Whistler: how Venice transformed his style

It is often said that one of the great unfairnesses in life is that bad people sometimes produce beautiful art. That is certainly true of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, one of the nineteenth century’s most influential painters. Living by the mantra of ‘art for art's sake,’ meant, in Whistler's case, not withdrawing from the world but hurling himself at it, fists flying. He called his autobiography…