Whistler and his followers in Italy

On September 19, 1879, American artist James McNeill Whistler arrived in Italy with a commission from the Fine Arts Society of London to create twelve etchings of Venice. Over the ensuing fourteen months the artist produced a body of prints that are among the most important of his career. The prints from Whistler’s Venice period are distinguished by the artist’s original approach to the city itself and to his medium, and they are instrumental to an understanding of Whistler’s prodigy as a printmaker. His etchings and lithographs have arguably become the most studied prints in the history of art —after those of Rembrandt— and they had a significant influence on the art of his followers.

Whistler sought to capture a “Venice of the Venetians,” and he braved the cold, damp winter of 1879 to explore the city in search of new subjects that would set his art apart from the view paintings that had defined Venetian cityscapes up to that point. His prints depict palazzo entries, private courtyards and sweeping views over the canal; Venice’s most famous monuments appear rarely and in the background. His career-long interest in the effects of light and water were enhanced by the technical innovations that he developed in this period and these, along with his novel subject matters, created a vision of Venice that was unprecedented.

This exhibit presents eleven prints by Whistler from this period, placing them alongside the work of his followers who were practicing in Italy in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The juxtaposition of these works allows the viewer to appreciate both Whistler’s innovations and the different ways in which his work affected that of the artists who followed him. While artists such as Mortimer Menpes and Joseph Pennell still enjoy a modicum of fame, other artists in this exhibit, like Minna Bolingbroke, have so faded from the public conscious that it is not even possible to reconstruct their biographies. Whistler’s legacy lies in his far-reaching vision for both his medium and his subject which has made his art significant for a remarkably broad range of colleagues.