Liverdun
James McNeill Whistler American
Not on view
Whistler visited Liverdun, a town on the Moselle, near the start of a summer Rhineland tour in 1858. He traveled by train between Nancy and Strasbourg, making sketches and a few etchings, including the present work. Here, old farm buildings frame a yard and establish what would become a favorite formal arrangement. Roofs and walls are punctuated with shadowed openings to create a play of lights and darks enlivened with the lightly etched forms of farm workers, ladders and a cart. A white cow walks out of the space at right, and broad expanses below and above suggest ground and sky. This composition was one included in "Douze eau-fortes d'apres Nature" (known as the "French Set"), the artist's first published work, issued in November 1858. This impression belonged to Thomas Winans, a Baltimore friend who financed the artist's move to Paris in 1855; Winans kept the print in an album that descendants gave to the Museum.
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