3. James Abbott McNeill Whistler
(1834-1903)

The Music Room

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Whistler, The Music Room

The Music Room

Etching, 1858, 143 x 215 mm., Kennedy 33 ii/ii. Fine, rich impression in dark brown on old laid paper with full margins. The image shows Francis Seymour Haden at the left, his wife Dasha (Whistler's half-sister), and his surgical assistant Mr. James Reed Traer, all seated near a table and reading by lamplight. The plate resulted from studies, by both Whistler and Haden, of the interior lighting of scenes and sent both of them back to studying examples by Rembrandt (of whose etchings Haden had an enviable collection). Whistler proofed his plate in a great variety of ways but seems to have preferred the darkest impressions with much ink tone left on the plate, certainly a harbinger of things to come.