Weary

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Whistler depicts the celebrated Irish beauty Joanna Hiffernan—his model and mistress—sunk in an armchair, engulfed by a long skirt and loose hair, her lips parted as if to speak. The delicate paper captures the soft, drypoint lines and conveys a sensual mood. The light sketch of a girl’s head (in the lower left of the sheet) suggests that Whistler first worked on the plate from the opposite direction with another subject in mind. Drypoint lines were scratched directly into the copper to produce this famous image.

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