The Life of James McNeill Whistler by Elizabeth Robins Pennell and Joseph Pennell - 1911

London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1911. 5th or later Edition. Half-Leather. Very Good/No Jacket. 8vo - over 7� - 9�" tall. 1st Printing 1 Copyright date is 1911, fifth edition first printing, by written by E.P. Pennell and J. Pennell Blue and dark blue leather and cloth over boards with gilt lettering and design on the spine, wear to the edges and along the groves (still attached) Gilt top page edges and deckled fore edges.. Complete with SIGNED corespondents of the Authors. James Abbott Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on July 11, 1834, the first child of Anna McNeill Whistler and George Washington Whistler, and the brother of Confederate surgeon Dr. William McNeill Whistler. His father was a railroad engineer, and Anna was his second wife. James lived the first three years of his life in a modest house at 243 Worthen Street in Lowell.[7] The house is now the Whistler House Museum of Art, a museum dedicated to him. By 1871, Whistler returned to portraits and soon produced his most famous painting, the nearly monochromatic full-length figure entitled Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, but usually referred to as Whistler's Mother. A model failed to appear one day, according to a letter from his mother, so Whistler turned to his mother and suggested that he do her portrait. He had her stand at first, in his typically slow and experimental way, but that proved too tiring so the seated pose was adopted. It took dozens of sittings to complete. Pennell was born in Philadelphia, and first studied there, but like his friend James McNeill Whistler he then made his home in London, and taught at Slade School of Art. He won a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle (1900), and 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. He taught also at the Art Students League of New York. Elizabeth Robins Pennell was an American writer who, for most of her adult life, made her home in London. A recent researcher summed her up as "an adventurous, accomplished, self-assured, well-known columnist, biographer, cookbook collector, and art critic";[1] in addition, she wrote travelogues, mainly of European cycling voyages, and memoirs, centered on her London salon. Her biographies included the first in almost a century of the proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. (wikipedia)