Etching and drypoint on thin, antique cream laid paper
USA, 1858
James Abbott McNeil Whistler (1834-1903) – American painter and printmaker
‘La Vielle aux Loques’
Signed in plate lower right ‘Whistler’ (the ‘s’ reversed)
Second state of four
From Twelve Etchings from Nature
Kennedy 21; Mansfield 21; Thomas 9; Wedmore 14
Full margins, matted
Plate dimensions: 8 x 5 ? in. (20.3 x 14.9 cm.)
Sheet dimensions: 10 ? x 8 ? in. (27.6 x 20.6 cm.)
Overall dimensions: 15 ½ x 12 ¾ in. (39.4 x 32.4 cm.)

An old woman sits, holding a piece of cloth in her lap, framed in an open doorway. Working by the light from the door, the space around the figure is cramped with pots, sacks, boxes and bottles. Although the subject appears to be worn-out with age in a poverty-stricken environment, Whistler captures her with great respect, displaying a crowded but well-organized workspace. With an expert use of shade and light, this well-known etching by the artist recalls Rembrandt on a small-scale.

La Vieille aux Loques was etched in 1858 and published in Douze eaux-fortes d'après Nature (Twelve Etchings from Nature, the 'French Set') in November 1858. Signed in the plate with the ‘s’ in Whistler’s signature reversed, this print is from the second state of four. With full margins and matted, the plate measures 8 x 5 ? inches. Several variations of staining at both top and bottom sheet edge from previous hinges on verso showing through to recto the bottom sheet edge stain has a purple hue.

James A.M. Whistler (American, 1834-1903)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler changed the course of art history with his radical techniques and adoption of Asian design principles, which emphasized a two-dimensional flattening of painted forms and their arrangement into abstract patterns. A London-based expatriate, Whistler embraced and promoted the doctrine that art should not serve narrative, but rather project the artist’s subjective feelings through the handling of the medium. His revolutionary methods changed existing approaches to oil paint, pastel, watercolor, etching—even interior design and the decorative arts. The flat, expressive, and radically simplified forms in his Venice pastels, and his use of fluid blue and gray pigments in his abstract nocturnes, altered how his contemporaries like Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas saw and understood art. He scandalously named one of his most famous paintings Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 (1871), suggesting the reduction of a portrait of his mother to an arrangement of formal elements.

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