Finette

Catalogue number: SO 0090
Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Printer: Fine Art Society
Date: 1859
Medium: Etching and drypoint
Dimensions [to plate mark]: 202 x 292 mm
Catalogues: Glasgow 61
State: State 14, cancelled plate
Publication: Whistler's Etchings, published by The Fine Art Society, London, 1879

Printing

The cabaret dancer Finette is depicted wearing a black satin ‘domino’ cloak over her wide crinoline. Behind her is a box containing her mask for a Bal masqué and other accessories associated with hedonistic nightlife in Second Empire Paris. The subject of this etching and its art-historical precedents have been extensively discussed by earlier generations of writers, although none have chosen to note the close correspondences of subject-matter and composition between Finette and a significant number of collodion photographs by Clementina Hawarden with which Whistler is certain to have been familiar. Visual evidence suggests Hawarden's ‘Studies from Life’ were in circulation amongst progressive painters and printmakers in both London and Paris.

The ‘Cancelled Set’ of etchings was produced as part of the campaign by Whistler's allies to offer support to the artist after his bankruptcy, which followed the punitive outcome of the well-known ‘Whistler-Ruskin Libel Trial’ in November 1878. Whistler's etching plates were sold at the bankruptcy auction on 7 May 1879 and were purchased by The Fine Art Society, who printed an unknown number of impressions (possibly 50 from each plate) of around 57 examples of his work, bound into albums. The impression of Finette in the Surviving Object retains evidence on the left side of the sheet consistent with being bound into a volume. At least ten of the Fine Art Society albums came into the possession of Alphonse Thibaudeau, co-author of the 1877 Legros catalogue raisonné, and in 1889 were subsequently sold to dealers who broke up the collections for sale as individual prints.

History

Purchased from Ebay seller aldanhouse on 08 December 2025. Order number:10-13943-71571.