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Pioneering and influential American-born artist (1834–1903), best known for his distinctively evocative portraits, city-scenes, and landscapes. ALS signed with Whistler's famous 'butterfly' monogram, one page both sides, 6 x 3.75, 21 Cheyne Walk letterhead, no date but circa 1891. Handwritten letter to literary critic, poet, and editor William E. Henley, in part: "I am sending you the most lovely things—a couple of little masterpieces—tout simplement!—New—original in every sense of the word. Dainty as few things are—and as to execution—brilliant beyond all you could ever have expected—perfect little bijous! I am enchanted—If you have this sort of thing in your book, Bewick may be relegated to Ruskin's 'middle class villa with the little parlour opening on the nicely mown lawn.' The proofs come in a separate envelope registered that they may run no risk. And now what do you think your Financier at the back will pay for such plates—and how many would be wanted—You must point out apart from the exquisite beauty of composition and execution, that as etchings they are of that marvelous simplicity that allows of their being printed with the utmost ease—Write me a line telling me that you are pleased." In very good to fine condition, with a small stain, central vertical fold, and a slice to the upper blank area affecting no text.
In 1877, John Ruskin famously attacked James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, criticizing both its splatter technique and Whistler’s commitment to “art for art’s sake,” a core principle of the Aesthetic Movement that clashed with Ruskin’s realist philosophy. Ruskin’s scathing review prompted the artist—long a target of Ruskin’s criticism—to sue for libel. Although Whistler won the case, the costly proceedings bankrupted him, forcing the sale of his art collection and home; he later memorialized the feud in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890), which published the trial transcript and related letters, generating mixed publicity. In this letter, Whistler sarcastically paraphrases Ruskin’s 1879 views on watercolors: 'They gave an unquestionable tone of liberal-mindedness to a suburban villa, and were the cheerfullest possible decorations for a moderate-sized breakfast-parlour opening onto a nicely mown lawn.'
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