Terrible Disaster! Loss of the Arctic! (from Sketchbook)
1854–55
Medium
Brown ink on brown wove paper
Dimensions
5 x 3 1/4 in. (12.7 x 8.3 cm)
Classification
Drawing
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Margaret C. Buell, Helen L. King, and Sybil A. Walk, 1970
Accession Number
1970.121.43
Tags
Art Historical Context
In 1854, the steamship *SS Arctic* sank in a tragic collision off Newfoundland coast, claiming over 300 lives in one of the era's worst maritime disasters. James McNeill Whistler, a young American artist barely out of his teens, captured the horror in this poignant sketchbook drawing titled *Terrible Disaster! Loss of the!*. Rendered in brown ink on matching brown wove paper, intimate 5 x 3¼-inch page feels like a raw, personal reaction to shocking newspaper headlines, evoking the chaos and human cost amid America's growing fascination with steam-powered ocean travel. Whistler's economical us...
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...