La Rétameuse

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

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