James McNeill Whistler

Percy Thomas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Percy Thomas's print is based on a Whistler self-portrait, "Arrangement in Grey: Portrait of the Painter," ca. 1872 (Detroit Institute of Arts). The print was created as a frontispiece for the first catalogue of Whister's etchings, published in London in 1874 by the etcher's brother, Ralph Thomas. Wearing a smock and wide brimmed hat, the subject holds two brushes and is identified by his butterfly mark perched on the edge of the dado behind his shoulder. An inscription at upper right, from Whistler to Samuel P. Avery, Sr., relates this impression to the American edition of the catalogue, that Avery published in New York.

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