For the song by Faith No More see "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (song)"

The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies is a book by the painter James McNeill Whistler

James McNeill Whistler

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...

, published in 1890. The book was in part a response to, in part a transcript of, Whistler's famous libel suit against critic John Ruskin

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...

. Ruskin, in a review of the inaugural showing at the Grosvenor Gallery

Grosvenor Gallery

The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé...

, had referred to Whistler's painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket as "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." The book contains Whistler's letters to newspapers chronicling his many petty grievances against various acquaintances and friends.

External links

• This book can be downloaded from gutenberg.org here.