Whistler's Father

James Robbins writes about the famous painter James McNeill Whistler and his almost famous engineer father George W. Whistler:

Everyone knows — or at least has seen — James McNeill Whistler’s mother, Anna McNeill Whistler, who was immortalized in her son’s 1871 oil painting Arrangement in Grey and Black. But few remember Whistler’s father, George Washington Whistler, who in his day was one of the most famous engineers in America.