Annie

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

During a stay in London with his sister Deborah Delano Haden while recuperating from a fall, Whistler made this etching of his niece Annie. His brother-in-law, Seymour Haden, a gifted printmaker, encouraged the artist’s first serious efforts in the medium. Here, the emphasis on alternating lights and darks, and the omission of the figure’s legs, demonstrate a greater interest in abstract patterning than portraiture. Whistler gave this print to Thomas Winans, the Baltimore friend who funded his move to Paris in 1855.

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