Exhibitions

Traditionally artists showed oil and watercolour paintings in public exhibitions. Whistler considered that his paintings, etchings, watercolours and pastels were all deserving of exhibition space.

Whistler was concerned not only that his paintings should be beautiful, but that they should be harmoniously arranged on the wall. He was unusual for his time in believing that the artist should have control over the exhibition space as a work of art in itself. Where the opportunity allowed, he designed special frames, arranged the lighting, chose the colour and material for the walls, ceilings, curtains, clothing of attendants and wrote and designed catalogues to showcase his paintings. The whole was a single arrangement in colour comparable to his paintings.

For example, at the Dowdeswell gallery in London in 1884 Whistler orchestrated the entire exhibition event, which he entitled an Arrangement in Fleshcolour and Grey, to harmonise with his paintings, and even signed the room with his butterfly signature in flesh-coloured velvet on the mantelpiece.

Whistler did not crowd his paintings together, frame by frame, as often happened in exhibitions, but gave each work its own individual space so that it could be properly appreciated. He also placed them at eye level, so that they could be fully seen. Many exhibitions would hang paintings from floor to ceiling, so that many were too low and many too high to be viewed adequately.