Between 1914 and 1919, Henry Clay Frick acquired twenty works by James McNeill Whistler: five paintings, three pastels, and twelve prints, a remarkable ensemble that represents the breadth of Whistler’s artistic activity and testifies to Frick’s taste as a collector.

The museum’s collection includes four full-length portraits and a single evocative seascape by Whistler. During the exhibition Portraits, Pastels, Prints: Whistler in The Frick Collection, in 2009, twelve etchings and three pastels from his Venetian sojourn of 1879–80 were brought together for the first time in more than twenty years and displayed in the museum’s Cabinet. Dating from 1866 to 1892, these works demonstrate the continuity of Whistler’s aesthetic concerns across three distinct media.