Coast Scene, Bathers (1884–85): Artwork and History

Coast Scene, Bathers (1884–85) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

In this intimately scaled seascape, James McNeill Whistler employed the sparest of compositional elements to evoke a coastal atmosphere. Broad horizontal bands of blues and gray suggest sky, ocean, and sand, with dabs of thin pigment giving economical, yet expressive form to around a dozen figures on the windswept beach. Whistler dedicated much of his artistic practice to capturing the mood and color harmonies of marine scenes. Coast Scene, Bathers was painted en plein air, a practice to which the artist returned in the 1880s. It marked a distinctive shift from his studio-produced Nocturnes of the previous decade.

Object facts

• Title: Coast Scene, Bathers
• Date: 1884–85
• Artist attribution: James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903)
• Place of origin: United States
• Medium: Oil on panel
• Dimensions: 13.3 × 21.9 cm (5 1/4 × 8 5/8 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Arts of the Americas
• Reference number: 1933.208

Collection credit

Walter S. Brewster Collection

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.