The prints of James McNeill Whistler are such masterful examples of the genre that some collectors value them more highly than his paintings. Linked to a single painting in much of the public consciousness, he produced a delightful body of work in this entirely separate medium. While he did not necessarily reinvent the techniques of etching and lithography, Whistler's stylistic innovations and his lovely and dramatic sets of European scenes were, says Grace Glueck in the New York Times, responsible for the resurgent popularity of the print in the last half of the 19th century.  

Carnegie Museum of Art began collecting Whistler prints between 1913 and 1919, and acquired nearly all of his early lithographs, which were generally printed in small editions and are thus quite rare. The museum continued to acquire the prints over the next few decades and its outstanding collection has been touring throughout the United States and Canada since 1997.  

The exhibition includes works from throughout Whistler's career. Born in Massachusetts, Whistler spent much of his childhood in St. Petersburg, Russia, and studied in Paris, before living most of his life in London. Whistler: Impressions of an American Abroad takes the viewer from Whistler’s early realism through his experiments with impressionism, tracing his development as a printmaker to the point where he manipulated the ink on the plate with his hands to produce the effects of water or light. Because he considered each impression of his prints unique, Whistler produced most of them himself, ending up with a slightly different version each time.