PRINTS
Whistler, James McNeill
U.S. (1834 - 1903)
Little Arthur
1858
Etching on laid paper
2 1/4 x 2 in. (6 x 5 cm) plate mark size; 4 1/8 x 3 3/4 in. (10.5 x 9.5 cm) sheet size
Stimson Collection, gift of Dorothy Stimson Bullitt
FA 77.169

Whistler's first published series called Twelve Etchings from Nature was also known as The French Set. It was a heterogeneous mixture of works done in England, Germany, and the avant-garde artistic French circle of which Whistler was a part. Whistler employed Auguste Delatre, an excellent Parisian printer who had perfected a technique called "artistic printing" by manipulating the amount of plate tone on the surfaces of copper. His method of painting directly with ink on the plate gave Whistler's work much more subtle shades of light and dark. For helping him achieve the effects he desired, Whistler dedicated this first group of etchings to the master craftsman with the words "homage a M. Delatre." This work of Arthur Haden, Whistler's nephew, was one of an early group done of the Haden household. It shows a debt to Rembrandt's etched portraits being diminutive in scale and employing active webs of crosshatching to create chiaroscuro effects. These early etchings mark the beginning of several years of close collaboration between Whistler and Seymour Haden. The surgeon Haden regarded Whistler as his protege, but the younger artist quickly surpassed Haden. -- Label copy for James McNeill Whistler: A Dreamer Apart, Reed Gallery, March 27 to June 15, 1990.