which of the heads was drawn best and that one would be No 1; the next best would be No 2, etc. Of course, there was a certain amount of squabbling among the professors because one would find a certain drawing best while another would try to prove the opposite and defend the drawing he considered best. In these instances the final decision rested with the Vice-President of the Academy. Since the students’ surnames usually appeared on the drawings, the professors could show bias in evaluating the merits of the drawings, but it has to be said to their credit that this almost never happened … Whoever received one of the top ten numbers was transferred in the next third of the year into the next class.69

The two professors who taught “Drawing from Originals of Heads” and “Drawing from Originals of Figures” were Ivan Aleksandrovich Voinov and Ivan Ivanovich Vistelius.70 There is proof only that James was Vistelius’s pupil. An extant pencil copy of a neoclassical drawing of a woman’s head that he executed in St. Petersburg (see Image 163) bears the customary surnames of teacher and student: “Vistelius” and “Visler.”71

The angle of the portrait is from the right shoulder and back (not including the spine), which are bare. The woman’s head is turned to the right, almost looking over her right shoulder, to the extent that the right iris, which seems light-colored, fills the right corner of her eye and some of the left eye is visible, as is the part in her hair, which is parted in the middle. Her hair, which seems light-colored, is plaited into narrow braids. A double braid encircles the middle of her head while another braid, of which only a single tier is visible, is coiled on top of her head. She has full lips and a long, straight nose. The right shoulder and back are visible down to the level of the middle of the right upper arm. The elbow is not visible, but the lifted hand with wrist and half of the lower arm can be seen. The hand is turned palm in, and the thumb and forefinger hold up a piece of drapery while the other fingers of the right hand are extended upward and forward. The left arm has been brought across the chest and the left hand rests on the right shoulder close to the neck. The little finger of this hand looks truncated and may be folded under. The raised drapery intersects the left arm so that only the hand, the wrist and half of the lower arm are visible, the same as in the case of the right hand.72

James attended the evening class, from 5 to 7 p.m., but from the start did not go every day. After his first class, he hoped to go three times a week, but his ill health, a term as a boarder at Monsieur Jourdan’s school, the arrival of brother George Whistler in the summer of 1845 and his stay of several months, skipping a class to stay home and make “something to surprise dear father,”73 and two summers for his health’s sake in England – the one in 1847 extending well into October – all took their toll on his attendance.

He was very impressed that Koritskii was in the life class (see Image 158), and felt that he could never achieve that level himself.74 Nor was it unheard of that some students “stayed in the same class two and three years,”75 and this is what happened to him, given his absences and failure to take the monthly assessment examinations that determined advancement into subsequent levels. In 1846 and 1847, he was not formally registered. In 1848, his name appeared in the Inspector’s Class Journal, with ticket number 425 assigned to him, but there is no number to show which of the five drawing courses he was registered in, and none to indicate that he took a monthly examination.76 Four hundred eighty-six students were registered in the drawing courses in that year.77 The proposed date of 1847–1848 later assigned to the abovementioned drawing he made for Vistelius78 means it was executed some three years after he began attending the Academy (before June 1848), and that he was still in “Drawing from Originals of Heads.” There are no other known extant drawings bearing his name along with that of his Academy teacher. But, as Anna Whistler, looking over “St. P. memorials” of her sons some five years later, wrote James that her “eye met … your originals,”79 other drawings (whereabouts unknown) would seem to have been made.80

While the diary entries from 5/17 April 1845 to June 1846 show that James attended drawing lessons at the Academy on an irregular basis, the center in his artistic life was Koritskii, who came to the Whistler home on Saturdays at four o’clock to give him a two-hour lesson.81 This included the period from September through December 1846, when James attended Monsieur Jourdan’s school, because boarders went home early Saturday afternoon for the weekend. He enjoyed his lessons with Koritskii so much that when he had to miss one because he was kept at school until 5:30 one Saturday as a punishment, he cried.82 The loan from Koritskii of an écorché and a plaster bust,83 and his condemnation of a drawing of a dog by James, give glimpses into the content of the lessons.84 Occasionally, Koritskii came to their house on a Monday morning, which may have been connected with an assignment set by the Academy or by him, having a deadline.85 James’s comment in later years that “he could remember wonderful things he had done during the years in Russia,”86 although vague, nevertheless shows the elation he felt. James had the opportunity to see Koritskii himself sketch at these sessions. In 1846, Koritskii drew John Bouttatz Whistler “seated in his little carriage driving about the parlour.”87 In 1847, he drew the figure of Napoleon in James’s sketchbook (see Image 171).88 And, when James was not registered at the Academy, he sometimes went there to Koritskii’s study in the morning to draw and – in early 1847 – possibly to have his portrait painted.89 However, the frequency of these lessons was, like attendance at the Academy, affected by considerations of James’s health and by family plans.

In 1847 and 1848, when James was seriously ill and Anna Whistler took the boys to England for both summers, his time with Koritskii was severely curtailed: in both 1847 and 1848 they probably worked together only four months. But James thought of Koritskii even when separated from him. From 1847 on, he constantly referred to Koritskii in his letters to his parents. From England in 1848 he sent paints to St. Petersburg to his father, who assured him that he “would send one half to [Koritskii] as a present from [James].”90

It was a blow for both James and Koritskii that at the end of the summer of 1848 James was left in England. He was assured that he would spend the mid-summer vacation the next year in St. Petersburg,91 but no one could have guessed at that point that he would never see St. Petersburg, his beloved father, or Koritskii again.

Anna Whistler returned to St. Petersburg charged with a commission for Koritskii from James as well as with expressions of attachment to this young man, whom he “look[ed] up to with all the reverence an Artist merits and his master besides.”92 When correspondence became the only link with his parents, James wrote them so many letters in September and October of 184893 mentioning Koritskii that Anna Whistler invited Koritskii to spend the evening of 31 October with the family so “that [they] might deliver [James’s] messages of love to him.”94 The invitation was for seven o’clock, when Willie, the only remaining family member who spoke Russian, “would be free from study to talk to him of [James].”95 Willie and Koritskii looked at views of the Isle of Wight, and Willie “recounted to him [their] walks and pursuits.”96 Anna Whistler showed him a sketch James had made for her of “The Witch of Endor Raising Samuel” and reported to James: “Your master said it was a good effort.”97 James’s commission to Koritskii was for “impressions in white wax of the Russian eagle,”98 but Koritskii “said he would try to get a book of Russian heraldry” for James instead.99 When Willie “told him how often [James] had wished for him, he seemed in a glow of emotion, put his hand on his heart and said “and ‘oh how I wish for him always.’”100 He thanked James “for the paints,” saying “such cannot be bought here.”101 It was clear that “he delighted to talk of his pupil.”102 He asked for and received permission to write to James.103 He did not succeed in getting the book of heraldry by the deadline of 5 November that Anna Whistler had set,104 and this project fell by the wayside. Nor does he seem ever to have written to James, although he sent his love through Anna Whistler and repeatedly promised to write. Gradually the objects he had lent for copying were returned to him.105

For the Academy exhibit in late autumn of 1848, Koritskii submitted a copy he had made of Dessain’s 1847 portrait of James and Willie (see Image 27), “a proof of his affection for … dear Jemie.”106 On 11 December, he presented “dear father with [this] portrait of his pupil and ‘brat’” (Russian for “brother”).107 Koritskii had obviously intended it as a surprise, because when Major Whistler had gone “one day to the Palette [de Raphael],” an art supplies store, “the vender of crayons etc … [had] enquired if we had been to see the portrait of our boys exhibited at the Academy, most admirable likenesses painted in oils by a Russian officer.”108

Koritskii came again later in December “to recommend a draftsman” to replace the alcoholic Hedenschoug.109 Major Whistler, knowing Koritskii had given his paints from James to the ailing Briullov, presented to him with James’s love the second half of the paints James had sent.110

He came again to consult in late January or early February 1849 with the now-frail Major Whistler about Briullov, whose serious illness required him, too, to leave the severe climate of St. Petersburg. He asked Major Whistler what route should be taken to reach the island of St. Catherine, off Brazil, recommended by Briullov’s doctors.111 He apparently harbored the hope that he might accompany Briullov on his journey to Europe and thus see James in England.112

Koritskii’s last recorded visit took place when he called on the widowed Anna Whistler and Willie in May 1849 before they left St. Petersburg permanently.113 He told them of his great disappointment. His hopes of going abroad with Briullov and seeing James in England had all been dashed. They were to take a letter from him to James, but there is no further reference to it.114 With their departure from Russia, the Whistlers lost touch with him.115

James was exposed at the Academy to a rigorous, challenging, competitive, structured training, albeit sporadic. Koritskii both taught him and tried to direct him in fulfilling the demands placed on the students, yet attendance in a class and Koritskii’s supervision did little to instill discipline in him. Years later, he expressed the regret that he had not “begun by learning something of drawing,”116 but he was immersed in the world of art as he had never been before. The elated words of Koritskii’s cousin, Anton Shtukenberg (see Image 250), about his visits to the Academy were equally applicable to James:

[I] loved to wander through the rooms of the glorious Academy. They instilled [in one] a particular poetic mood. I had free access to the Academy and would gaze passionately at Guido Reni, Domenichino and Raphael (in copies made by Briullov and Bruni). This greatly aided the development of my taste and my love of the fine arts … it seems to me that in the Academy even a person with no hands would have become enamored of painting.”117

This awakening later prompted James to name St. Petersburg as his birthplace.118

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An aspect of his immersion in the world of Russian art is that through Koritskii he apparently came to the attention of Briullov. It is plausible that Koritskii would have told Briullov that he had been engaged to give lessons to the young son of the American building the railroad. It seems likely that Briullov knew James at least by sight, since James was a pupil of his student, although under any circumstances the beautiful, animated, underage child in the halls of the Academy would have drawn attention to himself. Koritskii wrote in his diary on 30 December [1846 / 11 January 1847] that he “was painting a portrait of the American” (whereabouts unknown), who may have been James, and some of the time the work was carried out in Briullov’s presence.119 The ailing Briullov’s delight when Koritskii presented him with paints sent by James from London in 1848, and pretended they were for Briullov from James, also suggests that Briullov knew James or knew of him.120 In fact, he may have known both Whistler boys, for Willie felt free to try to see Briullov as well as Koritskii during the Christmas holidays of 1848.121

Anna Whistler would have heard a great deal about Briullov from Koritskii via James and Willie. There is no direct evidence that she ever met him, but indirect evidence suggests that she may have visited his studio, and it is in this period that he was painting some of his best portraits. Her diaries show her acquaintance with only one female portrait by Briullov – St. Alexandra Ascending to Heaven (Sviataia Aleksandra, voznosiashchaiasia na nebo) (1845) (see Image 453) – which James pronounced “the most interesting of all the works of art around us” when they visited the oratory (see Image 452) of the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo (see Images 388, 447) in 1846.122 Two years after leaving Russia, Anna Whistler, with her appreciation for color, alluded to Briullov when describing to James her visits “next door to see Cousin Josée Richards,” daughter of General Joseph Gardner Swift and the niece of Major Whistler, “looking beautiful enough for one of Brulloffs subjects in a cerulean blue robe clasped with turquoise and her eyes as blue as the broach.”123 It is difficult to imagine that Anna Whistler could make a comparison between Josée Richards and the subjects of Briullov’s paintings based only on statements about them by Koritskii translated by her children and having seen only one of Briullov’s female portraits. Privileged visitors to St. Petersburg could be taken to view artists’ studios.124 The indirect evidence suggests that Koritskii, through whom his friends obtained access to view Briullov’s studio,125 may have taken some of the Whistler family on a tour of it as well. He mentioned to Major and Anna Whistler in October of 1848 that Briullov was painting a group of nuns (see Image 176), which he (Koritskii) hoped they might see.126 This, too, implies entry to Briullov’s studio.

James’s enrollment at the Academy awakened the family’s interest in the exhibits taking place there. Every three years the Academy building was the scene of a public exhibition of the works of Academy professors and students as well as of artists working in St. Petersburg.127 In the autumn of each year there was an annual exhibit. There were also many smaller temporary exhibits. Attending exhibits also introduced them to the permanent collection.

On 17/29 April 1846, Major and Anna Whistler attended the triennial exhibit. They wanted their children “to become familiar with the subjects of the modern artists.” James and Willie went almost every day that week. James was especially taken by “a boys portrait said to be his likeness and altho the eyes were black and the curls darker than his, [his parents] found it so like him … the boy is taken in a white shirt with crimped frill open at the throat, it is half length and no other garment could set off the glow on the brunette complexion so finely.” Major Whistler “said he should be glad to buy it, but its frame would only correspond with the furniture of a palace, being a rich vine.”128 Emile-François Dessain, a French artist then working in St. Petersburg, showed sixteen works in this exhibit, including six pastel portraits (unnamed in the catalogue).129 One of them may have been the portrait resembling James, for something inspired his parents to commission Dessain to paint James and Willie. After the exhibit – most likely between autumn of 1846 and an unspecifiable date in 1847 – Dessain executed a pastel double portrait of James and Willie, identically dressed in grey trousers and close-fitting black jackets, the uniform of Monsieur Jourdan’s school, which they attended from September through December of 1846 (see Image 27).130 Anna Whistler’s “deeper interest” was attracted by the religious subject of The Brass Serpent (Mednyi zmii) by Fyodor Antonovich Bruni (see Images 183–184) in the permanent collection, but in her zeal she seemed to imagine more “countenances beaming with Faith” than actually were.131

In March of 1847, the Academy mounted a special two-week exhibit of seven paintings by the celebrated Russian marine painter, Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovskii (see Image 178).132 Major and Anna Whistler, Debo, Willie, and Mary Brennan attended.133 Anna Whistler recorded with appreciation the play of the light from the torches in the central painting of the group: Peter I at Krasnaia Gorka Lighting a Bonfire on the Shore as a Beacon to His Foundering Ships (Pyotr I pri Krasnoi gorke, zazhigaiushchii kostyor dlia podachi signala gibnushchim svoim sudam) (see Image 179). Smaller views of Odessa, Constantinople, and other seaports (see Images 180–182), in which the “sun gilds the water magnificently or the moonbeams play upon the waves all delighted [them] in turn.”134 Only James missed the exhibit, which his mother must have described to him. He had by then been confined to the house for nine weeks with rheumatic fever. He had not been permitted to draw the entire time, so Koritskii was not coming to their home. James’s compensation was a volume of Hogarth’s engravings of his own originals, which Debo borrowed for him. Looking through it, his thoughts were of Koritskii, to whom he greatly wished to show it.

Unfortunately, only these two exhibits were recorded by Anna Whistler, but they show the rich and exciting offerings James and his family could savor a short ride across the Neva opposite their home. From England in 1849, he continued to be interested in knowing of any exhibits taking place at the Academy,135 but Major Whistler was too weak to attend, if he was even aware of them.

Given all the exhibits James must have seen, the tantalizing question remains of whether he ever visited the Hermitage (see Images 114–116).136 When the family first arrived in St. Petersburg, Colonel Todd took the adult members to the Hermitage. In October 1848, when Koritskii visited the Whistlers and told them he was copying paintings in the Hermitage, he invited Major and Anna Whistler “to go [there] to see the pictures now.”137 Relating this to James in a letter, Anna Whistler’s response was: “but oh I shall miss my Jemie too sadly there!”138 A possible interpretation of her comment is that she would miss him too much if she were to go now, because she had been there before in his company. There is support for this interpretation in an earlier analogous situation. In September 1848, she had expressed similar sentiments about visiting the Church of Our Lady (Vor Frue Kirke) in Copenhagen without James on her way back to St. Petersburg, after having visited it with James on their way to England in June 1848 (see Images 480–484).139 Beyond the abovementioned intimation, there seems to be no information about whether James ever visited the Hermitage.

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The Whistlers’ interest in having portraits of family members made in St. Petersburg preceded the commission for the portrait by Dessain. James’s watercolor portrait (see Image 24) was painted in 1844 by C.A.F. Fiessler, a German artist, whose biography cannot so far be established.140 Nothing is known about the circumstances under which it was executed. It was given to Mary Brennan as a gift by Anna Whistler.141

In the primitively painted portrait, James, nine or ten years old, stands at “a wooden drafting table” with “a palette in his left hand and a paintbrush in the right.”142 The blue-eyed boy with short, curly, dark hair wears a dark-belted beige artist’s smock (unpainted, it is the color of the paper). He is not the beautiful child Whistler was. Behind him and to his left is a green drape with fringe that is perhaps supposed to be gold. The wall is grey. The child is painting the portrait of a woman with long, dark hair, who is wearing a blue dress with stiff pink roses that stick up from a dark belt. “[H]e is shown in a three-quarter view with his face turned toward the viewer.”143 The border of the portrait is painted bright blue to resemble a frame. In the lower left of the portrait is written: “n.d. Natur gemalt v. C.A.F. Fiessler. 1844.” In this same year, a full-length portrait photograph was taken of James, showing a sweet-faced boy (see Image 25).

In 1845 or 1846, James’s pencil portrait (see Image 26) was executed by an unidentified artist, whose possible identity has been proposed as Thomas Wright (see Image 208), Koritskii (see Images 167–170), or James himself with later corrections by Seymour Haden (see Image 20).144

For his 48th birthday, in May 1848, Major Whistler commissioned a portrait of himself (whereabouts unknown) for his wife from an unidentified artist, who may have been the brother of the children’s tutor, Mr. Biber.145 James accompanied his father to the artist’s studio at least once. There is no information about the appearance of the portrait. It may be the one Major Whistler bequeathed when dying to Colonel Pavel Petrovich Mel’nikov (see Image 247), his colleague and friend in charge of the Northern Administration of the St. Petersburg–Moscow Railway.146

The English artist Thomas Wright was then active in St. Petersburg. He drew a pencil and watercolor portrait of Anna Whistler in 1845 (see Image 1), signing it in the lower right “Thos. Wright (Rait) 1845” (“Rait” is a transliteration of his his Russian signature, Райт). In the drawing, Anna Whistler appears in left profile. She is wearing a light blue dress with a white collar. Her figure is shown to just below the bodice of her dress. She is slender, with a quite long, straight nose. Her visible eye and eyebrow look dark. She is looking straight ahead with an expression of pleasant composure. Her dark hair is pulled back in a braided chignon. A small curl of hair hangs loose in front of her ear. Only the very top of her ear is covered by her hair. Her chin is small and proportionate to her face. Her dress has a puckered panel running from the neck across the shoulder to the top of the elbow-length sleeve, which has a puckered cuff. The collar is squarish and lighter in color than the dress and reveals the neck.

Major Whistler’s draftsman, Carl Hedenschoug, persuaded the Whistler parents in 1844 to let him draw James’s and Willie’s portraits. He produced such hideous caricatures that, although the kind-hearted Major Whistler paid for them, he also burned them.147

With Koritskii’s presentation of his copy of Dessain’s portrait of James and Willie to Major Whistler, he and Anna Whistler each had a portrait of them. Anna Whistler, however, liked Koritskii’s copy less than she did the original,148 and both she and her husband did not seem to consider either artist first-rate.149 Consequently, as James was now living in England, they shifted their search for a portrait artist. Major Whistler asked that his engineer friend Thomas Macdougall Smith be requested to find “a first rate Artist … in London that we may have a good picture with a perfect likeness.”150 Smith recommended William Boxall (see Image 209). When James’s portrait was almost completed, he described to his father the fine background with its “warm tone very like one of Gainsboroughs,” with “a beautiful creamy surface” that “looks so rich” (see Image 28).151 Seeing his portrait, he immediately wondered “what Karitzky would say to it?”152 Certain of returning to St. Petersburg, he added: “Of course he will see it.”153

Boxall also painted a portrait of Debo at this time. The little information about it does not describe it, but shows that Anna Whistler says she paid for it in 1849 before Boxall painted James’s portrait and that she lent it to Francis Seymour Haden, who wanted to have a copy made. Debo’s portrait is in a private collection in Worchestershire, but the owners appear to have been unwilling to give permission for it to be included when approached by Ronald Anderson at the time that he and Anne Koval were writing James’s biography.153b

In 1849, after the death of Major Whistler, when Anna Whistler and Willie stopped in London to pick up James on their way home to America, daguerreotypes were made at the request of Joesph Harrison Jr. of her and both boys by William Edward Kilburn in his Regent Street studio.154 “In the exquisitely clear, jewellike ninth plates of the Whistler brothers, which form a pair of mirror images, the boys sit before a delicately hand-colored backdrop of blue sky and white clouds” (see Images 29–30).155 The whereabouts of the daguerreotype of Anna Whistler are unknown to me.

On their trips between England and Russia, Anna Whistler, James, and Willie stopped in Germany and Denmark. These stopovers appealed to James, who had expressed to his mother his desire to travel, his particular interests being Italy and Egypt.156 In Lübeck, they visited the art gallery of Georg Pflüg, which contained many Old-Master paintings. Mr. Pflüg was already acquainted with Major Whistler.157 On their 1847 stopover from Russia, James, a first-time visitor, went to the gallery three times.158 He was impressed by “a very fine head painted by a Spanish master.”159 They also visited “the marine church where the wonderful clock and the deaths dance are.”160 The latter, James wrote his father, “consists of series of oil paintings – representing death in 24 different positions exercising his power over people of all ranks; the picture itself was more curious than pretty.”161

On route to England in the summer of 1848, their steamer stopped at Copenhagen to take on coal. Delayed by quarantine precautions, they opted to spend their brief time ashore at the Church of Our Lady (Vor Frue Kirke) (see Image 480). The sculptures here were known to them from reproductions owned by the Laws in St. Petersburg. The visit was proposed by James and seconded by the friend of Bertel Thorvaldsen – probably Dr. Olaf Lundt Bang (see Image 485) – whom they had met on board and who had “detect[ed] Jemies love for sculpture.”162 At the church, they saw Thorvaldsen’s neoclassical marble sculptures of Christ, the apostles, the angel baptismal font, and the terra cotta pediment with St. John in the wilderness (see Images 481–484). Anna Whistler liked the figure of Christ “better than any attempt at similitude of Him that I ever saw before. The expression … so benign & so commanding.”163 She was probably moved by Christ’s appearing to be human rather than divine.

Left in London with the Hadens in the autumn of 1848, James was sent to Eldon Villa, a school run by a Mr. and Mrs. Phillott, at Portishead, near Bristol. Anna Whistler was waiting to hear what Seymour, who would see James at Christmas, would say as to whether James had “gained either health or wisdom at Portishead.”164 She seemed nevertheless to expect James to return to Eldon Villa in the new year and to come to St. Petersburg when his third quarter at the school was over.165 But after Christmas, James did not return to the Phillotts’ school, where there were too many temptations.166 He lived with the Hadens, and Seymour arranged for tutoring by “a clergyman well-qualified to teach him.”167

Living with the Hadens, James became even more immersed in the world of art than in St. Petersburg. He sat to William Boxall (see Image 209), later director of the National Gallery, for his portrait. He formed a deep attachment to Boxall and, in turn, charmed the artist. He, Debo, and Seymour visited Boxall’s studio to view the portrait, which was “very like and a very fine picture” by “a beautiful Colorist.”168 He may have taken Mr. Eastwick (see Image 233) there, too, so that a “report [of his] likeness” could be made in St. Petersburg.169 He announced with elation that Boxall was going to take him to Hampton Court to see the cartoons by Raphael, “the greatest Artist that ever was.”170 He wished his father and Koritskii could be there, too. Boxall made him a present of History of the Early Italian Painters by Anna Jameson.171 Boxall’s portrait of the fourteen-year-old boy (see Image 28) was exhibited at the Royal Academy in the spring and summer of 1849.172

Seymour fostered James’s art education, paying no heed to the fact that James’s parents did not want him to be an artist. It was Seymour, himself an artist, who probably had the greatest influence over James in this brief stay in London. He “was a talented draughts man … having attended a government art training school while studying medicine at the Sorbonne in Paris.” On “completion of his medical studies,” he had “traveled through Italy and Switzerland … from February to August, 1844,” going on “regular sketching expeditions.”173 He had made etchings of some of his sketches when back in London.174 Watercolors of some of the sketches hung in Debo’s boudoir (see Images 213–222).175

Starting in 1845, Seymour had begun to collect etchings, particularly “in the area of seventeenth-century Dutch etching,” accumulating Rembrandt’s work especially. “[I]n the mid to late 1840s … [he] began [a] serious study of Rembrandt etchings.” It is believed that James’s participation in this activity, even for the short time he spent in England, “would have developed [in him] an extraordinary knowledge not only of Rembrandt’s etchings … but also of the etchings of the seventeenth-century Dutch school.”176

Seymour also “arranged for [James] to attend a series of very popular lectures … at the Royal Academy Schools in March, 1849” by Charles Robert Leslie (see Image 210), who had at one time been “drawing master at West Point.”177 James “liked them very much.”178 His “interest in etching” had been awakened in St. Petersburg, when he whiled away his confining days of illness looking at Hogarth’s book of etchings of his own originals.179 Leslie’s lecture on Hogarth now impressed him the most.180 It is felt that Leslie reinforced Seymour’s directing of James’s “interests towards Rembrandt and seventeenth-century Dutch art.”181 Seymour started James as a collector by giving him “a 10s Print from one of Fuseli’s works called ‘The Lazar House’ … taken from Milton and … a very fine thing tho’ much exaggerated” (see Image 207).182 He acted as critic of James’s artistic efforts, correcting his drawing of the infant Annie Haden.183 He also saw the flaws in James’s character. When James was leaving for America, Seymour wrote him a letter telling him “sans [without] reserve of your faults,” but decided James would “think it too severe” and did not send it.184

In the spring of 1849, James took James Bicheno Francis (see Image 56), a visiting friend from his childhood days in Lowell, “through several picture galleries.”185 Not everyone shared his indefatigable enthusiasm for art, as Seymour did, or encouraged his opinion on works of art, as his father had. Francis, the hydraulic engineer who had replaced Major Whistler at Lowell, Massachusetts, characterized James with some amusement as “a very profound Critic – setting down this picture as dumb, that a mess, and another divine, all in the most innocent and amusing manner.”186 After going “through no less than five galleries,” Francis, who had no appreciation for the arts in general, “got tired to death of pictures.”187

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The Russian art experience, augmented by the German and the Danish, and especially by the English, culminated in the adolescent’s declaration in 1849: “I hope, dear Father, you will not object to my choice, viz: a painter, for I wish to be one so very much.”188

A little more than two months later, his father was dead. James returned with his mother, Willie, and Mary Brennan to their native land. The almost five years abroad, especially in his formative years, had changed him and made him different from his contemporaries at home. He “had a rather foreign air,”189 as did Willie, and together they made “a most picturesque couple, quite unique, among the other boys” in Stonington.190

“There are critical periods in children’s lives,” such as “growing up in a foreign community,” “that predispose them to seek other identities.”191 It is perhaps in St. Petersburg that James’s aristocratic view of himself was formed.192 His father had been invited by the emperor to build the first railroad in Russia. His father had actually been presented to Nicholas I (see Images 420–423). He had breakfasted at the emperor’s table, when he had talked and traveled in the same railroad car with the emperor, when the latter came to inspect the factory at Alexandrofsky (see Images 223–225) and ride on the finished section of railroad. He had received a Russian decoration (see Image 252) for his work. All of this would have been enough to instill in James an aristocratic view of himself, but in addition, the family lived surrounded by Imperial palaces and mansions belonging to the aristocracy. Their first landlord was a count and the grandson of Catherine the Great (see Images 86, 414). Some of the family went to a fête for peasants on the estate of Count Kushelev (see Image 302). They had met young Count Stroganov (see Image 299) on the voyage to St. Petersburg. Being a child, James did not have his mother’s understanding of the social gap between them and the aristocracy that she thought could not be bridged. He wanted to see the young count when the name of the latter was mentioned, but was restrained by her. She may have told him that the young count’s grandmother (see Image 300) had died, as well as his fiancée’s uncle (see Image 310), to both of whom the emperor was devoted. In Briullov’s studio, which he must have visited, and in the permanent collection of the Academy, he would have seen portraits of aristocrats. There is an uncorroborated story that when Major Whistler died, the emperor proposed that James and Willie be educated in his Corps of Pages (see Images 139, 371) and they may have known of the offer their mother rejected. An early inkling of any snobbery in James was recorded by his mother when he was miffed because they had to travel second-class on the train from Hull to Scarborough during their 1847 visit to England.193 Still, when asked whether he would like to be a grand duke and have the grounds at Tsarskoe Selo “for play grounds,” he rejected the idea because “there could be no freedom with a footman at ones heels!”194 And, had he been enrolled in the Corps of Pages, his love of freedom and lack of discipline could have resulted in his dismissal.

For six years, he endured artistic doldrums in the United States, until he was twenty-one, when he returned to Europe forever.

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James’s biography in the diaries concludes with the summer of 1848 on the Isle of Wight. No mention is made of his having been left in England, when Anna Whistler resumes writing her diary in St. Petersburg in September. Her abandonment of the diary after September 1848 means that James’s life and art experiences in England are excluded. Her comments on his lessons at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg hardly illuminate his experience there. Her first-hand acquaintance with James and Koritskii’s relationship within the family yields greater but not abundant detail. This essay on James’s life during the St. Petersburg sojourn, on the important continuity of his rich art experiences in England, on his relationship with Koritskii from a distance, and on the illumination of Koritskii’s artistic life outside their family has therefore relied heavily on outside sources: the Whistler Collection at Glasgow University Library; the Maxwell Papers at the New-York Historical Society; the Harrison Letterbooks at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Pennell–Whistler Papers at the Library of Congress; James’s record at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in the Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian State Historical Archives) in St. Petersburg; and the Eastwick Letters in the possession of Estelle and David Knapp, and extensive printed sources.

Notes