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James McNeill Whistler 1834-1903
La Rétameuse, 1858signed and inscribed 'Imp. Delatre. Rue St. Jacques. 171.' in plate; printed in black ink on wove paperetchingan impression in the second (final) state4 ½ x 3 ½ inches (11.2 x 8.9 cm)The elderly sitter in this etching is shown in a respectable yet worn state of working-class dress. She wears a distinctive, high-crowned bulbous bonnet with long ribbons, a traditional garment...The elderly sitter in this etching is shown in a respectable yet worn state of working-class dress. She wears a distinctive, high-crowned bulbous bonnet with long ribbons, a traditional garment common among country women in Alsace during the mid-19th century. Whistler identifies her trade as a weaver through the shuttle thrust into her waistband. At the time, hand-loom weaving was already being viewed as an outdated, pre-industrial craft, making the sitter a picturesque and somewhat outdated figure to the eyes of an American expatriate like Whistler, accustomed to bustle of Paris.Literature
R. Thomas, A Catalogue of the Etchings and Drypoints of James Abbott MacNeil Whistler (London 1874), no. 3;F. Wedmore, Whistler's Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue (London 1886), no. 5;
H. Mansfield, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (Chicago 1909), no. 11;
E.G. Kennedy, The Etched Work of Whistler (New York 1910), no. 14;
M.F. MacDonald, G. Petri, M. Hausberg, and J. Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, (Glasgow 2011), on-line website at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk, no. 26
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