Artwork App

A work made of oil on paper mounted on panel.

Board: 62 × 46.5 cm (24 7/16 × 18 5/16 in.); Overall: 63 × 47.3 cm (24 13/16 × 18 5/8 in.)

The Artist in His Studio

By the mid-1860s, the London-based, American artist James McNeill Whistler was increasingly fascinated with the aesthetics of Asian art. In The Artist in His Studio, Whistler stares out at the viewer with palette and paintbrush in hand, surrounded by works from his collection: three Japanese scrolls hang on the wall and Chinese porcelain adorns shelves on the left. He applied thin layers of paint in muted tones to evoke the flattened appearance of Japanese woodblock prints. The composition also recalls the work of the Spanish Baroque painter Diego Velázquez, who likewise included a self-portrait at his easel in Las Meninas (1656, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). Whistler harmonized Western and Eastern artistic elements, placing himself at the center of such an enterprise.

Credit Line

Friends of American Art Collection

Colors

Exhibition History

Milwaukee Art Institute, An Exhibition of Forty Paintings Presented to the Art Institute of Chicago by the Friends of American Art, Mar. 1–29, 1925, cat. 40, as In the Studio. Art Institute of Chicago, <a href="https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/5626/a-century-of-progress-loan-exhibition-of-paintings-and-sculpture-1933">A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture</a>, May 23–Oct. 31, 1933, cat. Art Institute of Chicago, Summer Exhibitions, July 20–Oct. 29, 1939, cat. 1. WI, Milwaukee Art Institute, Nineteenth Century American Masters, Feb. 20–Mar. 28, 1948, no cat. IL, Durand Art Institute, Lake Forest College, A Century of American Painting: Masterpieces Loaned by The Art Institute of Chicago, June 10–16, 1957, no. 2, as The Artist in the Studio. Art Institute of Chicago, Whistler's Mother: An American Icon Returns to Chicago, Mar. 4–May 21, 2017, no cat. London, Royal Academy of Arts, The Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan and James McNeill Whistler, Feb. 23–May 23, 2022; Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, July 3–Oct. 10, 2022, cat. (ill. pl. 38).