The Duet
Medium
Transfer lithograph in black on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 24.6 × 16.5 cm (9 11/16 × 6 1/2 in.); Sheet: 28.3 × 22.7 cm (11 3/16 × 8 15/16 in.)
Classification
transfer lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
73793
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Similar to many other artists of the period, Whistler relied on family members to serve as models. Relatives sometimes posed for formal works but were often pictured in everyday settings. Many of the resulting prints and drawings are charmingly casual, as exemplified by these domestic images of Whistler’s wife and two of her sisters. In one, Beatrice Whistler and her younger sister Ethel Whibley play a four-hand piano piece in the comfortable, lamp-lit salon of the Whistlers’ home in Paris. The ...
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...