Whistler's confidence as an etcher is seen in this portrait of Jo Hiffernan, his model, muse and companion in the 1860s. The artist's brother-in-law Seymour Haden taught him to etch and showed in works by Rembrandt. From the latter, Whistler learned to approach printmaking as an experimental process in which portions of an image could be left suggestively undeveloped. Here, Whistler used drypoint, scratching lines into the copper to throw up a burr that caught the ink and printed in a soft, evocative manner. A shadowy female head visible at lower right demonstrates that the artist changed his mind as he worked, turned the plate around, and began the design afresh. Jo's pose and sensuously unbound hair echo languid images of women beautiful women created by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti who lived near Whistler in Chelsea.
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Artwork Details
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Medium:Drypoint, printed in black ink on tan Japan drum-mounted on ivory laid paper; fourth state of six (Glasgow);
Dimensions:Plate: 8 3/16 x 5 1/4 in. (20.8 x 13.3 cm) Sheet: 17 9/16 × 13 1/8 in. (44.6 × 33.4 cm)
Classification:Prints
Credit Line:Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1917
Object Number:17.3.64
Inscription: Signed and dated in plate, at lower left: "Whistler 63" In plate, within image at bottom right: butterfly monogram and "imp" (datable to 1889/90) Inscribed in pen at lower lower left: 'Whistler (abraded)
Harris Brisbane Dick; Vendor: Dick Estate, U.S. Trust
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art [The Met Breuer]. "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible," March 18–September 4, 2016.
Howard Mansfield A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Drypoints of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Caxton Club, 1909.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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The Met's collection of drawings and prints—one of the most comprehensive and distinguished of its kind in the world—began with a gift of 670 works from Cornelius Vanderbilt, a Museum trustee, in 1880.