Whistler in watercolor: lovely little games

Abstract

For renowned artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), watercolor was the medium through which he reinvented himself in the 1880s and painted his way into posterity. No one was more smitten with Whistler and his works than Gilded Age industrialist Charles Lang Freer, who amassed the world's largest collection of watercolors by the artist and included them in his bequest to the Smithsonian in 1906. Freer's collection comprises more than fifty examples of Whistler's watercolors, yet these works have never left the confines of the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. This landmark book takes a fresh look at the exhibition and reception of Whistler's watercolors in Britain and the United States and provides a new scientific analysis of his materials and techniques, from the papers he used to the pigments he chose.

Contents

Preface and acknowledgments -- A new beginning / Lee Glazer -- Galleries and games / Lee Glazer -- Turn to America / Lee Glazer -- Knowledge of a lifetime / Emily Jacobson and Blythe McCarthy -- Whistler's watercolors. Early works -- Seascapes and river views -- In the studio -- Domestic interiors -- Street scenes -- Nocturnes -- Freer's watercolors.