The Artist in His Studio, 1865/66 (oil on paper mounted on panel)

By the mid-1860s, the London-based American artist James McNeill Whistler was increasingly fascinated with the aesthetics of Asian art, applying thin applications of paint in muted tones to reductive compositions. Further, in The Artist in His Studio, three Japanese scrolls hang on the wall, Chinese porcelain adorns shelves on the left, and the central figure wears a kimono. The artist, who stares out at the viewer with palette and paintbrush in hand, also called on the work of the Spanish Baroque master, Diego Velázquez. Whistler, in essence, attempted to harmonize Western and Eastern artistic elements, placing himself at the center of such an enterprise.