Lady in an armchair
Medium
Drypoint, with drypoint and scraped cancellation, in black ink on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Plate: 22.7 × 15.2 cm (8 15/16 × 6 in.); Sheet, sight, bound: 37.4 × 24 cm (14 3/4 × 9 1/2 in.)
Classification
drypoint
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
190727
Art Historical Context
Step into the intimate world of James McNeillistler's *Lady in an Armchair (1861), a drypoint print that captures the quiet elegance of a seated woman. Created during Whistler's formative years in London, when he was pioneering innovative printmaking techniques amid the Etching Revival, this work exemplifies his shift toward subtle realism and atmospheric effects. The artist, an American expatriate renowned for his tonal harmonies and later Aestheticism, here renders the subject with a directness that echoes his portraits in oil. Whistler's drypoint process—scratching lines directly into a co...
About the Artist
James McNeill Whistler · 1834–1903
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was an American-born painter and printmaker who became a leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement and pioneer of Tonalism and Japonisme. He revolutionized art by championing "art for art's sake" and treating paintings as visual equivalents of musical compositions, titling works as "arrangements," "harmonies," and "nocturnes" to emphasize formal qualities o...