Ralph Brown King

Ralph King was an intimate friend of the mother of American artist James McNeill Whistler. Anna Matilda (McNeill) Whistler (1804-1881), and her iconic portrait, formally known as *Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1* or *Portrait of the Artist's Mother*, now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris:

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/index.php?id=851&L=1&tx_commentaire_pi1%5...

Anna Whistler was a daughter of the South born in Wilmington, North Carolina, but she lived with her Bohemian son in England during her final years.

Ralph King (1801-1878) was a New York broker who handled Anna Whistler's financial affairs in the 1850s. He was the husband of Anna's first cousin Isabella M. Gibbs, and the couple's daughter "Florida" (also "Ida") actually married Anna's son and James McNeil Whistler's brother, William McNeill Whistler.

William, called "Willie" by family and friends, was a Confederate soldier and physician. His wife, Florida King, whom James McNeill Whistler nicknamed "the Countess," was a staunch supporter of the Confederacy. The links below lead to Willie's photo and the portrait his artist brother painted of him:

http://www.tias.com/517/PictPage/3923906885.html

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/111478

James McNeill Whistler's mother Anna stayed with "Cousin Ralph" and his wife Isabella when in New York, even serving as Ralph's "companion" and attending to his "domestic comfort" when Isabella traveled to Georgetown, D.C., to visit her sister in August of 1867. Anna reported in a letter of August 27, 1867 that Ralph "likes some one to listen to his remarks upon the public affairs," a desire which she evidently indulged with good will while Isabella was away. On October 29, 1867, she wrote that Ralph, though frail in health, "is always good & kind as a brother to me, may he be spared long to bless his sweet wife & many of us!" Below are links to letters from Whistler's mother and the artist himself in which Ralph King figures:

http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/display/?c...

http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/display/?r...

Whistler was particularly fond of giving musical titles like "nocturne," "harmony," "symphony, and "variations" to his paintings. Below are links to a few examples:

http://venetianred.net/2009/02/04/the-melody-of-ineffable-color/

http://www.asia.si.edu/explore/american/Whistler_slideshow.asp

Incidentally, the artist was the nephew of Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr., whose plantation in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Reserve under the administration of the United States National Park Service. Zephaniah was a polygamist, and his first wife was a Senegalese slave whom he originally purchased when she was barely a teenager. When Florida passed into American hands, Kingsley was unable to persuade the new government to recognize mixed racial marriages, so he moved with his family to Haiti.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephaniah_Kingsley