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- Accession Number
- 1954/1.344
- Title
- Annie Haden
- Artist
- James McNeill Whistler
- Artist Nationality
- American
- Artist Life Dates
- 1834 - 1903
- Medium and Support
- drypoint, printed in black ink on laid paper
- Object Creation Date
- 1860
- Object Creation Place
- North and Central America (continent)
- United States (nation)
- Credit Line
- Bequest of Margaret Watson Parker
- Inscription
- On plate: Whistler. 1860("6" is in reverse). Notation in pencil, lower margin (possibly by Trixie Whistler) Collector's mark: Royal Library, Windsor Castle. Lugt 2535
- Dimensions
- 47.1 cm x 32.9 cm (18 9/16 in. x 12 15/16 in.)
- Century
- 19th century
- Primary Object Classification
-
Print
- Physical Description
- A girl with long loose hair stands on a carpet in front of drapery. She is wearing a straw hat and cape over her dress; she is wearing flat shoes with rosetts on the top. She stands facing slightly to the left, although her eyes look at the viewer. Her left hand is not visible and her right hand holds the edge of her cape.
- Subject Matter
- Whistler was very fond of the children of his half-sister, Deborah Haden. She and her husband, the surgeon and amateur printmaker Francis Seymour Haden, lived in London and Whistler spent a lot of time with the family. He drew and painted his sister and her children numerous times in the late 1850s and early 1860s. This portrait of his niece Annie was drawn when the sitter was about 12 years old.
- Whistler admired the paintings of Velázquez and here Whistler incorporated some of the conventions of aristocratic portraiture that he valued in the Spanish painter's work. However, despite the formality of the pose, Whistler's drypoint shows his touching empathy and affection for Annie. The face captures all the tentative self-consciousness of the young woman with the most delicate lines. Years later, even as late as 1900, when Whistler was asked if his reputation as a printmaker had to rely on only one of his works, he said that he'd stake his reputation on this plate of Annie Haden.
