A new exhibition of prints from the Toledo Museum of Art’s collection spotlights

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903) Limehouse. Etching, 1859. 1912.1195

the work of iconic American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903).

Although perhaps more popularly known today as a painter, Whistler was a master of the etched line. “Whistler: Influences, Friends and the Not-So-Friendly,” on view Feb. 26 through May 30 in the museum’s Works on Paper Galleries, provides a comparison of the great American artist with his contemporaries as well as a look at what influenced his work.

As a printmaker, Whistler’s name is often linked with Rembrandt’s as the artist who, 200 years later, further explored and refined the beauty of the etched line. The artist spent most of his life in London, and was greatly influenced by that city as well as by Paris. He proved to be an innovative, master craftsman with few peers, then or now.

Tom Loeffler, the Museum’s assistant curator of works on paper, says Whistler himself never drew a distinction between his efforts as a painter and his work as a printmaker.