Early Morning

1878·Lithotint with scraping, on a prepared half-tint ground, in black on cream wove proofing paper·Image: 16.5 × 26.9 cm (6 1/2 × 10 5/8 in.); Sheet: 25.6 × 37.9 cm (10 1/8 × 14 15/16 in.)

<p>Whistler experimented with the expressive potential of lithography, and in the case of his rare lithotints, he applied washes of ink directly to the stone to create veils of pigment. The result is a nuanced representation of light and fog, as is seen in these evocations of life on London’s Thames River. At the time he produced these prints, Whistler was involved in a lawsuit with the famed English art critic John Ruskin, who had argued that the abstraction of one of Whistler’s painted <em>Nocturnes</em> defied the unwritten laws of aesthetics. Despite the notoriety—and bankrupting cost—of the legal case, Whistler persisted in his exploration of abstraction.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1878
Medium: Lithotint with scraping, on a prepared half-tint ground, in black on cream wove proofing paper
Dimensions: Image: 16.5 × 26.9 cm (6 1/2 × 10 5/8 in.); Sheet: 25.6 × 37.9 cm (10 1/8 × 14 15/16 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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