The Kitchen

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This image of a rustic kitchen in Lutzelbourg, a town in Alsace, belongs to a group of etchings known as the "French Set." They were Whistler’s first published prints, issued in Paris in 1858 by Auguste Delâtre and formally titled "Douze eaux-fortes d’après nature" (Twelve Etchings from Nature). The twenty-one-year-old artist had moved to Paris from Washington, D.C., three years earlier. Encouraged by his British brother-in-law the amateur etcher Seymour Hayden, Whistler traveled through northeastern France and the Rhineland, sketching and etching several plates in situ. He completed the plate for this print after returning to Paris. The strong contrasts of light and shade demonstrate an appreciation for Dutch models and anticipate Whistler’s mature etchings.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art