Chelsea. – (James Abbott Mcneill Whistler) ◄ Önceki Sonraki ►

Sanatçı: James Abbott Mcneill Whistler

Tarih: 1879

Müze: Te Papa (Wellington, New Zealand)

teknik: Drypoint

One of art’s most inventive and influential printmakers, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) made nearly 500 etchings over five decades, as well as some 180 lithographs. As a gifted young draftsman, he recognised the medium’s ability to record and reproduce sketches scratched quickly into the wax coating of copper plates; as a mature artist, he immersed himself in the complexities of etching, drypoint and controlled inking to produce striking works of astounding subtlety. He spent some of his teenage years in London, living with his half-sister and her husband Francis Seymour Haden, a surgeon, avid etcher and Rembrandt collector. After his father’s death, Whistler returned to his native US and entered West Point Military Academy in 1851, studying art but failing elsewhere. A brief stint followed at the US Coast and Geodetic Survey, where he felt confined drawing maps but learned to etch and doodled figures reminiscent of the French caricaturist Paul Gavarni across the top of a topographic view. Funds advanced by a family friend enabled the crucial move to Paris in 1855. Whistler took drawing classes, entered the studio of Charles Gleyre and, encouraged by Haden, began etching by 1857. Reproductive prints were still the norm for etching, so Whistler broke new ground as he toured Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland in 1858 to develop a series titled Douze eaux-forts d’après nature (Twelve Etchings from Nature, or the