James Abbott McNeill Whistler born in the industrial town of Lowell, Massachusetts in 1834, became one of the most influential late 19th-century American painters and etchers, although he lived primarily in England. He studied in Paris with Charles Gleyre and became a part of avant-garde circles that included Henri Fantin-Latour, Alphonse Legros, Edouard Manet, Gustave Courbet, and Edgar Degas. He worked in a wide variety of styles that included Impressionism, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau. He was especially influential in the Tonalist movement and was a catalyst for those who wanted to break away from prescribed academic methods, credited with being the first American modernist to influence European art.

Whistler exerted a profound influence on his contemporaries and on the course of American art. He was the first to be captivated by the recently discovered Japanese art and readily incorporated its flattened forms, cropped figures, monochromatic colors, and economy of means into his own works. or interpretation he entitled his paintings with musical nomenclature, such as nocturne and etude.