PRINTS
Whistler, James McNeill
U.S. (1834 - 1903)
La Mère Gérard
1858
Etching and drypoint on wove paper
11 x 9 in. (27.9 x 22.9 cm) sheet size; 5 x 3 1/2 in. (12.7 x 8.9 cm) plate mark size
Stimson Collection, gift of Dorothy Stimson Bullitt
FA 77.168

Whistler had returned to Paris and became interested in Courbet's radical artistic ideas. He maintained that all people were equally appropriate subjects for art and that genre subjects and the poor should be depicted. Whistler was drawn to Mere Gerard's "picturesque appearance." The tragic tale of her fall by degrees from the proud position of maintaining a reading room to selling flowers at the door of the Bal Bullier also probably appealed to the artist. Again there is little doubt that beside contemporary realist sources for La Mere Gerard lies Rembrandt's graphic influences such as Beggar in a High Cap leaning on a Stick. The Dutch artist shows figures against a background only defined by their shadows. -- Label text for James McNeill Whistler: A Dreamer Apart, Reed Gallery, March 27-June 15, 1990.