La Rétameuse

James McNeill Whistler

1858 · Etching, printed in black ink on buff (darkened) chine on off-white wove (chine collé); second state of two (Glasgow) · Drawings and Prints

Whistler portrays a poor elderly woman in old-fashioned garb wearing a distinctive bonnet. "La Rétameuse" translates as tinker, a travelling repairer of tinlware and the subject has thrust what may be a shuttle, or large spoon, into the waist of her apron. Several of the etchings that the artist published in "Douze eau-fortes d'apres Nature" (Twelve Etchings from Nature) in 1858 center on French women who worked into old age. He presented them without sentiment or idealization but with an awareness that society's need for their skills was being swept away by industrialization. The sensitive detailed etching of this subject's irregular facial features contrasts with looser open lines elsewhere in the image, a handling that echoes Rembrandt whose prints Whistler knew from the collection of his brother-in-law Seymour Haden.

Artist

James McNeill Whistler

Date

1858

Medium

Etching, printed in black ink on buff (darkened) chine on off-white wove (chine collé); second state of two (Glasgow)

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of William Loring Andrews, 1883, transferred from the Library