"Whistler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always taken in the old squabble of real and ideal has enabled me to make at all clearer the different characteristics of painting and sculpture in Renaissance portraiture, the relation of the art of Raphael to the art of Velasquez and the art of Whistler. I can scarcely judge whether the pleasure which I owe to the crowding together, the moving about in my fancy, of the heroes and wizards and hippogriffs of the old tales of Oberon and Ogier; the association with the knights and ladies of Boiardo ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... womanly way for a girl. To be sure, there is not much difference between climbing fences and many of the gymnastic performances for girls; but time and place must be regarded. I should not frown if I heard a girl whistling, under two conditions,—she must be a good whistler, and confine her musical exercise to the woods. I think it is fine to see a girl go over a fence without sticking between the bars, and it really is too bad to have to be pulled through by an "I told you so!" It is fine to see a girl ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... Pre-Raphaelite landscapes, let us imagine ourselves straightway turning to one of the numerous scenes by Whistler of the Thames at twilight, with its glimmering lights and ghostly shapes of bridges and hulks of steamers. Nothing is outlined, nothing is clearly defined, but the mystery of London's river is caught and pictured ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed. Whistler used to make many rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter if he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... George Overman. The late John Hudson, the college tonsor and common room man,{*} was famous for having several times, for trifling wagers, drank a full overman of strong beer off at a draught. A Tun, another vessel in use at Pembroke, is a half pint silver cup. A Whistler, a silver pint tankard also in use there, was the gift of Mr. Anthony Whistler, a ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star hotel and there was no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... morbid fellow, and far less moral than Burns; for when Burns confessed excess he did not defend it. But he has cast a gigantic shadow on our literature, and was as certainly a genius as Poe. Also he had humour, which Poe had not. And if any one still smarting from the pinpricks of Wilde or Whistler, wants to convict them of plagiarism in their "art for art" epigrams—he will find most of what they said said better in Murder as ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... popper gun, A reg'lar one that shoots, And Teddy's got an engine With a whistler that toots. But I've got something finer yet— A pair of rubber boots. Oh, it's boots, boots, boots, A pair of rubber boots! I could walk from here to China In a pair of ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... nonentity, and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay. Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named: Men were ashamed ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... calls to mind the names of Manet, Monet, Pissaro, Mme. Berthe Morisot, Paul Cezanne, Whistler, Sargent, Hassam, and many others. Impressionists exhibited their pictures in Paris as early as 1874; not until 1878 were they seen to advantage in London, when Whistler exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery; and the New English Art Club, founded in 1885, was the outcome of the need of this ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... case were these: Mrs. Whistler has singular absence of mind, and on the last Sunday she attended church Dr. Dox began to read from the Scriptures the account of the Deluge. Mrs. Whistler was deeply attentive; and when the doctor came to the story of how it rained for so many days and nights, she was so much absorbed ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... he looked neither to the right nor to the left until he had passed the Baxters' fence. But when he had gone as far as the upper corner of the fence beyond, he turned his head and looked back, without any expression—except that of a whistler—at Jane. And thus, still whistling "My country, 'tis of thee," and with blank pink face over his shoulder, he proceeded until ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... Clarin. Myadestes obscurus. Blue Jay. Cyanocitta cristata. Brazilian Cardinal. Mountain Whistler. Siffleur montagne. Trembleur. Townsend's Fly-catching ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... of his family to be expressed, Andy pursed up his lips and whistled. He still was not much of a whistler, yet from the shrill piping emerged a faint resemblance to a few bars of "The ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... man might summarize it thus: fastidiousness in choice of subject, the picture well within the frame, low relief, a Velasquez study of tones and a Japanese study of spaces. Let us, dear and patient reader, particularly dwell upon the spacing. A Whistler, or a good Japanese print, might be described as a kaleidoscope suddenly arrested and transfixed at the moment of most exquisite relations in the pieces of glass. An Intimate Play of a kindred sort would start to turning ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... device as a mark of distinction beyond the knob used by physicians in general. Men of genius now and then have found in their choice of a cane an opportunity for the play of their eccentricity, such a celebrated cane being the tall wand of Whistler. Among the relics of great men preserved in museums for the inspiration of the people canes generally are to be found. We have all looked upon the cane of George Washington at Mount Vernon and the walking-stick of ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... a connoisseur, was not slow to recognise the value and extreme rarity of the prints. Rembrandt, Whistler, Hayden, Merryon, Cameron, Muirhead Bone and Zorn were represented by their most notable creations; two startling subjects by Brangwyn hung alone in one corner of the room, isolated, it would seem, out of consideration for the gleaming, jewel-like ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... to fifty,—but resolute grappling with each period brings one out almost inevitably into a fine serene certainty which cannot but have its effect on those who are younger. Ripe old age, cheerful, useful, and understanding, is one of the finest influences in the world. We hang Rembrandt's or Whistler's picture of his mother on our walls that we may feel its quieting hand, the sense of peace and achievement which the picture carries. We have no better illustration of the ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... Poe happened to be born in Boston, but he hated "Frog-Pondium"—his favorite name for the city of his nativity—as much as Whistler hated his native town of Lowell. His father died early of tuberculosis, and his mother, after a pitiful struggle with disease and poverty, soon followed her husband to the grave. The boy, by physical inheritance a neurasthenic, though with marked ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... day, say from the deck of a river steamer, the spectacle they offered was, according to bias of mood and disposition, unlovely and drear or colourful and romantic: Whistler might have etched these houses, Dickens have staged therein a lowly tragedy, Thomas Burke have made of one a frame for some vignette ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... an end than he carried me across the road to Masson's old studio. It was strangely changed. On the walls were tapestry, a few good etchings, and some amazing pictures—a Rousseau, a Corot, a really superb old Crome, a Whistler, and a piece which my host claimed (and I believe) to be a Titian. The room was furnished with comfortable English smoking-room chairs, some American rockers, and an elaborate business table; spirits and soda-water (with the mark of Schweppe, no less) stood ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prove as fatal to Japanese painting as an art as any similar endeavour of European painters to remodel their style upon that of Japan would be fatal to the distinctive art of Europe. I make this statement with full knowledge of the fact that some art critics in this country declare that Mr. Whistler and other artists have been largely affected or influenced in their style by a study of Japanese art in painting ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... of the '—— Sonata.' This message was accompanied by a curious little device like the letter C with a line drawn through it, and I said to myself: 'If this should prove to be a mark which "Ernest" used in signing his manuscript, something like Whistler's butterfly, I shall have a fine test of ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... yew trees look at this time of year," interposed a lady with a soft, silvery voice that suggested a chinchilla muff painted by Whistler. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... think of such a change. I'm leading the merriest of lives, and only hope it will last. Living with Henley, No. 85, Newman Street; very jolly and comfortable. Chumming with all the old Paris fellows again, all of them going ahead. There's Whistler is already one of the great celebrities here—Poynter getting on. This is a very jolly little village, and I wish you were over here. They do make such a fuss with an agreeable fellow like you or me, for instance. But I suppose Paris is just as jolly in its way. My ideas of Paris are all Boheme, ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... care to attempt it. Nor does the musician wish to imitate the screech of a siren or the explosion of a gun. These are not subjects for art. Harmonious sounds are the study of the musician, and tuned colors are the materials of the colorist. Corot in landscape, and Titian, Velasquez, and Whistler in figure painting, show us that Nature's richest effects and most beautiful color are enveloped ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... of the particular form of wizardry practised so successfully by the celebrated Mrs. Whistler, one of whose names is, according to the Talmud, that of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... it was much frequented by the Polish hero. On the parade ground is Victory Monument (78 ft. high), erected in 1874 as a Civil War memorial. The library—one of the finest military libraries in existence—contains interesting memorials by Saint Gaudens to J. McNeil Whistler and Edgar Allan Poe, both of whom were cadets at the academy and both of ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... artists and last night I went out into the Grande Monde to a bal masque for charity at the palace of the Comtesse de la Ferrondeux. It was very stupid and the men outnumbered the women 30 to 1, which are interesting odds. To-day we went to Whistler's and sat out in a garden with high walls about it and drank tea and laughed at Rothenstein. The last thing he said was at the Ambassadeurs when one of the students picking up a fork said, "These are the same sort ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Whistler's case were these: Mrs. Whistler has singular absence of mind, and on the last Sunday she attended church Dr. Dox began to read from the Scriptures the account of the Deluge. Mrs. Whistler was deeply attentive; ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... for the present. They seem too formal when only we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them. Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you take Madre's cablegram with you when you went ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... once upon a time aspired to have his own particular grace curse, just as he liked to have his crest, and his bookplate, and his characteristic signature. It fluttered pleasantly into his conversation, as Mr. Whistler's butterfly comes into his pictures—a signature and a delight. 'Od's butterfly!' I have sometimes thought of a little book of grace-words and heraldic curses, printed with wide margins on the best of paper. Its ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... But his hands had slipped on the handle of the audience, and the forensic rosin of Demosthenes would not have enabled him to regain his grip. He was cruelly assured of the fact by the hostile and ready-witted whistler. Again Mr. Bispham absurded. This time the tune broke out in all parts of the hall and was itself punctuated by catcalls and sotto-voce insults delivered with terrific shouts. Mr. Bispham's speech ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... in which Miss Belvoir received her friends was very large, long and low, and had a delightful view of the river from the Embankment. It was a greyish afternoon, vague and misty, and one saw from the windows views that looked exactly like pictures by Whistler. The room was furnished in a Post-Impressionist style, chiefly in red, black and brown; the colours were all plain—that is to say, there were no designs except on the ceiling, which was cosily covered with large, ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... were becoming day sounds; the far-away hooting of freight-engines seemed brisker than an hour ago in the dark. A cheerful whistler passed the house, even more careless of sleepers than the milkman's horse had been; then a group of coloured workmen came by, and although it was impossible to be sure whether they were homeward bound from night-work or on their ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... two bars of a rag-time melody, and the air was immediately taken up, and then quickly ended with a peculiar run. The first whistler walked confidently up to the fire. The fat man looked up, and spake ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... had sat and watched the lava that yet flowed from those lips that were kissed in youth by all the Muses. Neither from him nor from J.M. Whistler's brilliant aphorisms on art could be gathered anything more than the exquisite pleasure of the moment: the monochronos haedonae. Of the great pedagogues, I had known, but never sat at the feet of Jowett, whom I found far less inspiring than any ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... bean you've got," said a mild young man, with a deep voice across the table. "If I had a few hundred thousand," said the mild young man, "I'd put every cent of it on Benny Whistler for the heavyweight championship. I've private information that Battling Tuke has been got at and means to ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Howker, wrinkled, dim-eyed, every inch a butler, every fibre in him the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety drawing and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... one place—the veiled whiteness of the cliff coming through, like a diffused, mysterious radiance. It was a delicate and wonderful picture, something expressive, suggestive, and desolate, a symphony in grey and black- -a Whistler. But the next thing said by the voice behind me made me turn round. It growled out contempt for all associated notions of roaring seas with concise energy, then went ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... and the seventy times seven looming stacks of the mills. The white mist of the river, the grays and blacks of the smoke blended into a half-revealing haze, dotted here and there with fire. It was unlovely, tremendous. Whistler might have painted it with its pathos, its majesty, but he would have missed what made it infinitely suggestive—the rattle and roar of iron on iron, the rumble of wheels, the throbbing beat, against the ears, of fire and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and clasped each other's hands. The mystery of the fairy piping they had heard in the woods that first afternoon was solved. The same clear, sweet notes came thrilling out between her fingers, alluring as the pipes of Pan. The whistler was a girl named Noel Carrington; she was one of the younger girls whom nobody had noticed particularly before. Her whistling brought wild applause which was perfectly sincere; her performance delighted the audience beyond measure. She was called back again and again until at last, quite out of breath, ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... play this closing series, and that its true condition was kept a secret by the management, one writer going so far as to say that Manager Ewing's brother John was at that time disabled by a sprained ankle, while Rusie was suffering from a bruised leg, and also that Whistler had been playing at first base so well that Ewing thought he could afford to give Conner a day or two off, all of which may have been true, though I am free to confess right now that ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... example set by Homer when he "smote his bloomin' lyre," as cited by Mr. Kipling, who went "an' took what he'd admire," I have gleaned the vast volume of Whistler literature and helped myself in making this compilation. Some few of the anecdotes are first-hand. Others were garnered by Mr. Ford in the original version of The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. The rest have been ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz |
