Whistler in Watercolor

James McNeill Whistler reinvented himself as an artist in the 1880s and painted his way into posterity with the help of watercolor. Beginning in 1881, he created a profusion of small, marketable works over the next fifteen years. “I have done delightful things,” he confided, “and have a wonderful game to play.” For Whistler, the word “game” referred to the watercolors themselves and to his plans for selling them.

Museum founder Charles Lang Freer amassed the world’s largest collection of Whistler’s watercolors, with more than fifty seascapes, nocturnes, interior views, and street scenes. His vast collection also included prints, drawings, pastels, and oil paintings by the artist. Due to Freer’s will, these works have never left the museum, and the fragile watercolors have rarely been displayed. Recent research conducted by museum curators, scientists, and conservators now shines new light on Whistler’s materials, techniques, and artistic genius, as seen in this first major exhibition of his watercolors at the Freer Gallery since the 1930s.

All works are by James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), are the gift of Charles Lang Freer, and are in the permanent collection of the Freer Gallery of Art.

Purchase a copy of Whistler in Watercolor: Lovely Little Games.

Early Works

After unsuccessful stints at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, and at the US Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington, DC, Whistler moved to Paris to become an artist. In 1858 he and fellow artist Ernest Delannoy started on a walking tour of the Alsace and Rhineland regions, planning to reach Amsterdam. They soon abandoned the trip when they ran out of money. Along the way Whistler made scores of pencil drawings and several watercolors. He also drew on prepared copperplates that he later etched and printed in Paris. With under- and overdrawing in pencil, the watercolors were intended as compositional studies structured by line rather than color, while the etchings were considered finished works of art.

Two pivotal events caused Whistler to turn his attention to watercolor: a falling-out over the Peacock Room with his primary patron, industrialist Frederick Leyland, in 1877, and an expensive libel suit against critic John Ruskin in 1878. The Ruskin trial transformed Whistler into a celebrity, but it also left him bankrupt. Hoping to recover financially, he accepted a three-month commission from the Fine Art Society of London to produce a set of twelve etchings of Venice. More than a year later, Whistler returned from Italy with fifty etchings, a hundred pastels, several oil paintings, and at least three watercolors.

Whistler fully embraced the medium of watercolor in the 1880s. “Mr. Whistler is about to surprise both his friends and his detractors by appearing in the new character of the water-colour artist,” a reporter wrote in 1881. While London Bridge was not his first watercolor, Whistler wanted it understood as his beginning point.

Seascapes

While traditional landscapes held little interest for Whistler, he claimed, “The sea to me, is, and always was, most fascinating!” Rendered with simplicity, his seascapes of Southend, a popular seaside destination south of London, rely on broad washes of color with sparse detail. Whistler was a master at creating a mixture of pigments that produced a tonally balanced palette. His seascapes were often organized in a three-part composition of sky, sea, and shore.

Whistler traveled to St. Ives in southwest England in late 1883, intent on producing works to sell at an upcoming solo gallery show in London. He had recently purchased supplies to paint en plein air, including a travel stool and a pochade box, a small case for carrying art materials. The artist reported he was “tremendously busy with lots of pictures of all kinds.” He moved easily between painting with watercolors or oils, yet his touch is lighter and his palette appears brighter in the watercolors. The watercolors from St. Ives are linked by their paper. Each contains traces of kaolin, a fine clay found in the hills of Cornwall and used in porcelain production.

Home and Studio

Whistler frequently depicted his model and longtime companion Maud Franklin, recognizable by her auburn hair, in quiet moments at home. Several compositions contain suggestions of an unseen person—perhaps the artist himself—by including a hat on the bed or an empty chair. The small size of these works encourages the viewer to draw near, even though details dissolve on close inspection.

In the late nineteenth century an artist’s studio was regarded as a sanctuary of creativity and mystery. Whistler played on the appeal of the studio by welcoming patrons and collectors into his work space and providing a tantalizing peek behind the scenes. In Milly Finch, a model wearing a lavender dress poses provocatively on a red chaise lounge. In Note in Pink and Purple, Milly sits demurely with her hand in her lap. The identical dress, chaise, table, and drapery swag are present in both works, yet the mood is quite different. This illustrates how Whistler used his studio, with its theatrical trappings and bohemian intrigue, much like a performance space.

Street Scenes and Nocturnes

Street scenes of daily life fascinated Whistler. The theme appears throughout his career, from the quiet village of Saverne and a busy flower market in northern France, to the children in his London neighborhood and his “nocturnes” along Amsterdam’s canals. Through these watercolors, as well as his etchings, pastels, and oil paintings, Whistler conveyed the rapid changes in city life.

Working in London, he focused on the rickety houses and small businesses along Cheyne Walk in the Chelsea neighborhood, where he lived for many years. These scenes not only appealed to Victorian critics and art collectors, but they also provided subtle allusions to social and economic realities. In Chelsea Children, a child looks longingly into a shop window advertising stewed eels, an inexpensive meal favored by the poor. These local shops disappeared as cities developed and large-scale department stores became more prevalent.

The watercolors that resulted from his 1882 trip to Amsterdam are among Whistler’s most experimental works. Maintaining a wet surface while he worked, the artist rubbed and scraped the paper to achieve his desired effects. Whistler explained that he chose the word “nocturne” to describe his night scenes because “it generalizes and simplifies the whole set of them.” Despite their differences in scale, location, subject matter, and medium, all of his nocturnes focus on complicated patterns of color and tone.

Through these stylistic and thematic approaches that captured the developing urban character, Whistler painted an enchanting portrait of European street life.

Conservation and Science

According to the ledger books of the London art supplier C. Roberson and Company, Whistler purchased sixteen “blocks” of wove paper from 1881 to 1883. Blocks of paper, compressed and sealed around the edges, not only minimized distortion of the wet paper, but they were also easy to carry while painting outside. Remnants of adhesive and blue fabric discovered around the edges of many his watercolors confirm that Whistler used blocks for these works more than a century ago.

The blocks of wove watercolor paper that Whistler and other artists purchased were manufactured with different surface textures. These papers were sold by name: rough, cold-pressed, and hot-pressed. Rough paper was air dried, which left a textured surface. Cold-pressed paper was repeatedly flattened during the drying process to create an even surface. Hot-pressed paper was passed between heated metal rollers to compress fibers and impart a smooth finish. Whistler exploited these surface textures and their visual effect on his watercolors, using hot-pressed papers for his detailed street scenes and shopfronts and cold-pressed papers for his more atmospheric seascapes.

While it appears many of these watercolors were painted rapidly, technical analysis reveals Whistler sometimes significantly reworked and revised them. The skirt in Milly Finch is one example. Reflected infrared imaging reveals it was originally spread wide over the sofa. Whistler repainted the area to reduce the skirt’s size.

Extended exposure to light has faded or changed the color of nearly all of these watercolors. A century ago A Note in Green was described as having a “blazing greenish-yellow background.” The edges of the work hidden by the frame remain bright yellow, while the yellows in the rest of the painting have dulled over the years and now look muted.

Videos

Watercolor Rediscovered: Whistler in the Nineteenth Century

In conjunction with the opening of Whistler in Watercolor, the following lecture series on May 19, 2019, explored the development of watercolor in the Victorian era and James McNeill Whistler’s contributions to the genre. The program featured talks by experts in British and American art history (Kathleen Foster, Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Curator of American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Robyn Asleson, curator of prints and drawings at the National Portrait Gallery) and a paper conservation specialist (Emily Jacobson, paper and photographs conservator at the National Museum of Asian Art).

View the video playlist.

Support for the National Museum of Asian Art’s American art program is provided by the Lunder Foundation.