Excerpt from Brush and Pencil, Vol. 12: August, 1903
For this Whistler sued Ruskin for libel. After a trial, which became almost a farce, the artist obtained judgment for one farthing damages, which farthing he at once hung upon his watch-chain. The costs of the action, amounting to nineteen hundred dollars, which fell upon Ruskin, were raised by public subscription.
The fact is that from the outset Whistler’s artistic career was dominated by certain convictions which he seriously and earnestly offered to the world - which, it is to be feared, he often gratuitously flouted in the world’s face - and which the leading spirits in the world of art at that time were not prepared to accept. Impressionism has been termed the century’s most important contribution to art, and in a very vital sense Whistler antedated by six or seven years Manet, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, and the other men who broke away from tradition and sought to paint, not facts, but impressions.
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