Portrait of Whistler with a Hat

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) · 1857-1859

As is frequently the case when a young artist creates a self-portrait, Whistler identified himself with a past master. Theodore Duret reported that Whistler was particularly struck by Rembrandt's Portrait of a Man in a Beret in the Louvre. Whistler adopted Rembrandt's general format as well as his rich, dark palette. The artist Kenyon Cox detected the impact of Courbet's realism in Whistler's use of "rather violent light and shade, with black shadows, the yellowish tone of the flesh, and the attempt at powerful modelling." The self-portrait exhibits a fastidious fashion consciousness: the artist is wearing a flat-brimmed brushed silk hat--the "Quartier Latin type," as one friend described it. By the time Freer acquired this self-portrait in 1906, it had been frequently exhibited in America and reproduced as both a woodcut and an engraving.