The Riva, No. 1 (The Riva)

The Riva, No. 1 (The Riva)

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The artist etched the Riva degli Schiavone from his room in the Casa Jankowitz in Venice. Traditional visual hierarchy is overturned and the foreground filled with a triangular expanse of open plaza. Paving stones are suggested with a few etched lines and the edges enlivened with pedestrians, moored boats, and gondolas. An arched bridge leads across a canal toward a curved bank lined with buildings, concluding in the tiny exclamation point of the Campanile. Whistler arrived in Venice in September 1879, commissioned by the Fine Art Society to prepare twelve etchings in three months, but returned to London in November 1880 with many more plates. This print was published in Venice, a Series of Twelve Etchings (the "First Venice Set") in December.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.