Voir la musique chez James McNeill Whistler

Whistler occupies a unique position in Britain as both practitioner and theoretician of musicalism in art. A herald of modern painting, he also became emblematic of the avant-garde artist for writers and painters alike during his trial against Ruskin in 1878. His impact on turn-of-the-century novelists and poets is indisputable and one is tempted to argue that the representation of music and musicality in British literature must have been in part influenced by the interpretation Whistler gave of them, and particularly by Whistler’s musical use of colour and forms. After describing the context which contributed to the emergence of an ut pictura musica in 19th-century Europe, this paper will analyse the role of music in Whistler’s works in order to concentrate on a few aesthetic principles at the origin of the renewal of the arts and literature at the end of the 19th century. Finally, I will give a few examples of authors who were influenced by Whistlerianism.