"The untold story of the artistic battle between James Abbot MacNeill Whistler and John Ruskin over Whistler's controversial, ground-breaking Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. In November 1878, America's greatest painter sued England's greatest critic for a bad review. The painter won--but ruined himself in the process. The painter: James Abbot MacNeill Whistler, whose combination of incredible talent, unflagging energy, and relentless self-promotion had by that time brought him to the very edge of artistic preeminence. The critic: John Ruskin, Slade Professor of Art at Oxford University, whose four-decades' worth of prolific and highly respected literary output on aesthetics had made him England's unchallenged and seemingly unchallengeable arbiter of art."--
