Etching and aquatint on antique cream laid paper, 1882. 141x101 mm; 5 1/2x4 inches, full margins. Eighth state (of 8). Numbered 14/14 in pencil and with the artist's initials ink stamp (Lugt supplement 613e, lower margin). A very good impression of this scarce print.
Pissarro (1830-1903) was among the most prolific of the Impressionist printmakers, producing close to 200 etchings and lithographs. While he and Whistler probably never met, he was doubtless aware of Whistler's printmaking efforts. In all likelihood, he saw Whistler's Venice etchings exhibited in Paris during the 1880s and he commented in an 1893 letter to his son Lucien on Whistler's specifically colored walls and frame designs for the exhibitions of his Venice etchings in London during the early 1880s (claiming that he had originated the use of colored mats, walls and frames for an exhibition of his work at Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris in 1880).
Pissarro preferred to print his own plates and use unusual papers, much like Whistler from the 1870s onward. The intimacy of this mother and child scene relates to Whistler's etchings of the Haden family from the late 1850s and 1860s. Delteil 38.
