PRINTS
Whistler, James McNeill
U.S. (1834 - 1903)
The Doorway
1879 - 1880
Etching and drypoint on Japan paper
11 3/8 x 7 3/4 in. (28.9 x 19.8 cm) sheet size, trimmed to plate mark
Stimson Collection, gift of Dorothy Stimson Bullitt
FA 77.174
Keywords: Cityscape (Venice); Architecture (detail); Series: The First Venice Set, plate 5; Human figure

Some of the etchings show frontal views of facades and palaces, lending an almost two-dimensional quality to the sense of space, often subservient to pattern. These prints are also semi-vignettes with the design often holding the center of the print while the edges fade away. Whistler etched this Renaissance doorway while moored in a gondola fifteen feet away. The architecture was quickly arrived at, but Whistler drew and redrew the girl. Her scale and poverty increased the faded grandeur of the building. Just along the top of the doorway in the interior some chairs hang from the ceiling. The magnificent palace had become home to a chair maker. -- Label copy for James McNeill Whistler: A Dreamer Apart, Reed Gallery, March 27 - June 15, 1990.