James McNeill Whistler: breaking all the rules: this American expatriate excelled as a painter, printmaker, etcher, lithographer, and gallery designer—all the while doing it his way - Museums Today - Biography

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 2004

Freer purchased 11 impressions of the Amsterdam prints from Whistler in the spring of 1890, eventually assembling an unrivaled collection of 1,100 of Whistler's works on paper: pastels, watercolors, drawings, lithographs, and prints. Due to their fragile nature, the works may be displayed only for short periods of time in modern museums.

In early 1887, Whistler became romantically involved with the artist Beatrix Godwin, whom he married in 1888. In 1892, the Whistlers moved to Paris, where they settled in the aristocratic neighborhood of the Faubourg St. Germain. Almost all of Whistler's lithographs were drawn between 1887 and Beatrix's death from cancer in 1896. The artist used grease crayons to draw on a prepared printing stone, challenging contemporary notions of form and finish. Tranfer lithographs, meanwhile, were made by drawing the crayon onto a piece of paper and then rubbing it onto the stone, which then is etched and inked for printing. Subjects include the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, local shops, his home, and portraits of friends and family. They often are sketchy, with large areas left unworked, but offer tender glimpses of the irascible artist as a contented family man.

"Mr. Whistler's Galleries" will be on display through April 4. "Whistler in Paris: Lithographs from the Belle Epoque, 1891-1896" will run through Aug. 15. Both are on view at the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.