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This Day in Boston History

July 10th, 1843

New England's Southern Gentleman

On this day, the artist James McNeil Whistler was born in Lowell. He was raised in Russia for most of his first six years, where his father was designing the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway for Czar Nicholas. On the death of his father (1849) the family returned to America. Whistler would enroll in West Point and be discharged for failing chemistry.

Whistler worked briefly in Washington etching maps for the Coast Guard. He began a studio in Boston but became discouraged at the limited prospects for artists in America. So he set off for Paris pretending to be a southern gentleman born of American aristocracy, a facade he would maintain the rest of his life.

Whistler was accepted by the artists of Paris as no American before him. And though brilliant and vane, he and his friends in Paris: Courbet, Manet, Degas, and Monet would reshape the artist's vision of the modern world, and their role in it.


 


England's Prime Minister never expected this tea tax to cause an outcry, let alone revolution. In 1767, England reduced its property taxes at home. To balance the national budget they needed to find a mechanism for the American colonies to pay for the expense of stationing officials in them. The officials would generate their own revenue by collecting taxes on all imported goods, and once paid affixing stamps on them. This Stamp Tax generated more in the way of protests and smuggling than added revenue.

Religion. Politics. Rebellion. Boston’s pedigree was forged back in England in the midst of religious dissension, where Puritans and Pilgrims sought religious reform, and Cavaliers and Roundheads vied for political power. The question isn't where did Boston get its name – but how.


Requiem for a Short Visit

Visiting Boston, but only have a short time?
Check out our
Itinerary for a Short Visit.


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