Whistler as Printmaker: Highlights from the Gertrude Kosovsky Collection

The Frick Collection is pleased to announce a promised gift of forty-two works on paper by James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), from the collection of Gertrude Kosovsky. An exhibition highlighting fifteen prints and one pastel from the gift is now on view in the Cabinet Gallery. 

The collection [...] includes twenty-seven etchings, fourteen lithographs, and one pastel, which range from Whistler’s early etchings dating from the late 1850s to lithographs of the late 1890s. Most are impressions made during his lifetime, a number of them from his major published sets, while others were produced for periodicals, thus encompassing different aspects of the American expatriate’s prolific activity as a printmaker. Works printed posthumously are also included.

The gift significantly expands the Frick’s Whistler holdings. In particular, it nearly triples the Frick’s works on paper by the artist — almost all from his Venice period — and places them in the context of his career as a whole, allowing many more aspects of the master’s virtuoso printmaking to be appreciated.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.