The Freer Gallery of Art has launched “Whistler in Watercolor,” a scholarly, online catalogue of watercolor pieces by 19th-century American artist James McNeill Whistler. The new resource includes works rarely seen outside of the Freer Gallery, accompanied by extensive curatorial information and archival documents.
The Freer Gallery of Art is home to the world’s largest collection of James McNeill Whistler’s watercolors. Originally acquired by museum founder Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919), the collection comprises more than fifty seascapes, figures, interiors, and nocturnes.
This online catalogue introduces visitors to the artist’s vast creative output in watercolor and provides access to rarely seen works that have never left the confines of the Freer Gallery. It incorporates collaborative research by our museum’s curatorial, conservation, and scientific staff to illuminate the artist’s techniques and materials.
The Whistler in Watercolor online scholarly catalogue invites visitors to explore the collection with state-of-the-art technical imaging and archival documents, map the location where each artwork was created, and more. Each object in the online catalogue is accompanied by tabs detailing extensive curatorial information, including the work’s provenance and exhibition history, technical analysis of the pigments and papers, and scientific imaging using ultraviolet, infrared, and x-ray.
