The Whistler Gallery, NEW and Gluten Free

[The Only Whistler]

Oscar In the Peacock Room

[Primula Baggins]

One of those pillows has John Singer Sargent's painting Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose on it, or I am a monkey's maiden great-aunt.

Edited to add: Lovely pup, lovely room, very lovely painting.

[The Only Whistler]

One of those pillows has John Singer Sargent's painting Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose on it, or I am a monkey's maiden great-aunt.

Edited to add: Lovely pup, lovely room, very lovely painting.

Yes, you’ll also see Ophelia and (far left) a portion of The Lady of Shallot.

I had a number of pre-Raphaelite pillows custom made for the room.

[Primula Baggins]

And there's Millais's Ophelia.

ETA: You beat me to it.

My mother loved the Pre-Raphaelites. We had a book that I never got tired of looking through when I was small.

[The Only Whistler]

One wall has a pre-Raphaelite wallpaper strip designed by the artist Walter Crane. We had to get it through a British historical wallpaper company.

We do our research, over here!

[Primula Baggins]

Well, it's your profession, certainly!

Whereas I write senses-shattering works of thrilling sci-fi wonder (for 5% of my income), and also check the spelling in medical textbooks (for 95%). We all have our place(s) in life.

[The Only Whistler]

Le Lis Colombien

Re-posting this one. It's my first (and probably last) experiment in pre-Raphaelite art. And of course it hangs in the Peacock Room.

[elengil]

I do quite like the effect of that one.

[The Only Whistler]

A cute red-headed Colombian. I painted her forty times, which verges on madness. But she had such an angelic face! She called herself Hispanic, but she looked like a Medieval English damsel.

[Primula Baggins]

It's really striking—she looks very modern with that direct gaze and the shorter hair, despite the sixteenth-century dress. (Seventeenth?) Nothing swoony about her.

[The Only Whistler]

True. She’s a feminist damsel. Her eyes are saying, what am I doing in this crazy outfit? Where are my jeans?

Most of my pictures involve stylistic or philosophical clashes, on some level.

[elengil]

Interesting. I didn't really get the "get me out of this dress" vibe as much as the "you really don't want to mess with me, sweetie" vibe.

[The Only Whistler]

The point is, she’s not the fragile flower type. Pre-Raphaelite women usually look as though they’re in the last stages of sickness or despair. This one ain’t.

[Primula Baggins]

That's what I was trying to put my finger on. Pre-Raphaelite women are usually looking down, or away, or asleep. Or dead. It's romantic (I loved it as a little girl—that and the atmosphere of the paintings, and the details I could pore over, and the stories I could make up about what was going on).

[The Only Whistler]

Woman On Red

I forgot this one. Still a bit strong-willed for a pre-Raphaelite lady, but very much in the mode of the Paris Academy painters.

[Frelga]

The point is, she’s not the fragile flower type. Pre-Raphaelite women usually look as though they’re in the last stages of sickness or despair. This one ain’t.

Possibly why they were never my favorite. Yours reminded me of Medusa holding the head of Perseus by the Luciano Garbati. There's a nude with an attitude.

[The Only Whistler]

I have nudes with every attitude you can imagine, including homicidal ones.

But you’ll have to go to my gallery for those.

[The Only Whistler]

Poster for Medea

This is as far from pre-Raphaelite as you can get.

[Primula Baggins]

Do you do this kind of work for theater companies, Whistler, or is this just for its own sake? It's gorgeous.

[The Only Whistler]

I do it mostly to amuse myself. I have made myself available for forty years, but I've done little for money apart from saccharine Sunday school art and vulgar advertising designs. These have won dozens of awards, all of which I've literally thrown away because I take no pride in them.

My brilliant career falls into two categories: Creating garbage that sells, and non-garbage that doesn't. I was also a writer, but no more: As you know better than I, fame and fortune are even harder to come by in that line self-flagellation.