John Ruskin, the celebrated writer on aesthetics,…
August 1877 CE
John Ruskin, the celebrated writer on aesthetics, attacks the impressionist manner of Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (c. 1875, Detroit Institute of Arts).
In his one-man monthly magazine Fors Clavigera, Ruskin writes that he “never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.”
Whistler responds with a libel suit against Ruskin.