Item 30: Mr. Whistler (ca. 1908)

Everything about James McNeill Whistler, the expatriate American artist, pleased Beerbohm. He admired his paintings, his skills as a conversationalist, and especially his witty prose. As Beerbohm put it in “Whistler’s Writing,” an essay filled with praise, “his style never falters.” What inspired him most, however, was Whistler’s self-presentation. Whistler’s was the kind of celebrity image that Beerbohm aimed to recreate for himself, with a perfect façade maintained through deployment of dress and accessories, including top hat and walking stick. Nevertheless, for Beerbohm, hero worship never stood in the way of wicked caricature. He depicted Whistler as akin to a squat eagle, with a beaklike nose and winged eyebrows, trailed by a shadow suggesting the plumage of a tail.