Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter by James Abbot McNeill Whistler (1834

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Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter

James Abbot McNeill Whistler (1834–1903)

c. 1872

Oil on canvas

29 1/2 x 21 in. (74.9 x 53.3 cm)

Collection: Detroit Institute of the Arts number 34.27

Bequest of Henry Glover Stevens in memory of Ellen P. Stevens and Mary M. Stevens

Provenance:Alexander Ionides. Alecco Ionides George McCulloch, London, 1895; to his widow, Mrs. Coutts Michie, 1907 William O'Leary Fine Arts, Detroit, until 1911. Henry Glover Stevens, Detroit, 1911 Acquired in 1934

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Commentary by Théodore Duret

Whistler had his studio in the Rue Campagne Premiere. Here he painted, among his earliest works (1857-1859), his bust portrait of himself, with a hat on his head, engraved by H. Guèrard. In this there has been discovered the influence of Rembrandt, in whom he was then deeply interested. He had been particularly taken by Rembrandt's head of a young man at the Louvre, with the wide biretta and the long wavy hair, and he amused himself by painting his own portrait in a similar get- up. Here is a heavily loaded canvas, a strong opposition of light and shade, while the wide-brimmed hat and tousled hair complete the analogy. A second portrait (plate) of himself, also of bust length, and with a hat on, which is reproduced as a frontispiece to this volume, but less Rembrandtesque and more marked by his own personality, must have been painted at about this period, only a little later. [20]

References

Duret, Theodore. Whistler. Trans. Frank Rutter. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1907; London: Grant Richards, 1907.

Merrill, Linda. A Pot of Paint: Aesthetics on Trial in Whistler v. Ruskin. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

Whistler, J.M. . Mr Whistler’s “Ten O’Clock”. London: Chatto and Windus, 1888.

Wilmer, Clive. “The Falling Rocket: Ruskin, Whistler and Abstraction in Art” Victorian Web. [Complete text].

Last modified 11 January 2012