Past Exhibition

The Gentle Art of Making Prints: Whistler Impressions from the Fogg Art Museum
December 5, 2002- February 23, 2003

This exhibition highlights the work of an American Master, James Abbot McNeill Whistler, esteemed in his own time as the greatest etcher since Rembrandt. The group of prints from the Fogg Art Museum was selected to convey a sense of the tremendous diversity within Whistler's graphic production. These artworks demonstrate how the material qualities of a print, such as the paper it is printed on and the way the ink sits on the surface, are key to appreciating not only the scope of Whistler's endeavor, but also the reason he was so admired.

A champion of the Art for Art's Sake movement, Whistler was not, however, unfamiliar with making art for the market's sake. Unlike his paintings, which critics had labeled "pictile nightmares" and "meaningless canvases," Whistler's etchings enjoyed popular and critical acclaim from their first appearance in the Salon of 1859. Whistler worked tirelessly to promote the aesthetic validity of etching and lithography. His innovative approaches and technical manipulations helped to stimulate revivals in both techniques at the end of the century and expand the market for their purchase. These commercial aspects of Whistler's printmaking do not to diminish his contribution to the graphic arts or assign him purely mercenary motives. Instead they acknowledge the reciprocal relationship between Whistler's aesthetic choices and the realities of the publication process in an era of new opportunities for public exposure in commercial galleries, art portfolios, and periodicals.