JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER (1834-1903)

This ethereal portrait of the artist's friend Maud Franklin is, remarkably, only his second essay in lithotint, a notoriously difficult medium to control. It shows a more successful integration of liquid tusche and lithographic crayon than his first attempt Study: Maud Seated (Way 131) from the same year. The strength of the printing of the areas of broad wash, particularly to the right, and the heavy wove paper, of the type used for proofing, suggest that this may be one of the earliest impressions taken. As Way made no distinction between the states in his tally of twelve we cannot be certain how many of these were in the first state, as here. Spink, Stratis and Tedeschi list two, in the British Museum and the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.