American Art Collaborative

Having learned to etch in the 1850s, Whistler made his final series of etchings in Amsterdam in 1889. The Dance House: Nocturne shows the façade of a building at night in the city’s red-light district. Rays of light radiate from a lantern in the middle of the composition and reflect off the water in the canal below. Illuminated windows surround the lantern, so that the façade becomes a surface of sumptuous and delicate contrasts. Whistler used extra fine intersecting lines of various depths and density to achieve a seductive play of tone, ranging from rich, heavily inked dark areas to creamier sources of light. The focus on the flow of light softly dissipating into the night was inspired by Whistler’s study of Rembrandt’s etchings.