Whistler depicts the celebrated Irish beauty Joanna Hiffernan—his model and mistress—sunk in an armchair, engulfed by a long skirt and loose hair, her lips parted as if to speak. The delicate paper captures the soft, drypoint lines and conveys a sensual mood. The light sketch of a girl’s head (in the lower left of the sheet) suggests that Whistler first worked on the plate from the opposite direction with another subject in mind. Drypoint lines were scratched directly into the copper to produce this famous image.
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Howard Mansfield A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Drypoints of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Caxton Club, 1909, cat. no. 92.
Edward Guthrie Kennedy, Royal Cortissoz The Etched Work of Whistler: illustrated by reproductions in collotype of the different states of the plates. The Grolier Club, 1910, cat. no. 92 ii1/iii.
From Realism to Symbolism: Whistler and his World: an exhibition. Organized by the Department of Art History and Archaeology of Columbia University in the City of New York in cooperation with the Philadelphia Museum of Art; March 3-April 4, Wildenstein, New York; April 15-May 23, Philadelphia Museum or Art. Allen Staley, Theodore Reff, New York, 1971, pl. 18, cat. no. 13, p. 41.
Katharine A. Lochnan The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler. Ex. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 14–November 11, 1984; The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, November 24, 1984–January 13, 1985. Yale University Press, Art Gallery of Ontario, New Haven, 1984, cat. no. 96, pp. 149, 150, 279.
Allen Staley The Post-Pre-Raphaelite Print: etching, illustration, reproductive engraving, and photography in England in and around the 1860s. Ex. cat., Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University. New York, 1995, That in the catalogue, version at the New York Public Library, second state., cat. no. 78, pp. 131-2, ill.
Margaret F. MacDonald, Susan Grace Galassi, Aileen Ribeiro, Patricia de Montfort Whistler, Women and Fashion. Exh. cat.; The Frick Collection. London and New Haven, 2003, fig. no. 77, p. 80.
Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Joanna Meacock James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow on-line website at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk. University of Glasgow, 2012, cat. no. 93 iv/vi.
Margaret F. MacDonald, Charles Brock, Patricia de Montford, Joanna Dunn, Grischka Petri, Aileen Ribeiro, Joyce H. Townsend The Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan and James McNeill Whistler. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington; Royal Academy of Art, London. New Haven and London, 2020, pp. 20, 204-5, pls. 22-7, pp. 82-7 (impressions The New York Public Library (state i/vi), Fitzwilliam Museum (state ii/vi), National Gallery of Art, Washington (state iv/vi), University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (state iv/vi), The Hunterian, University of Glasgow (state iv/vi) and The Art Institute of Chicago (state v/vi)).
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