The Music Room

1859·Etching, with selective wiping of plate tone, in black on off-white wove paper·Image/plate: 14.4 × 21.4 cm (5 11/16 × 8 7/16 in.); Sheet: 20.4 × 33.6 cm (8 1/16 × 13 1/4 in.)

Long before Whistler conceived of the portrait of his mother, his most important early models were his half-sister, Deborah Haden, and her family. Deborah was married to the physician, print collector, and amateur artist Francis Seymour Haden, and they had three children, Annie, Seymour, and Arthur. During one visit in 1859, Whistler created ambitious but personal depictions of the family, including the The Music Room, which portrays the couple along with Haden’s medical partner, James Traer, as deeply absorbed in their respective activities. Meanwhile, the severe profile of Deborah in <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/73412">Reading by Lamplight</a> (1917.443) anticipates Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1.

Catalogue

Year: 1859
Medium: Etching, with selective wiping of plate tone, in black on off-white wove paper
Dimensions: Image/plate: 14.4 × 21.4 cm (5 11/16 × 8 7/16 in.); Sheet: 20.4 × 33.6 cm (8 1/16 × 13 1/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: James McNeill Whistler

Artist

James McNeill Whistler

Painting

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake".

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

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