Weary
James McNeill Whistler American
Not on view
Whistler's confidence as an etcher is seen in this portrait of Jo Hiffernan, his model, muse and companion in the 1860s. The artist's brother-in-law Seymour Haden taught him to etch and showed in works by Rembrandt. From the latter, Whistler learned to approach printmaking as an experimental process in which portions of an image could be left suggestively undeveloped. Here, Whistler used drypoint, scratching lines into the copper to throw up a burr that caught the ink and printed in a soft, evocative manner. A shadowy female head visible at lower right demonstrates that the artist changed his mind as he worked, turned the plate around, and began the design afresh. Jo's pose and sensuously unbound hair echo languid images of women beautiful women created by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti who lived near Whistler in Chelsea.
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