Author Description

With Kindest Regards records the extraordinary friendship between the American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and his most significant patron, Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919). By the time the industrialist from Detroit met the artist in 1890, Whistler was as notorious for his irascibility as he was famous for his artistic productions. Freer, however, would always maintain that he had never met a truer, nobler man. Their correspondence reveals a warmth and generosity in Whistler that has gone largely unobserved. The eighty-nine letters, telegrams, cablegrams, and calling cards chronicle the growth of Freer's Whistler collection, the largest and most important in the world. Linda Merrill sets the correspondence in context and traces the contacts between the two men during their long acquaintance. She observes how the previously unpublished letters cast new light on Freer's aesthetic education and expand the history of Whistler's later years. Even Freer's outstanding collection of Asian art began with the keen interest in Japanese art he shared with Whistler. Illustrated with works from the Freer collection and vintage photographs from the Freer Gallery Archives, With Kindest Regards makes important original documents accessible for the first time, augments the legends of Whistler's personality, and reveals the foundation of Charles Freer's legacy to the United States.