Two kinds of things are celebrated in Today I Learnt. One is the striking or curious interesting fact the writer didn't know and probably you didn't either. The other is the more rueful discovery where the surprising fact is that the writer didn't know it. Maybe these need another thread called "Only today I learnt".
I have known something about Whistler since age 9 or 10. This came from one of the phenomenally successful 'William' childrens' books by Richmal Crompton aimed at a readership of about 9 to 12 range. Which sold over 12 million copies and are still in print if rather dated and. The equivocation on which the line of the story where I learned (and of which I don't remember much else) depends is that a very prosperous member of the local community has acquired a Whistler which is the talk of the town, but the anarchic and rather ignorant antihero William supposes that a Whistler is some kind of machine that whistles. Instead it referred to a valuable painting.So thanks to the book I knew what a Whistler was early on, but I didn't know much more for a long time. I don't remember reading about him in books about painting I read, nor in books of reproductions of famous painters I once had. Many decades later I did come directly across some works – Whistler's most famous and striking painting of his mother in the Orsay museum, Paris
https://www.wikiart.org/en/james-mcneill-whistler then some other works in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow.
https://www.gla.ac.uk/whistler/ https://www.gla.ac.uk/whistler/thehunterian/ And every now and then in general reading over the years, mostly I guess in cultural pages of newspapers, I stumbled across mentions of Whistler. Yet I often had a uncomfortable feeling, a cognitive dissonance , there was something not quite right I could never put my finger on. Might it be him being called an "American painter"?
An American painter? Like there was more than one?
Sorry folks, in Europe we hardly know of a single one before about 1930. And the categorisation 'American' is problematic - he was indeed an American citizen but he spent fairly few years in the USA, though he did attend West Point, where he was a total misfit. Most of his painting was done in Britain and France. Unusual but there was still something else uncomfortable though… I was always very uncertain about his dates and things said soeti sounded incongruous (I didn't even know till today much of what I've said or linked to above).
Now, if you haven't heard, there has broken out in Britain over about the past year acutely a massive movement in the arts, museums and heritage curation sector, around public monuments, in culture the arts and in the universities, the sciences by no means exempt, broadcasting, and journalism, to revise, revalue, and change everything in the names of e.g. 'decolonising the curriculum', awareness raising, wokeism, revising, re-relabelling, re-evaluating, BLM, 'culture wars', re-examining our national identity, history, and self image. After this movement has washed over many more obvious targets, in about the last fortnight the immorality of Isaac Newton and George Friedrich Handel who held investments in companies involved in slave trading have in their turn been brought into focus by this movement (it is no merit of Sir Isaac's that he lost a lot of money over it) and it will probably become obligatory to mention this in University lectures when Newton's discoveries are explained. In the very last days another piece of heritage to now give offence after having been in place for about 100 years are the
Whistler murals in the Tate gallery in London. To see this sort of discussion Google rex whistler tate mural.
100 years? The Tate? As I said I had been vague about Whistler and vague about dates, but had uncomfortable feelings. So I thought I must look into this at last.
And not before
today I learnt that there have been
two famous painters called Whistler.
The first was the one discussed above named James Whistler (which is cutting a long story short actually). The second, who occasioned the present furore was Rex Whistler. He "
painted many members of London society, including Edith Sitwell, Cecil Beaton and other members of the set to which he belonged that became known as the "Bright Young Things". "
The general idea of Bright Young Things is obvious, and I knew that it was rather attached to the interwar period, but only
today I learnt that it originally referred to a very specific group. And there is no doubt that the Whistler of the William story would have been Rex. Williams's older brother and sister, Robert and Ethel who come into the story would surely have wished or affected to be Bright Young Things.
I really do not know why the painting contains the things objected to. I first thought it might be irony, and ironic comment on the sources of wealth of the better off Bright Young Things or perhaps of the philanthropists who financed the Tate. But it is possible that he merely found the fantasy, the conceit, of '
The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats' amusing. The Bright Young Things were fashionable and bohemian, but they were not progressive and were seriously unserious. And snobs. Supercilious and superior, finding everything and everyone perfectly amusing. One can even find much to condemn in them if one wants to take seriousness towards the opposite extreme.
That said one should not forget that Rex Whistler died fighting in the war against Nazism.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-has-the-tate-cancelled-its-own-restaurant-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tate_Britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Whistler
https://artuk.org/discover/artists/whistler-rex-19051944