James McNeill Whistler. De Valparaíso a Venecia: un viaje de ida y vuelta

Este artículo aborda la experiencia del pintor James McNeill Whistler durante su estadía en Valparaíso en 1866 y las obras que allí realizó, con el objetivo de indagar el efecto que tuvo este viaje en su obra y explorar su posible influencia en el arte chileno. Se trata de un avance de un proyecto de investigación que gira en torno a la pregunta por los viajes en la historia del arte, a través de imágenes, libros y documentos que dan cuenta de relaciones —reversibles, a destiempo o cruzadas; de movilidad, intercambios e influencias— más complejas, con múltiples direcciones y en diversos sentidos.

The Worst Man in London

Charles Augustus Milverton, blackmailer of society women in the 1904 story that bears his name, is assumed by critics to be based on a real person – but which real person is open to doubt. The favourite is Charles Augustus Howell, a larger-than-life associate of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (whose members knew him as ‘Owl’), friend to James McNeill Whistler and Algernon Charles Swinburne, and one-time secretary to John Ruskin. However, it is by no means established that Howell was, in Lancelyn Green’s words, a ‘scoundrel and blackmailer’. He certainly seems to have fallen out with a lot of people, but the more outlandish stories about his life and death – Oscar Wilde may be the source for the claim that Howell was found dying outside a Chelsea public house ‘with his throat cut and a ten shilling piece between his clenched teeth’ – may be urban myths rather than actual facts: his death certificate, for instance, records that he died of pneumonia.