American Impressionism 2014-15

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Date: c. 1883

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.152

Text Entries: Thought to depict a coastline in England, this work is executed with thin washes of paint and slight tonal variation that often characterize James McNeill Whistler's small seascapes of the period. Whistler's brushwork is almost imperceptible except in a few waves and the clouds overhead. These elements and the vertical masts and lone figure on the beach punctuate the horizontal bands of Whistler's composition. The boats that are cropped on the left and right edges of the work also lend a sense of captured motion, their partial inclusion suggesting that they were in Whistler's sight line when a "freshening breeze" stirred the scene.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Date: 1887

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.155

Text Entries: Beginning in the 1880s, Whistler painted nearly all of his outdoor scenes on small wood panels en plein air (outdoors). While traveling with his brother on holiday, Whistler created this atmospheric evocation of the Belgian seaport and popular resort of Ostend, in which a welcoming crowd presumably cheers the ship of King Leopold II into harbor. The individuals in the crowd merge to create a horizontal strip of color that forms a layer with the beach, water, and sky, while the two figures on the right in the foreground add depth to the otherwise flattened composition. As its title alludes, the painting contains "notes" of red-the Belgian flag, the British Red Ensign, and touches in the crowd-that serve as the "visual music" that Whistler sought in his work. A brownish wash melds the pictorial elements together and acts as a veil that undercuts the immediacy of subject. Shrouded in this misty layer, it becomes a scene of quiet contemplation rather than one of festive activity for the occasion. When exhibited in 1887, a critical review described this small seascape as "an impression merely, and those who can see the poetry of faint impressions of light and shadow will get something out of it."

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Date: 1899

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.158

Text Entries: Horizontal bands of color and barely perceptible brushstrokes-as in "A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend"-characterize this composition. One in a series of panel paintings executed in Pourville-sur-Mer in France, this work reflects only a mild disturbance of serenity created by its layered paint of the white-capped waves and peopled beach. By the year this painting was executed, James McNeill Whistler had been creating small works, most measuring less than 12 inches and many around 5 x 8 inches, for more than a decade. This format became a trademark following an 1884 London exhibition of sixty-one small oils, watercolors, pastels, drawings, and prints. Prominent art patron Charles Lang Freer explained that Whistler's small pictures were "superficially, the size of your hand, but, artistically, the size of a continent." Whistler would continue to create and exhibit these diminutive works throughout his career. He once explained, "A perfect thing is a perfect thing, whether large or small."

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Date: by 1884

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1999.149

Text Entries: A brilliant portraitist known for his full-length canvases, James McNeill Whistler used this small panel to capture the lounging figure of his mistress, Maud Franklin. During her more than fifteen-year association with Whistler, Franklin often modeled for the artist. For this oil on panel, Whistler was less concerned with expressing Maud's identity than with capturing the languorous mood of the setting, which is wonderfully off-set by Whistler's expressive brushwork. Swirls of paint compose the forms, and a liberal use of red pigment further animates the scene. Such exuberance of mood and material is less obvious in Whistler's later works on panel, evidenced by the examples in this room.