Whistler’s Aesthetic Characteristics Of Oil Painting

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was one of the most important artists in nineteenthcentury paintings. His works influenced heavily the history of European paintings. Former researchscholars pay more attention to his painting techniques and artistic ideas. However, they ignore his abstractart and its affects to the European paintings.This paper mainly aim to analysis the cause of Whistler’sworks and abstract features, in order to get the influence the art world and the broader English society.Whistler’s abstract art is reflected on his aesthetics and art works. His basic creeds are Visual andsound‘color palette’‘art for art’s sake’‘pure artistic language” and so on.. Whistler’s abstract art is the maincharacter of his works. The reasons for forming those art features are the effect of Art Nouveau in theEurope at that time which include representative of the impressionist, Monet representative of the realisticpainting, Courbet and representative of Pre-Raphaelite Rossetti. Add to that he is attracted to the formlanguage from Japanese art, Thus, this arouse strong contrast between the British traditional painting art.Tothe painting in the19th England, Whistler’s special artistic style has very important significant to thetraditional narrative paintings style and transition of British painting. He promoted the development of NewAesthetic in England. British painting gradually break free from the traditional narrative paintings. Thereason why Whistler make so popular in the British painting derive from the” New Aesthetic” and the“Oriental Art”. The nature is that Whistler, as a representative of the new aesthetic, shocked theconservative and close condition of European traditional paintings.This impact build a solid base for him in the history of the European paintings. It is also the main reason toform Whistler’s artistic features.