Whistler was the one revolutionary painter in the English-speaking world whom Courbet, Manet, & Degas regarded as their peer in the crusade against 19th century academic art. This book reexamines the colorful American artists almost forgotten role in the birth of abstract painting. Includes the painters own vivid epigrams, & documents how Whistlers unorthodox pictorial design & his new vision of space set the stage for geometric abstraction in 20th century art. Illustrated entirely in color, it focuses primarily on the late landscapes & seascapes in which Whistlers abstract vision reached its ultimate development.