JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER PRINTS

[3] The Kitchen, 1858
Etching on thin, yellowish-brown chine; trimmed to the platemark
an impression in the second state (of three)
Signed Whistler and inscribed Imp. Delatre. Rue St. Jacques. 171. in the
plate at lower right
815/16 x 6 3/16 inches (22.7 x 15.8 cm)
Provenance: Alexander John Godby, Baltimore and London (Lugt
1119b); Harlow, McDonald & Co., New York; Lucien Goldschmidt,
Inc., New York
Reference: Kennedy 24; Glasgow 16
Whistler made several early drawings of kitchens in
addition to a preliminary pencil sketch and the watercolour
of this kitchen in Lutzelbourg in Alsace-Lorraine
(now in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.) that
was used as the basis for this etching. He transferred the
image of a peasant woman gazing through a window in
her modest home to the copper etching plate after his
return to Paris; it was published in the French Set in this
second state. As Ruth Fine notes, this print “was considered
during Whistler’s lifetime one of the most beautiful
of the French Set” (p.39). Indeed, it was so popular that
the artist reworked the copper plate and printed a new
edition of 50 impressions, published by The Fine Art
Society in 1884.
Lochnan notes the influence of the quiet domestic
scenes of the French Realist painter François Bonvin
on Whistler’s subject here. But like Whistler’s other
etchings of women in shadowy interiors and doorways,
contemplative or absorbed in their tasks, this composition
also reflects the underlying geometries and the sense
of stillness found in the work of the seventeenth-century
Dutch master Pieter de Hooch. Here Whistler further
deploys de Hooch’s method of rhythmically juxtaposing
light and dark areas to draw the eye around the picture
plane and into the sequence of apparently receding spaces
toward the window where the woman is shown silhouetted
against the light (see Lochnan, pp.41–43).
[4] The Dog on the Kennel, 1858
Etching, printed in black ink on Japan paper, an impression in the
second (final) state: there was no published edition
2 3/4 x 3 1/2 inches (7.2 x 8.9 cm) sheet 5 1/4 x 6 1/4 inches (13.3 x 16 cm)
Reference: Kennedy 18; Glasgow 19
This was drawn during Whistler’s tour of the Rhineland
in search of subjects for etchings to be published in the
French Set, between 14th August and 7th October 1858.
Both the kennel and the dog were also depicted in The
Unsafe Tenement. Frederick Wedmore recorded that
Whistler was working on the larger plate when the dog
jumped up on the kennel, but put it aside to make the
small study. This information came from Samuel P. Avery,
whose Whistler collection is in the New York Public
Library, and who first met the artist in 1867. The etching
has been rarely exhibited but was lent by Avery to the
Union League Club in New York in 1881.
james mcneill whistler: prints 13