The Garden (1879–80): Art, History and Details

The Garden (1879–80) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Part of an expatriate community in Venice, James McNeill Whistler focused on the city’s architectural details in the prints, drawings, and paintings that he made during a year spent living there. This etching presents a private garden from the perspective of one of the city’s distinctive canals. Seen through an open doorway, the view, offers a voyeuristic glimpse of its inhabitants’ lives. Situated outside and looking into a lush garden, the viewer is placed in the artist’s position, able to feel his excitement as an outsider exploring a new but historied place.

Object facts

• Title: The Garden
• Date: 1879–80
• Creator attribution: James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903)
• Culture: America
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching and drypoint
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1923.31

A detail from the museum

This print is among the only ones in James McNeill Whistler's Second Venice Set without a clearly identifiable setting.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph King

Further reading listed by the museum

• Webb, Sheila, and Cleveland Museum of Art. Paper, the Continuous Thread. Cleveland, OH: Published by the Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.