Twelve Etchings from Nature: En Plein Soleil (1858): Art, History and Details

Twelve Etchings from Nature: En Plein Soleil (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:

En plein air typifies the taste for French art and for the practice of executing landscapes out of doors. Whistler referred to the Twelve Etchings from Nature as the "French Set," so-called because the chief sources of inspiration were to be found in the avant-garde French art of the day. Working from a low vantage point, Whistler placed his model on the crest of a hill with a distant town and poplar tree behind her. The bright play of sun on her face, the veiled half-shadow cast by the parasol, the wind-whipped fringe and grasses all contribute to the immediacy of the scene and to the artist’s developing powers to capture nuances of his subject.

Object facts

• Title: Twelve Etchings from Nature: En Plein Soleil
• Date: 1858
• Creator attribution: James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903)
• Culture: America
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching on chine collé
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1940.795.6

Collection credit

Bequest of James Parmelee

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.