Object details
Object number
S.G.Sar.1.1.1.8
Creator(s)
James McNeill Whistler
(Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834 - 1903, London, England)
Title
First Venice Set: The Little Lagoon
Date
1880
Medium
Etching and drypoint printed on laid paper
State
IV/IV
Dimensions
22.5 x 15.2 cm (8 7/8 x 6 in.)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Signed in pencil (on tab): Whistler's butterfly signature [dated 1888-1889]
Inscribed (on tab): "imp." [hand of Whistler]
Provenance
Possibly in the collection of the surgeon and etcher Francis Seymour Haden (1818-1910), by 1890.
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the art dealers H. Wunderlich & Co., New York on 11 April 1890 for $750. (as part of "Whistler's two sets of Venice etchings")
Commentary
Isabella Stewart Gardner kept meticulous records of many of her acquisitions. In keeping with this legacy, object information is continually being reviewed, updated, and enriched in order to give greater access to the collection.
Bibliography
The Fine Art Society. Mr. Whistler's Etchings (London, 1883), no. 26.
Frederick Wedmore. Whistler's Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue (London, 1886), p. 67, no. 152.
James McNeill Whistler. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (London, 1890), p. 99.
Howard Mansfield. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (Chicago, 1909), pp. 117-18, no. 183.
Edward G. Kennedy. The Etched Work of Whistler (New York, 1910), p. 71, no. 186.
P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. An Exhibition of Etchings, Dry Points & Lithographs by James McNeill Whistler (London, 16 November - 10 December 1971). p. 30, no. 98, pl. XXVII.
From Realism to Symbolism: Whistler and His World. Exh. cat. (New York: Wildenstein; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1971), p. 51, no. 33, pl. 42.
Katharine A. Lochnan. The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler. Exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984; Toronto: The Art Gallery of Ontario, 1985), pp. 194, 214, 281, no. 221.
Margaret F. MacDonald. James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours, a Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 1995), pp. 314-15, nos. 836r, 837.
Margaret F. MacDonald. Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice (Berkeley, 2001), pp. 88-89, 91, 97, 115, 128, 130, pl. 101.
Margaret F. MacDonald et al. "The Little Lagoon." James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné (University of Glasgow, 2012), no. 216, accessed 16 May 2016. http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/
Gallery
Short Gallery
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