James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who touches the…

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who touches the artistic life of his time at many points, executes a decorative stand for the 1878 Paris exhibition (his collaborator is the architect E. W. Godwin).

Whistler's action for libel against Ruskin—brought after Ruskin's attack on the impressionist manner of a Whistler Nocturne—which comes to trial In November 1878, makes the conflict between Ruskin's moral view of art and Whistler's Aestheticism a matter of wide public interest.