The Old Rag Woman, No. 10 (1858): Art, History and Details

The Old Rag Woman, No. 10 (1858) 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:

Whistler's first set of prints, the so-called French Set, included domestic and genre scenes, studies of friends and their children, and glimpses of shadowy figures in backstreets, alleyways, and anonymous interiors. His choice of subject and treatment reflected the American ex-patriot's awareness of modern realist trends in French art. This print, made after Whistler's return to Paris from the Rhine, describes an old woman silhouetted in a doorway, thrown into relief by a shadowed interior. Bent with fatigue, she sits among bundles of scavenged rags, gathered by the poor and sold to papermakers. The image resonates with the painful combination of aging and urban poverty.

Object facts

• Title: The Old Rag Woman, No. 10
• Date: 1858
• Creator attribution: James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903)
• Culture: America
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching with chine collé
• Dimensions: Plate: 20.8 x 14.8 cm (8 3/16 x 5 13/16 in.); Sheet: 27.3 x 20.8 cm (10 3/4 x 8 3/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1922.438

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph King

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.