Indeterminate Stillness: Looking at Whistler

January 26–April 10, 2011

This exhibition, celebrating Sharon and Barclay Simpson's gift to BAMPFA of sixty-two prints by James McNeill Whistler, looks at how Whistler subordinated Realism to the Modernist concerns of design, color, and tonal variation.

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James McNeill Whistler: Rotherhithe from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Series), 1860; etching; 10 ¾ X 7 ¾ in.; gift of Barclay and Sharon Simpson.

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Upcoming
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Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Selected Exhibition Objects

Print

Street at Saverne from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1858
Etching and drypoint printed in black ink on Japanese paper
Sheet: 9 5/8 x 8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.2
Print

The Kitchen from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1858
Etching
Plate: 8 7/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.5
Print

La Marchande de moutarde (The Mustard Seller) from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1858
Etching on Hallines laid paper
Plate: 6 1/8 x 3 1/2 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.4
Print

La Vielle aux loques (The Old Rag Gatherer) from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1858
Etching
Plate: 8 1/8 x 5 3/4 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.3
Print

Fumette from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1858
Etching printed in dark brown ink
Plate: 6 3/8 x 4 5/16 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.1
Print

Annie, Seated

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1857-1858
Etching
4 5/8 x 3 1/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of the Estate of J. K. Moffitt
1956.24
Film

Annie

United States

1982
Print

The Wine Glass

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1858
Etching printed in black ink on laid paper
Plate: 3 1/4 x 2 1/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.6
Print

Becquet (The Fiddler) from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1859
Etching and drypoint
Plate: 9 7/8 x 7 1/2 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Barclay and Sharon Simpson
2009.38.16
Print

Soupe à trois sous (Soup at three sous)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1859
Etching and drypoint
Plate: 6 x 9 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.14
Print

Longshoremen

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1859
Etching
Plate: 5 7/8 x 8 7/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.12
Print

The Forge from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1861
Drypoint
Plate: 7 5/8 x 12 3/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.18
Print

Old Westminster Bridge from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1859
Etching
Plate: 3 x 8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.8
Print

Thames Warehouses from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1859
Etching
Plate: 3 x 8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.7
Print

The Little Putney, No. 2

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879
Etching
Sheet: 6 3/8 x 9 1/2 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of the Estate of J. K. Moffitt
1956.14
Print

Rotherhithe from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1860
Etching
Plate: 10 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.17
Print

Limehouse from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1859
Etching
Plate: 5 x 8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.9
Print

Thames Police from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1859
Etching
Plate: 6 x 8 7/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.11
Print

Black Lion Wharf from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1859
Etching and drypoint
Plate: 5 7/8 x 8 7/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.10
Print

The Limeburner from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1859
Etching on Japanese paper
Sheet: 14 1/4 x 9 1/2 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.13
Print

Old Putney Bridge

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879
Etching and drypoint
Plate: 7 7/8 x 11 5/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.20
Print

Nocturne

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1878
Lithotint on ivory plate paper
Plate: 7 7/8 x 11 5/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.44
Print

San Biagio from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching and drypoint
Plate: 8 1/8 x 12 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.28
Print

The Palaces from Twelve Etchings (First Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching
Plate: 9 7/8 x 14 1/4 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.23
Print

The Doorway from Twelve Etchings (First Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching
11 1/2 x 8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of the Estate of J. K. Moffitt
1956.13
Print

The Two Doorways from Twelve Etchings (First Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching and drypoint
Sight: 7 1/4 x 11 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.26
Print

The Riva, No. 2 from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching and drypoint printed in dark brown ink with plate tone
Plate: 8 1/8 x 12 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.32
Print

The Riva, No. 1 Twelve Etchings (First Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching and drypoint
Plate: 7 3/4 x 11 5/8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.25
Print

Lagoon: Noon from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching on thin paper laid down on a thicker sheet
Plate: 5 x 8 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.39
Print

Ponte del Piovan from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching and drypoint
Sheet: 9 x 6 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.34
Print

The Bridge from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching
11 3/8 x 7 3/4 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.31
Print

Doorway and Vine from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching
Plate: 9 x 6 1/2 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.27
Print

The Balcony from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching with drypoint
Plate: 11 5/8 x 7 3/4 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.33
Print

The Rialto from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching and drypoint printed in dark brown on laid paper
Plate: 11 3/8 x 7 3/4 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.36
Print

Bead-Stringers from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching and drypoint
Plate: 9 x 6 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.29
Print

Turkeys from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching and drypoint
Plate: 8 x 5 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.30
Print

Nocturne: Furnace from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

1879-1880
Etching and drypoint
Plate: 6 1/2 x 9 in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of Sharon and Barclay Simpson
2009.38.38

Indeterminate Stillness: Looking at Whistler

January 26–April 10, 2011

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), the expatriate American artist, was a prolific and innovative painter, watercolorist, and printmaker. Throughout his lively career Whistler was known as a discerning collector of Japanese prints and as a quick-witted, sharp-tongued advocate of “art for art's sake.” Whistler's roots were in Realism, but his approach Modernist; his brand of Realism eschewed narrative and sentimentality and instead set the incidents and characters of the everyday into compositions determined by design, color, and tonal variation. For example, Whistler uses prosaic details to serve design and composition in numerous images of life along the Thames River, such as Rotherhithe (1860). Similarly, in his Venetian works, the minutiae of daily activity on the canals and lagoons are subsumed by the atmospheric effects of mist and fog. Whistler approached portraits in the same vein, posing the figures in vague flattened spaces where they blend into harmonious environments of tone and color, composed intervals of stillness and veracity. Indeterminate Stillness looks at Whistler through the panoramic range of his prints, which he made throughout his career, creating nearly five hundred etchings in addition to lithographs, linotints, and engravings. This exhibition also celebrates an extraordinary gift by Sharon and Barclay Simpson, avid collectors of Whistler's graphic work and longtime patrons and supporters of the University of California and particularly of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The Simpsons' generous gift of sixty-two prints by Whistler spans the thirty-year arc of his career and includes works from Whistler's most important print series, such as The Thames Set and both major series of Venetian prints. Whistler was born in Massachusetts, but spent his early years in St. Petersburg, Russia, where his father was a successful engineer and where James first studied art. After his family returned to America, Whistler briefly attended West Point Academy, then landed a job with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, where he was trained as an etcher. However, he was intent on a bohemian artistic life and soon moved to Paris and then to London, where he would be based for the rest of his life. In Paris, Whistler attended the popular studio of Charles Gabriel Gleyre, a follower of Ingres. The galleries of the Louvre, however, provided more influential models for Whistler, particularly the approach to light, tonal variation, and spatial composition in the works of seventeenth-century Dutch and Spanish masters Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Velazquez. Whistler and his circle of young artist and writer friends-Henri Fantin-Latour, Gustave Courbet, Edward Degas, Claude Monet, Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé -were drawn to Realism but not necessarily to tradition. In 1858 Whistler published his first portfolio of etchings, Twelve Etchings from Nature, also known as The French Set. Based on the success of this portfolio, Whistler moved to London where he continued his depictions of contemporary life. In 1871 he published a new portfolio of etchings, The Thames Set. Like Rotherhithe, which was part of the The Thames Set, the other scenes in the series are also intricately composed, with strong echoes of Realism. In these etchings, Whistler draws on design principles found in the Japanese prints of the Edo period that he and his circle collected with a passion. In 1886 and 1889, the Fine Arts Society in London published two sets of etchings that Whistler had made during extended stays in Italy, particularly Venice. They include both figures and city views, demonstrating Whistler's skilled draftsmanship and his extraordinary sense of atmosphere. Nocturne (1879-80) is from the first of the Venice sets. With a minimum of incised lines, the simple scene is enveloped in a rich darkness of water and sky, warm tones of black effectively evoking the humid atmosphere of Venice after dusk. Like many of his works of the 1860s and 1870s, paintings as well as works on paper, figures as well as seascapes, Nocturne's essence resides in a simple arrangement of closely related, harmonious color tonalities, an essence that stills and liberates the specifics of incident. Later this spring, internationally acclaimed Bay Area artist Robert Bechtle will speak in conversation with Barclay Simpson about Whistler, whose influence Bechtle has long acknowledged. His subjects are the qualities of light and atmosphere particular to the Bay Area as much as they are his immediate surroundings in middle-class San Francisco neighborhoods-parked cars, garages, ordinary people in back yards. In writing about Bechtle's recent watercolors and drawings, critic Robert Storr noted an imposed stillness and inherent poetry that recalls the tonal harmonies of James McNeil Whistler. In an observation that could apply equally well to Whistler's prints, Storr suggests that underlying the stillness of Bechtle's compositions whirs a velocity of spirit. (Robert Bechtle: Watercolors and Drawings, San Francisco: Gallery Paule Anglim, 2010).

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Indeterminate Stillness: Looking at Whistler

January 26–April 10, 2011

Selected Exhibition Objects

Print

Street at Saverne from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

The Kitchen from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

La Marchande de moutarde (The Mustard Seller) from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

La Vielle aux loques (The Old Rag Gatherer) from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Fumette from Twelve Etchings from Nature (French Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Annie, Seated

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Film

Annie

United States

Print

The Wine Glass

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Becquet (The Fiddler) from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Soupe à trois sous (Soup at three sous)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Longshoremen

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

The Forge from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Old Westminster Bridge from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Thames Warehouses from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

The Little Putney, No. 2

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Rotherhithe from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Limehouse from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Thames Police from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Black Lion Wharf from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

The Limeburner from A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (Thames Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Old Putney Bridge

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

Nocturne

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

San Biagio from A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings (Second Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

The Palaces from Twelve Etchings (First Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

The Doorway from Twelve Etchings (First Venice Set)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Print

The Two Doorways from Twelve Etchings (First Venice Set)