James Abbott McNeill Whistler has gone down in history as the very prototype of the singular, rebellious and influential artist. From the end of the 1870s, his work met with considerable success abroad, and the painter never ceased to surround himself with young artists in order to perpetuate the originality of his aesthetic choices.


For the first time in France, a major exhibition is unveiling “Whistlerism”, an artistic movement that was a contemporary of Impressionism, yet still little studied. Accompanying the exhibition James Abbott McNeill Whistler: The Butterfly Effect, this book takes readers from Scotland to Poland, from the Normandy coast to the Parisian salons, to help discover, thanks to the invaluable contributions of leading international specialists in Whistler and his work, the art of Whistlerism.


Whistler and his epigones, artists who are sometimes little known in France. And because Whistlerism endured long after the artist’s death, this catalogue examines his legacy even in the American abstract movement of the mid-20th century, while opening up the fields of poetry, art criticism, photography and cinema.


Text in French, with an English summary.