The Balcony

James McNeill Whistler accepted a commission from the Fine Art Society, a London commercial establishment, to do a series of etchings in Venice. He had shown great promise as an etcher in earlier works, such as the set that depicted the Thames River in 1859. In the Venice series, completed during the autumn/winter of 1879-1880, the artist deliberately steered away from the tourist sites that had been portrayed by countless artists in the past. Instead, he chose subjects that freed him to explore patterns of light and shadow and to manipulate pictorial space. His technical skills in the medium were finely honed, an expertise that allowed him to express the nuances of detail in his work. This depiction of a small house on the Rio de San Pantalon is a masterful study in chiaroscuro, with light figures carefully placed against dark silhouetted windows and doorways and architectural details suggested with a minimal use of line. Printed by Whistler himself, this group of etchings stands as a superb record of his sophisticated and innovative command of the etching medium.