"Whistler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... produced upon him by the sudden onslaught of the hairy brute, tusks erect and mouth wide open, a perfect glimpse of elephantine fury. It forms a capital example of early impressionism, respectfully recommended to the favourable attention of Mr. J.M. Whistler. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... traveller, perchance, will leave with kindlier feelings towards those responsible for the Chantrey pictures, though envious of a collection whose catholicity embraces works by two great modern masters, Londoners by option—Legros and Whistler. But any impression that may be left on the traveller's mind by the inspection of the examples of contemporary French art exhibited in this museum should be supplemented and corrected by an examination of decorative ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... in Florida, the very earliest mocking bird doesn't sing till around the first of March. And this isn't quite the middle of February. There's not a mocking bird on the Peninsula that is singing, yet. The very dulcet whistler, out yonder, ought to make a ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... There wuz one by Whistler full of the subtle mystery that he wrops round his figgers. Why you know he has painted one that to them that are sympathetic, the Little Lady in Black, will walk right out of the picture and come towards ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... the invention of something new or the discovery of something hitherto unperceived. When the invention or discovery is primarily beauty then we have the artistic type of Poietic mind; when it is not so, we have the true scientific man. The range of discovery may be narrowed as it is in the art of Whistler or the science of a cytologist, or it may embrace a wide extent of relevance, until at last both artist or scientific inquirer merge in the universal reference of the true philosopher. To the accumulated activities of the Poietic ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Mr. Bispham faced the tittering like a man, and endeavored to rehabilitate himself. But his hands had slipped on the handle of the audience, and the forensic rosin of Demosthenes would not have enabled him to regain his grip. He was cruelly assured of the fact by the hostile and ready-witted whistler. Again Mr. Bispham absurded. This time the tune broke out in all parts of the hall and was itself punctuated by catcalls and sotto-voce insults delivered with terrific shouts. Mr. Bispham's speech ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... it came and mellower and mellower it grew. He had never before heard anyone whistle so beautifully. It was like a song, but it was evident that someone was entering their happy valley, and in that wilderness who could come but an enemy? Nearer and nearer the whistler drew and the musical note of the whistling and its echoes ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... artist who sees things through a temperament, and, by eliminating the irrelevant, builds up the ideal on the foundation of the real. Tityrus sees more in Amaryllis than his brother shepherds see, just as Mr. Whistler sees more in a November fog than is visible to the eye of the casual wayfarer who gets lost in it, and mingles profanity with his coughs, yet, granting this, the reality and completeness of the illusion does not admit of doubt. On no alternative hypothesis can the great majority of marriages ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... thinking each time he must surely get it right; but no, it was always wrong, and always wrong the same way. Yet he seemed proud of his song, delivered it with execution and a manner of his own, and was charming to his mate. A very incorrect, incessant human whistler had thus a chance of knowing how his own music pleased the world. Two great birds—eagles, we thought—dwelt at the top of the canyon, among the crags that were printed on the sky. Now and again, but very rarely, they wheeled high ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regular, kind yet not emotionally affectionate, interesting, uncommon. He had a knack of saying as much in one page as most people did in five. Her imagination was not great, but he stimulated it. If he wrote a pungent line on Daudet or Whistler, on Montaigne or Fielding, she was stimulated to know them. One day he sent her Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which he had picked up in New York on his way to England. This startled her. She had never ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... art the painter has influenced very many moderns. Manet, Courbet, Corot, Millet, Whistler, are among the men whose work shines in the light of the Prado, and the list might be prolonged indefinitely, for all earnest art workers go to Velazquez, confident that whatever their aims and ideals, he will confirm and strengthen what is best ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... door to the left, but stopped in the middle of the room to study her as she stood framed in the doorway—a picture for Whistler. With pretty art and a woman's instinctive desire to please, she had placed the candle on a chair and assumed something of a pose. The mellow candle-light deepened the raven black of her hair, softened the tint of her gown until it appeared of almost transparent ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... yachts were flying before the wind and steam-tugs laboured slowly against the stream, dragging behind the heavily-laden lighter. Warehouses and wharfs and timber-yards now begin to line either bank; yet the materials for a sketch-book are scanty and uninviting: an artist who, like Mr. Whistler, has etched at Battersea and Blackwell, would find by comparison on the Neva the forms without character, the surface without texture, the masses without light, shade, or colour. As the boat advances the imperial ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... bet on a sure thing when y'lays it on y'r Uncle Dudley. I aint no Little Fatima fer looks; but I knows it, see. Young McKilligan bent me bugle in a ten-round go wunst; I gets this here split whistler the time I licked Kay-O Bergey, an' I's born with this here wheeze in me pipes, an' with that bum layout I aint buttin' into no cynthia ortchesstra, believe me. But I knows it, see, an' I got a kick in each mitt an' I aint never renigged on a pal, Mr. ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... as an art as any similar endeavour of European painters to remodel their style upon that of Japan would be fatal to the distinctive art of Europe. I make this statement with full knowledge of the fact that some art critics in this country declare that Mr. Whistler and other artists have been largely affected or influenced in their style by a study of Japanese art in painting and ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... look at this time of year," interposed a lady with a soft, silvery voice that suggested a chinchilla muff painted by Whistler. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... every fibre in him the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety drawing and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... with occasional interruptions as though the whistler were about some work or other. And then suddenly "Buzzer" Barling, holding something in one hand and rubbing violently with the other, stepped into the patch of light between the window and ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed. Whistler used to make many rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter if he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... survey of the more noticeable architectural and topographical features of London, which are indicating in no mean fashion the effect of Mr. Whistler's dictum: "Other times, ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... bars of a rag-time melody, and the air was immediately taken up, and then quickly ended with a peculiar run. The first whistler walked confidently up to the fire. The fat man looked up, and spake in a ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the man, taking off his paper cap and rubbing up his bristly gray hair. 'We call Jack "The Blackbird" among us; he is a famous whistler, is Jack.' ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... this afternoon at Whistler's portrait of Carlyle at the Guildhall, and I find in both the same final art: that art of perfect expression, perfect suppression, perfect balance of every quality, so that a kind of negative thing becomes a thing of the highest achievement. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... ladylike form, and 'Od's possles' a variety I met in the British Museum. Every gentleman once upon a time aspired to have his own particular grace curse, just as he liked to have his crest, and his bookplate, and his characteristic signature. It fluttered pleasantly into his conversation, as Mr. Whistler's butterfly comes into his pictures—a signature and a delight. 'Od's butterfly!' I have sometimes thought of a little book of grace-words and heraldic curses, printed with wide margins on the best of paper. Its covers should be of ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... toasts for the present. They seem too formal when only we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them. Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you take Madre's cablegram with you when you went ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Nor you, O Penny Whistler, grudge That I your instrument debase: By worse performers still we judge, And give that fife ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... away when unaccustomed "nigger-heads" of coral showed yellow in the sun? The calm, shallow sea conveyed the sounds with marvellous fidelity and surety. Yet this unaccountable call came from a quarter whence steamers may not venture, and was I not the only whistler within a range of many miles? No steamer ever gloated or warned or appealed in so fluty a note—plaintive, slightly ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the deck of a river steamer, the spectacle they offered was, according to bias of mood and disposition, unlovely and drear or colourful and romantic: Whistler might have etched these houses, Dickens have staged therein a lowly tragedy, Thomas Burke have made of one a frame for some ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Merganser Mallard Pintail Black Duck Widgeon Green-winged Teal Blue-winged Teal Shoveler Wood Duck Redhead Canvas-back Broadbill Lesser Scaup Duck Whistler Buffle-head Ruddy Duck Old Squaw Harlequin American Eider King Eider Black Coot Sea Coot White-winged Scoter Canada Goose Greater Snow Goose Blue Goose White-fronted Goose Brant ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... third movement of the '—— Sonata.' This message was accompanied by a curious little device like the letter C with a line drawn through it, and I said to myself: 'If this should prove to be a mark which "Ernest" used in signing his manuscript, something like Whistler's butterfly, I shall have a fine ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... female relatives in court dress and of male relatives in uniform. Behind the photographs were pots of growing flowers; and on the walls etchings and engravings after well-known landscapes. It was the room of a young man uninfluenced by Whistler, unaware of Chinese screens and indifferent to the rival claims of Jacobean and Chippendale furniture. It was civilised, not cultivated; and it was ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "If I were Whistler, I should ask you to let me paint your portrait like that—yes, with my despicable yellow tea-cup ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... fell forthwith to slapping away at the backs of each other's hands with great gusto, until, all of a sudden, the whistler outside gave one loud, shrill note, and—there was a ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Franz Hals was lost on me; all I could see was the dirty face of that guide. Rembrandt's Night Watch made me forget the creature for a moment, but when he began to describe it I fled in horror. We finished up in the modern section, and as I looked at van Gogh and Cezanne and Whistler's Effie Deans his squeaky voice kept up a running commentary. I rushed from the building after a ten minutes' tour, paid the worm his three guilden . . . and then went back and enjoyed the gallery. But I nearly committed murder in the Rijks Museum that day. If ever I am hanged it will ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... brings us to the most eccentric, the most striking, and in some respects the greatest artist of his time—James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Whistler was born at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834. His grandfather, of an English family long settled in Ireland, had been a member of Burgoyne's invading army, but afterwards joined the American service, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... that its true condition was kept a secret by the management, one writer going so far as to say that Manager Ewing's brother John was at that time disabled by a sprained ankle, while Rusie was suffering from a bruised leg, and also that Whistler had been playing at first base so well that Ewing thought he could afford to give Conner a day or two off, all of which may have been true, though I am free to confess right now that ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... same route to his sister's cottage, but did not attempt to conceal his movements. On the contrary, knowing that the sloop must have got clear of the harbour by that time, he went along the streets whistling cheerfully. He had been a noted, not to say noisy, whistler when a boy, and the habit had not forsaken him in his old age. On turning sharp round a corner, he ran against two men, one of whom swore at him, but ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... great men in the world of culture,—unless, indeed, such men lived a half century ago and have got into the school readers by this time? How many of our boys and girls have ever heard of MacDowell, or James, or Whistler, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... rule) either 'The British Grenadiers' or 'Cherry Ripe'. The latter air is indeed the shibboleth and diploma piece of the penny whistler; I hazard a guess it was originally composed for this instrument. It is singular enough that a man should be able to gain a livelihood, or even to tide over a period of unemployment, by the display of his proficiency ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... sit to any one could not withstand this dynamic little stranger. He did not sue; he invited: he did not invite; he commanded. He was twenty-one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was a wit. He was brimful of ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Daudet and the Goncourts. He knew every one in Paris. He knew them all by heart. He was Paris in Oxford. It was whispered that, so soon as he had polished off his selection of dons, he was going ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... art who are beginning to realize that the old impressionistic school lacked emphasis and individuality in its work. But I expect to stand firm, and when everybody else nearly is a Futurist and is tearing down Sargent's pictures and Abbey's and Whistler's to make room for immortal Young Messers, I and a few others will still be holding out resolutely ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... popper gun, A reg'lar one that shoots, And Teddy's got an engine With a whistler that toots. But I've got something finer yet— A pair of rubber boots. Oh, it's boots, boots, boots, A pair of rubber boots! I could walk from here to China In a ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... the old fox-hunter to my father, "the summons is come, as we used to say when I was a dragoon, to 'boot and saddle.' I told the doctor a month ago that my wind was touched, but he would have it that I was only a whistler." ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... in emanations from the canvass of Burne Jones? As thou gazest at a Whistler, doth it whistle wistful tones? Art thou sadly sympathetic with a symphony in blue? Tell me, tell me, gentle Student, art ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... histrionic art can lay just claim to having more than their share of whim, but the musical profession has no reason to be abashed, for it is a good second. However, the actor's and the musician's art are often not far separated. In speaking to James McNeil Whistler of a certain versatile musician, a lady once said, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... centre in successive steps, is an adaptation of the pattern of a well-known oriental fountain. All is equally black in this pool, and the border unfortunately is barely distinguishable from the water. After a dinner party at which Sir E. Burne-Jones, Mr. Whistler, Mr. Albert Moore, and many others were present, I recollect how, when we were smoking and drinking coffee in this hall, somebody, excitedly discoursing, stepped unaware right into the fountain. Two large Japanese gold tench, whose somnolent ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... looked neither to the right nor to the left until he had passed the Baxters' fence. But when he had gone as far as the upper corner of the fence beyond, he turned his head and looked back, without any expression—except that of a whistler—at Jane. And thus, still whistling "My country, 'tis of thee," and with blank pink face over his shoulder, he proceeded until ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... of this problem, and who, adapting themselves to the new conditions presented in this country, undertook to solve it. Among the pioneers in this branch of engineering no one has done more to establish correct methods, nor has left behind a more enviable or more enduring fame, than Major George W. Whistler. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... talent he had. Huh! I soon cured him of that. 'Go right to it, son,' says I. 'Paint something you can sell for five hundred and I'll cover it with a thousand. Until then, not a red cent.' And inside of twenty-four hours he concluded he wasn't any budding Whistler or Sargent, and came asking what I thought he should tackle first. Eh? Think you could ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... supply all the ornament, and are much too handsome to be hidden by odds and ends of useless things. A few good oil-paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery thirty years ago (the Burne Jones, not the Whistler side of them) are on the walls. The only landscape is a Cecil Lawson on the scale of a Rubens. There is a portrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion in her youth in one of the beautiful Rossettian costumes which, when ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... comes "the whistler." I had been expecting him. He is to-night whistling airs from Pinafore. The Pirates, thank Heaven! furnishes him no airs. He whistles—let me confess, reluctant although I am to do it—he whistles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Overman. The late John Hudson, the college tonsor and common room man,{*} was famous for having several times, for trifling wagers, drank a full overman of strong beer off at a draught. A Tun, another vessel in use at Pembroke, is a half pint silver cup. A Whistler, a silver pint tankard also in use there, was the gift of Mr. Anthony Whistler, a ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... be taught: they thought it could be learnt. They constrained themselves, with considerable creative fatigue, to find the exact adjectives which might parallel in English prose what has been clone in Italian painting. The same is true of Whistler and R. A. M. Stevenson and many others in the exposition of Velasquez. They had something to say about the pictures; they knew it was unworthy of the pictures, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton |
