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Theatre, Loches

Impression: Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
(1934.621)
Number: 418
Date: 1888
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 101 x 68 mm
Signed: butterfly at upper centre
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 3
Catalogues: K.387; M.388
Impressions taken from this plate  (3)

TECHNIQUE

This is an etching with additional drypoint, mostly used to augment the shadows. Broken curved lines, dots, dashes, and patches of shading are scattered across the scene, creating isolated vignettes of the audience, full of character, like notes in a sketchbook. The background has larger areas of shading and crosshatching creating masses of shadowy flickering light and dark from which figures emerge, only partly defined.

PRINTING

Three impressions of Theatre, Loches have been located, all printed in black ink with very light tone on laid paper, trimmed to the platemark and signed with a butterfly and 'imp.' on the tab to show that Whistler printed them. The one inscribed '1st Proof' is on ivory (), another on cream () and the third on off-white paper ().