Hooded Male Head (from Sketches on The Coast Survey Plate)

James McNeill Whistler

1854–55 · Etching; proof impression of the only state (Glasgow 1); this is a fragment cut from the upper portion of "Sketches on the Coast Survey Plate" (Kennedy no. 1) by Whistler and mounted on a board with six other related fragments. Cited by Glasgow as the earliest known impression. · Drawings and Prints

Whistler made his first etchings while employed as a draftsman at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington, D.C., between 1854 and 1855. A staff member taught him the technique and supplied him with a copper plate, on which he etched topographic renderings of coastlines, then sketched freely drawing figures. This fragment represents a Spanish hidalgo, or minor nobleman, and likely was intended as a self-portrait. It was trimmed from a printed proof and given to given to Thomas Winans, a friend in Baltimore who financed Whistler's move to Paris in 1855, allowing him to pursue an artistic career. Winans mounted the fragment in an album of Whistler's early work that his descendants gave to the Museum.

Artist

James McNeill Whistler

Date

1854–55

Medium

Etching; proof impression of the only state (Glasgow 1); this is a fragment cut from the upper portion of "Sketches on the Coast Survey Plate" (Kennedy no. 1) by Whistler and mounted on a board with six other related fragments. Cited by Glasgow as the earliest known impression.

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Margaret C. Buell, Helen L. King, and Sybil A. Walk, 1970