All Objects

The diminutive size of The Wine Glass belies its importance as Whistler's only still-life etching among the nearly five hundred works he produced in this medium. He likely made it in London while staying with his half-sister Deborah and her husband, Sir Francis Seymour Haden, a physician and an etcher himself with an extensive print collection. Whistler may have been trying to emulate the shading and precision of Old Master etchings, which would have been readily available to him. He may also have inspired Haden, who one month later made his own drawing of a wine glass.

Just Becquet, a Parisian sculptor and musician, is shown holding a cello, his eyes gazing intently at the viewer. While his head is highly detailed, other areas of the composition are more simply executed. Minimal lines delineate the instrument's form and the subject's hands; in dramatic contrast to the nearly empty space in the center of the composition, sweeping, velvety drypoint lines frame Becquet's cloak, adding depth and a sense of movement.

In an inexpensive Parisian cafe (as implied by the print's title), five men sit in various states of repose. Although the dark curly hair, mustache, and beard of the figure at left led one early critic to identify him as Whistler, he is in fact modeled after Henri Martin, a former soldier. The watchful young man seems out of place in his surroundings, unlike his nocturnal companions, whose features are largely hidden or dulled by the alcohol in the conspicuously placed bottles. The fibrous gampi paper support imparts a warm tone, perhaps suggesting the glow from the overhead gaslight.

From his house on the Riva degli Schiavoni, Whistler evokes, in a delicate scribbled line, the familiar forms of Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana at the center and the Giudecca on the left, fading into evening light. Touches of blue, orange, and white in the sky add movement and a sense of fleeting time as the sun's last rays disappear. In the foreground, reflections of the buildings convey the water's depth and transparency, while strokes of white suggest its shimmering surface. Whistler's extraordinary economy of means here is characteristic of the pastels carried out later in his stay. The artist referred to them as "beauties."

Beyond the water-filled foreground, a sunlit facade of varied textures stretches across the surface of the print. An adjoining piazza is glimpsed through a deeply shadowed archway in this working-class area. Hanging laundry connects two spatial realms. Throughout, local residents go about their activities. Delicately etched lines combine with darker accents of drypoint and tone, added in the printing process, to create atmospheric effects.  A reviewer of the time commented on Whistler's "masterly treatment . . . of the transparency of the water . . . which in etching is little short of surprising."

A busy locale on the Thames, Hurlingham Park was an intersection of industrial and leisure activities where both barges and rowboats lined the bank. Using richly inked drypoint lines, Whistler draws attention to two sails and their reflections. A band of boats cuts across the middle of the composition, creating a strong horizontal line repeated in the gentle disturbances on the river's tranquil surface. The bold, abstract forms in the foreground are set off by a more delicately rendered landscape along the shore.

Whistler drew this view of Vitré’s picturesque architecture during a summer spent in Brittany. The foreground is dominated by the canal, heavily shaded in contrast to the sunlit medieval structures that border it. A single figure in Breton dress occupies the scene at left. In the background, a pattern of light and dark represents the rooftops of houses ascending the hill. Responding to his printer about the first proofs he received, Whistler exclaimed, "They are most delicate and beautifully printed . . . There is a delightful velvety quality about them." Whistler achieved this soft effect with a stump—a tool for blending and shading.