The artist James Whistler sued the critic John Ruskin for libel in 1878 after Ruskin disparaged his work in a July 1877 issue of his newsletter, Fors Clavigera. The resulting trial laid bare swiftly changing aesthetic perceptions at the end of the 19th century. While Whistler won the legal case, he was bankrupted by court costs. Heading to Venice to nurse his wounds, he found, paradoxically, in the city Ruskin worshiped, the materials for an extraordinarily original series of Venetian drawings and etchings.
Dr. Marjorie Cohn is the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, Emerita at the Harvard Art Museums. Elisa German is Curator of the Lunder Whistler & Works on Paper Collection at Colby Museum of Art (Waterville, Maine).