Rue de Vannes, Paris

Description

Rue Vauvilliers
circa 1892–93
Etching on laid Japan tissue
Only state (Kennedy 439)
Bequest of Margaret Watson Parker, 1954/1.410
Whistler’s commitment to transfer lithography was so thoroughgoing in the 1890s that etchings like this one are extremely rare. Here he returns to the theme of street views, paring the building down to its essential elements in a depiction so minimal that the work borders on pure abstraction; his command at this stage was such that he achieved what he sought in a single state. Near musical in its play of theme and variation, the four-story building becomes an opportunity to juxtapose pairs of windows; the theme varies on each floor, from window boxes on the top floor through a series of balconies on the floors below. Pairs of dogs and milk cans on the street level playfully complete the image on the ground floor where the visual masses of the windows are anchored by the iron fence near the facade. Whistler creates a sense of the wall of the edifice through the placement of his butterfly signature, which is balanced on the right by the abstracted dark knob of a join between two sections of downspout.
These late Paris plates often suffered from negligent care. Whistler carried the prepared plates around wrapped in paper, which abraded the ground; the resultant pitting to the surface meant he had to exert extraordinary control when biting the plate, and rather than submerge it in an acid bath, he used a feather to selectively direct a controlled stream of acid. When Whistler turned to the American artist Frank Short (1857–1945) to print them for him, he directed him to wipe the plates cleanly, eschewing the atmospheric effects contributed by plate tone. He justified this rejection of his characteristic use of plate tone by saying, “what was good enough for Rembrandt is good enough for me.”