Portraits, Pastels, Prints: Whistler in The Frick Collection
June 2 through August 23, 2009
Whistler’s Working Method
Accounts of the discord and controversy that often surrounded Whistler — notably his famous libel suit against the critic John Ruskin of 1878 and his frequent disputes with sitters — portray a brash and
at times reckless man. As an artist, however, Whistler was serious
and devoted to his craft — a perfectionist who controlled all aspects of
production, choosing canvases of particular weaves and designing his
own frames. His paintings evolved over the course of numerous lengthy
sessions in the studio, often to the vexation of his sitters. Rosa Corder,
whose portrait is shown here, once recounted to a friend that she
posed for Whistler some forty times “lasting on two occasions until
she fainted and at last refused to go on with them.” The Comte de
Montesquiou similarly remarked on the “innumerable and interminable
posing sessions . . . like drills during which the painting . . . seems to
submit to the very laws of human growth,” which he endured until
Whistler finally declared, “Look at me for an instant longer, and you
will look forever.”
Whistler experimented constantly and altered his compositions as he painted, often spending an entire day on a hand or head. He
sometimes scraped down his canvases in order to begin anew and
repainted certain passages over and over again, ultimately concealing
his process with a final layer of freely applied paint. The boldness of
his brushstrokes creates the illusion that he dashed off his paintings
with great speed, rather than with obsessive care, and attests to his
facility with paint, just as his spare application of pastel and deftly
etched lines demonstrate his mastery as a printmaker and draftsman.
Whistler’s handling of paint dazzles the eye as much for its vivid energy
as for the splendid illusions of form and texture it achieves.
Whistler painted the five pictures exhibited here before and after his
stay in Venice in 1879–80. Three pastels and twelve etchings from this
trip are on view in the Cabinet near the museum’s entrance. |
