1. Glazer, Jacobson, McCarthy, Roeder, wall label, 2019:
After unsuccessful stints at the US Military Academy at West Point and at the US Coast and Geodetic Survey here in Washington, Whistler moved to Paris to become an artist. In 1858 he and fellow artist Ernest Delannoy started on a walking tour of the Alsace and Rhineland regions, planning to reach Amsterdam. They soon abandoned the trip when they ran out of money. Along the way Whistler made scores of pencil drawings and several watercolors. He also drew on prepared copperplates that he etched and printed in Paris. The etchings here formed part of his first series, Twelve Etchings after Nature, known as the French Set. With under- and overdrawing in pencil, the watercolors were intended as compositional studies structured by line rather than color, while the etchings were considered finished works of art.
2. Kenneth Myers, wall label, 2004:
Whistler completed several elaborate watercolors during his trip. Two of them served as models for etchings-one for A Street at Saverne, the other for The Kitchen. All of these watercolors seem to have been finished during the first few weeks of the trip, before Whistler and Delannoy reached Strasbourg. Confusingly, two of the watercolors have been titled The Kitchen. The other watercolor titled The Kitchen was the immediate source for the etching.
1. Curry: James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, Pg. 169
Despite Freer's inscription, neither this watercolor nor the pencil drawing that preceded it, entitled Cuisine à Lutzelbourg [F1898.151], is directly related to an etching. Similar subject matter treated in a similar sequence–from pencil drawing to watercolor to etching–may have confused Freer... As was consistent with his technique at this time, Whistler added the figure of a woman after he drew details of the room, including the large box which the woman partially obscures. Other details, like the straw hat hanging by the door, are taken from Whistler's standard formal vocabulary.
This watercolor translated the pencil drawing into bold areas of light and dark. A rather weak pencil sketch was substantially enhanced by wash blocks that create and maintain the space. Whistler gave the composition a strong tectonic structure by extending the shelf completely across the far end of the room parallel to the picture plane. The woman's relation to stove and oven as well as other details from the drawing were changed in the watercolor. The scene in [F1898.151] may be a view of the opposite end of the kitchen discussed in the previous entry. Alternatively, the space could have been invented in Whistler's studio after he returned from his trip armed with pencil sketches.
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