"American expatriate, James Abbott McNeil Whistler, painted at a time of great excitement and change within the art world. While a student in Paris at the Academy of Charles Gleyre, he was friend and classmate to the artists who would alter the face of art, those painters who would become known as The Impressionists, but Whistler, always the eccentric and outsider, pursued his own course toward fame. His works, inspired by the realism of Courbet, the spontaneous brushwork of Velázquez, and the harmonious arrangements of great music, were studies in tone, meticulously planned, yet painted with freshness and verve." - Kimber Scott