The Wine Glass
Medium
Etching with foul biting in black ink on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Plate: 8.3 × 5.5 cm (3 5/16 × 2 3/16 in.); Sheet: 18.6 × 16 cm (7 3/8 × 6 5/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
109168
Art Historical Context
James McNeill Whistler’s *The Wine Glass* (1859) captures the quiet elegance of everyday objects through the intimate medium of etching. Created during Whistler’s formative years in Paris, where he immersed himself in the realist circles of artists like Gustave Courbet, this small plate (just 8.3 × 5.5 cm) exemplifies his early mastery of printmaking. Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Prints and Drawings department, it invites viewers to appreciate the subtle beauty in simplicity—a hallmark of Whistler’s emerging Aesthetic movement philosophy, where “art for art’s sake” prioritized harm...
About the Artist
James McNeill Whistler · 1834–1903
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was an American-born painter and printmaker who became a leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement and pioneer of Tonalism and Japonisme. He revolutionized art by championing "art for art's sake" and treating paintings as visual equivalents of musical compositions, titling works as "arrangements," "harmonies," and "nocturnes" to emphasize formal qualities o...