Swan and Iris (Sketch after Cecil Lawson's "Swan and Iris")

Swan and Iris (Sketch after Cecil Lawson's "Swan and Iris")

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Whistler's etching is based on an unfinished painting by the British landscapist Lawson, a member of the Idyllists. The tranquil riverscape is composed of a flowering iris in the foreground, and a swan with outstretched wings moving across an expanse of water, perhaps the River Thames, towards a bank in the middle distance. The composition is framed by the wide span of an arched bridge. The print was commissioned as an illustration for a posthumous biography of Lawson written by Edmund Gosse and published in 1883, a copy of which is in the Museum's collection (17.3.2983). Lawson's wife, Constance Lawson, was the elder sister of Whistler's wife-to-be Beatrice Philip Godwin, whom he married in 1888.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Swan and Iris (Sketch after Cecil Lawson's "Swan and Iris")Swan and Iris (Sketch after Cecil Lawson's "Swan and Iris")Swan and Iris (Sketch after Cecil Lawson's "Swan and Iris")Swan and Iris (Sketch after Cecil Lawson's "Swan and Iris")Swan and Iris (Sketch after Cecil Lawson's "Swan and Iris")

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.