St. Ives, Cornwall
This beautiful gifts and homeware collection of St. Ives in Cornwall is based on a design by the American artist James Abbot NcNeill Whistler (1834-1903).
Known simply as 'Whistler', he was born in Lowell, Massachusetts near Boston, USA. He had travelled as a youth with his engineer father, living both in Russia and in England.
In 1855 he went as a student to Paris, where he met Degas, and was greatly influenced by Courbet.
By the time he came to spend the April-May of 1884 in St Ives, Cornwall, he was already well-known, even 'infamous', considered highly eccentric, for the 1878 quarrel with Ruskin, leading to the trial which left him with 1 farthing damages. He stayed at 14 Barnoon Terrace in St Ives.
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, 1883-1884
