The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

Directed by Leslie Megahey

"Who else but Whistler made us see that fog was beautiful or love the night?" asked Oscar Wilde, sometime friend of the irascible artist who is the subject of this Omnibus episode. James McNeill Whistler was a turn-of-the-century Bohemian, who escaped from his New England background to discover the louche life in Paris and London. His later style, impressionistic to the point of abstraction, pre-empted modernism by nearly 20 years. In reply to an impertinent judge who suggested he was charging 200 guineas for two days' work, Whistler replied: "No - I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime". James Runcie's film re-creates some of Whistler's most famous paintings, including the portrait of his mother, in studio tableaux. It also records many of the artist's celebrated run-ins with the critics of his day (he collected his attacks on the critics in a volume from which this film takes its title: The Gentle Art of Making Enemies).