Art Institute of Chicago

Letter to William Heinemann with corrections for Eden versus Whistler: The Baronet and the Butterfly. A Valentine with a Verdict

James McNeill Whistler

Date

October 18, 1898

Medium

Pen and brownish black ink, with graphite, on cream laid paper and etching in blue (recto); pen and brownish black ink and graphite on cream laid paper (verso)

Culture

United States

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Whistler disseminated ideas about art in his “Ten O’Clock” lecture and the pamphlets that recorded it as well as The Gentle Art of Making Enemies , a compendium of his newspaper correspondence issued in book form in 1890. Eight years later he enlisted William Heinemann, publisher of the Gentle Art , to produce a booklet to broadcast—and immortalize—the favorable outcome of Whistler’s legal case against Sir William Eden, which vindicated his position that artists had the right to control their own work. Whistler’s scrawled corrections on this sheet of stationery from a Paris hotel are related to that publication.

The authoritative record is held by Art Institute of Chicago. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.