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| JAMES WHISTLER |
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
American, 1834-1903 Little Putney , 1871 Etching, 5 1/4" x 8 1/4" Formally in the college library's Carnegie Collection James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1834. In 1842 he and his family moved to Russia. While in St. Petersburg, Whistler took drawing lessons at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, and on trips to London he attended lectures at the Royal Academy and studied etchings by Rembrandt. In 1855, four years after having returned to America and serving in the military, Whistler left for Paris. There he became friends with Gustave Courbet, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet. As the works of these men fit into a certain style, Whistler's work is difficult to categorize. Whistler's early etchings, the French Set and the Thames Set, were influenced by Courbet's realism as they represented personal experience without idealization. The French Set depicts rural life throughout France and the Rhineland in the autumn of 1858. The Thames Set, to which Little Putney belongs, shows the rather bleak river life of London. This set is a series of 16 prints done between the years 1858 and 1871 when they were published as a set. Through the minimal use and near equal combination of horizontal and vertical lines, Whistler created a feeling of stillness and stability. The bridge juts out at an angle from the tower on the shore and helps separate the water from the sky. Whistler's use of line is free and somewhat resembles a sketch, though for Whistler, etching was an art form in itself. |
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 PANNELL ART GALLERY
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