James Abbott McNeill Whistler - Early Life

Early Life

James Abbott Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was the first child born to Anna Matilda McNeill and George Washington Whistler, a prominent engineer. She was his father's second wife. At the Ruskin trial (see below), Whistler claimed the more exotic St. Petersburg, Russia as his birthplace: "I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born in Lowell", he declared. In later years, he would play up his mother's connection to the American South and its roots, and present himself as an impoverished Southern aristocrat (although to what extent he truly sympathized with the Southern cause during the American Civil War remains unclear). After her death, he would adopt her maiden name, using it as an additional middle name.

Young Whistler was a moody child prone to fits of temper and insolence, who—after bouts of ill-health—often drifted into periods of laziness. His parents discovered in his early youth that drawing often settled him down and helped focus his attention.