En Plein Soleil

Catalogue number: SO 0091
Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Printer: Auguste Delâtre
Date: 1858
Medium: Etching and drypoint
Dimensions [to plate mark]: 136 x 101 mm
Catalogues: Glasgow 11
State: III/III
Publication: Douze Eaux Fortes d'après Nature 1858

Subject

Having recovered his health in London, Whistler returned to Paris in April 1858, where he continued to engage with the innovations of contemporary forms of media, including the visual and compositional effects seen in the various types of photographic print then in circulation, and in the productions of British and French illustrated journals. He also joined other Realist artists in their re-evaluation of historical art outside the Franco-Italian Classical canon favoured by the Académie impériale, specifically the Dutch, Spanish and English traditions.

It seems likely that En Plein Soleil was produced in Paris in the early summer of 1858. Like many of Whistler's etchings of that year, the image seems to evoke past precedents; an obvious comparison would be Francisco Goya's famous painting The Parasol (1777). The strategy of using a cast shadow to break up the integrity of the subject's face, tentatively explored in Goya's painting, has become the intentional centre of interest in Whistler's etching, where it gains new meaning as a sign of ‘immediacy’ and para-photographic modernity. The motif would later be appropriated by Claude Monet in his early plein-air painting The Beach at Trouville (1870).

History

Gallery label on backing board: Charles Chenin & co. Ltd, Representative English and Foreign Artist's Colourmen, 183a Kings Road, Chelesa, Phone Kensington 3112.

Reciept: Locke & England, Chartered Surveyors, 1&2 Euston Place, Leamington Spa. 29 March, 1973. Handwritten ‘Lot 240, Whistler, Etching, £6 -’

Purchased online at auction from Fieldings Auctioneers, Stourbridge on 15 Jan 2026 09:30 GMT.