115

  • The Long Gallery, Louvre

  • 1894
  • James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American 1834-1903)
  • Transfer lithograph on ivory wove paper, published in The Studio
  • 21.9 x 16.0 cm., 8-5/8 x 6-3/8" image
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase through Gift from Dr. Thomas B. Brumbaugh, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2001.31

Essay by Catherine Carter Goebel, Editor

The Long Gallery, Louvre, depicts a central location for nineteenth-century artists. This former Parisian palace for the French monarchy was converted to a public museum in the wake of the French Revolution. From this point onward, it became a hub for art students like James McNeill Whistler, who in the 1850s first met his close friend, Henri Fantin-Latour, in this very hall. Fantin often sketched in this Long Gallery, a typical contemporary means toward a young artist's education through learning by replicating the Old Masters. This practice also resulted in marketable copies of masterpieces which provided welcome revenue for starving artists at the time. The friendship that resulted from this chance meeting not only introduced Whistler to the world of French Bohemia through Fantin's considerable connections, but also benefitted Fantin through Whistler's English ties which provided him with a market for his beautiful still life paintings (web gallery 92).

Whistler thus returned to this great landmark of his youth when he and his wife Beatrix moved to Paris in 1892. His prints during this time were produced in lithography, a medium that Beatrix encouraged and which he valued for its ability to capture the immediacy of the artist's sketch. Through his mature, reductive style, subtleties of spatial illusionism are rendered through subtle strokes of light and shadow. Although the flickering effects seem similar to French Impressionism, his Art for Art's Sake philosophy behind them differed. This work also contrasts with his earlier Realist etching style (web gallery 76 and 103). With the slightest masterful stroke, the viewer's eye moves down the corridor toward the adjacent gallery in the distance. The figures appear abstracted, yet are complete in essence. Perhaps he also reflected nostalgia with the artist depicted in the middle ground, painting on canvas after an original as Fantin did when they first met here. As audience, we in turn consider the spectators in this print, examining the artwork that embellishes the museum walls. This motif of depicting visitors studying artwork dates back to at least the eighteenth century. Whistler also continued his current practice of layering space through doorways. This image reached still further audience through publication in the journal, The Studio.