James McNeill Whistler - At the Piano 1858

Arrangement in Yellow and Grey 1857 Ingres, Roger Deliverant Angelique 1857 Vision of Saint Luke 1857 At the Piano 1858 Old Woman with Rags 1858 Portrait of Whistler with a Hat 1858 The Kitchen 1858
At the Piano 1858

At the Piano 1858
67x91cm oil/canvas
Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati

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From Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati:
The “Piano Picture,” as the artist called this study of his half-sister and niece, is world-renowned as Whistler’s first masterpiece. This experiment in composition and color is held together by a grid of picture frames, moldings, and furniture. With its space curving inward at the edges, two parallel centers are created in the black-robed woman concentrating on her playing while her white-clad daughter gazes outward. An advocate of “art for art’s sake,” Whistler relieved the suggestion of confinement by emphasizing reflections in the glass of the pictures as well as on the piano legs and instrument case.