Kennedy: The Etched Work of Whistler; No: 85 state iii. Published by Willam Tegg in "The Angler's Soliloquy".

Whistler's father was an engineer and the first five years of his life were spent in Russia where he learned to speak fluent French. Back in the U.S. he studied for the army at West Point, but failed although he learned draughtsmanship there. He left America, never to return and went at first to Paris to study art where the principal influence on him was Courbet and the prints of Hokkusai. Later he settled in London, where his mother joined him in 1863. He spent a period in Venice where he made two series of etchings which had immense success when exhibited back in London where he had now settled. He became a celebrated portrait and landscape artist. His paintings were impressionist, in contrast to his etchings in which he showed his incomparable draughtsmanship. Whistler was flamboyant, argumentative and one of the most interesting characters in the London and Paris fin de siecle art scene and he also had a great influence on some of his contemporaries, such as Sickert and countless others