#JesuitMuseums: Gonzaga University
AJCU’s #JesuitMuseums series is back for the summer! Today’s post on San Giorgio by James Abbott McNeill Whistler comes from the Jundt Art Museum at Gonzaga University.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903), San Giorgio, 1880, Etching on paper, 8 x 12 inches, Jundt Art Museum, Gonzaga University; Museum purchase with funds provided by the Endowed Gallery Exhibit Fund 2018.44.
For its exhibitions this upcoming fall semester at Gonzaga University, the Jundt Art Museum has elected to focus on its permanent collection. From the Collection: Art in the 19th Century highlights several significant artists, including James Abbott McNeill Whistler.
Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the son of Major George Washington Whistler (a railroad engineer) and his second wife, Anna Matilda McNeill, James Abbott McNeill Whistler had a childhood spent partially abroad in Russia and England before entering the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1852. Expelled for poor grades, Whistler first worked as a draftsman for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, drawing and making etchings for topographical maps, then traveled to Paris to study art in 1855.
Drawing overt connections between tone and color in music and in his art, Whistler often used musical terms in his titles, like ‘symphony,’ ‘nocturne,’ ‘arrangement,’ and ‘harmony.’ He created arguably his two most well-known paintings in the 1870s: Arrangement in Grey and Black, a.k.a. Whistler’s Mother (1871; Musée d’Orsay) and Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (ca. 1875; Detroit Institute of Arts).
Throughout the following decades, Whistler continued to work in his distinctive style — loosely painted, softly colored, and poetically atmospheric — in paintings and pastels, while also creating subtle yet detailed etchings and lithographs. He spent nearly fifteen months in Venice in 1879–80, supported by the London Fine Art Society’s commission for twelve etchings of the Italian city. Printed as part of A Set of Twenty-Six Etchings, usually referred to as “the Second Venice Set,” San Giorgio takes its title from the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, visible in the distance at the left side of the horizon line in the print. The scene on the Giudecca Canal features the rigging of ships and vessels amid a vast use of negative space for the Venetian harbor.
The 57 works of art in this display, open August 28 through December 31, have also been chosen by Dr. Paul Manoguerra, director/curator of the Jundt Art Museum, for use in teaching and research by Gonzaga undergraduates in VART 395: Art in the 19th Century this fall.
