Composition

A Shop, Art Institute of Chicago

The Terra website discusses the composition:

'The deliberate asymmetry of the composition and the contrast of structured lines and flat expanses recall the powerful influence of Japanese woodblock prints, which Whistler greatly admired. Compared to most of his shop-front paintings, here the figures … are relatively prominent; they lend notes of movement, color, and animation. ...Whistler was less interested in recording the scene before him or capturing the flavor of urban life than in the decorative potential of his subjects. With his facile brushwork and understated palette, the artist blurred the weathered surfaces and irregular geometry of the old shop fronts ... to reveal their underlying design, anticipating the full development of abstract art early in the twentieth century.' 1

Technique

A Shop, Art Institute of Chicago

It is painted with careful brushstrokes, and very thin paint, almost like watercolour. The Terra website comments:

'Rapidly executed in thin layers of transparent oil paint, the work is relatively pale in tone, with the grays of the open doorway, glazed window, and street set against the modulated pinks of the solid wall. ... In the 1880s Whistler favored such small panel paintings for their portability and ease of execution. Smoother than canvas, the wood surface more clearly reveals evidence of the painting process, an assertion of the creator’s presence and persona that links Whistler to modernist tendencies in late-nineteenth-century art.' 2

The butterfly signature is unusual and shows signs of having been reworked, possibly touched up by Whistler or by another hand.

Conservation History

A Shop, photograph, 1974

Unknown. Old photographs show it in reasonable condition. There may be some slight abrasion marks at left.

Frame

Frame size: 34.3 x 43.2 x 3.5 cm (13 1/2 x 17 x 1 3/8").