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Activity Outside of Paris
Image: Arrangement in Grey and Black (Whistler's Mother), James Whistler, 1871 |
 James Whistler |
The change in the artistic temperature of Paris meant an opportunity for painters elsewhere. On feels a sudden intensification of activity in the 1890's in other European cultural centers. Ensor was working in Antwerp, Mucha in Berlin, Toorop in Amsterdam, Steer, Sickert and Beardsley in London. This was the beginning of the internationalism that has characterized 20th century art.
What had gone on in the previous forty years or so in these places can in no degree be compared with what had happened in France. In general, the best painters working outside Paris during that period were either, like Eakins and Homer, or the Dutch landscape painters, or Liebermann and Leibl, naturalists, sometimes influenced by Courbet and the Impressionists; or they were Symbolists of the more literary kind, at their best when gifted with a strongly personal vision, such as Marees or Hodler, Rossetti or Burne-Jones, or Albert Pinkham Ryder. The most interesting and original of all was probably the American James Whistler, who made his headquarters in London in the early 1860's. |