The Unsafe Tenement (The Old Farm)

1858

Not on view

Whistler found this dilapidated building during a summer tour of Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland. He carried sketchbooks, etching needles and copper plates, etching about six plates between mid-August and October. Such restraint suggests many preparatory sketches and careful planning before needle touched copper. Crumbling architecture is here given an unidealized individuality in a way that echoes how realist painters approached the human figure. In November 1858, Whistler included the print in his first published set, "Douze eau-fortes d'apres Nature" ("Twelve Etchings from Nature"), known as the "French Set." This impression belonged to Thomas Winans, a Baltimore friend who financed the artist's move to Paris in 1855; Winans kept the print in an album that descendants gave to the Museum.

Artwork Details

Title: The Unsafe Tenement (The Old Farm)
Series/Portfolio: French Set ("Douze eau-fortes d'apres Nature" 1858) and Winans Scrapbook
Artist: James McNeill Whistler (American, Lowell, Massachusetts 1834–1903 London)
Date: 1858
Medium: Etching on tan chine on white wove paper (chine collé); third state of four (Glasgow)
Dimensions: Plate: 6 1/8 × 8 7/8 in. (15.6 × 22.6 cm)
Sheet: 7 in. × 9 7/8 in. (17.8 × 25.1 cm)
Classification: Prints
Credit Line: Gift of Margaret C. Buell, Helen L. King, and Sybil A. Walk, 1970
Object Number: 1970.121.72
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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Reading, James McNeill Whistler American, Lithograph with scraping; printed in black ink on grayish chine mounted on ivory wove paper; fourth state of four (Chicago) — Reading
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