Object details
Object number
S.G.Sar.1.1.1.5
Creator(s)
James McNeill Whistler
(Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834 - 1903, London, England)
Title
First Venice Set: The Doorway
Date
1879-1880
Medium
Etching and drypoint printed on laid paper
State
XVIII/XX
Dimensions
29.2 x 20.2 cm (11 1/2 x 7 15/16 in.)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Signed in pencil (on tab): Whistler's butterfly signature [dated 1886]
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. 13.
Frederick Wedmore. Whistler's Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue (London, 1886), pp. 67-68, no. 154.
James McNeill Whistler. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (London, 1890), p. 96.
Howard Mansfield. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (Chicago, 1909), pp. 119-20, no. 185.
Edward G. Kennedy. The Etched Work of Whistler (New York, 1910), pp. 72-73, no. 188.
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. 182, 214, 266, no. 205.
P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. An Exhibition of Etchings, Dry Points & Lithographs by James McNeill Whistler (London, 16 November - 10 December 1971). pp. 24-25, no. 81.
David Park Curry. James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art. Exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, 1984), p. 262, fig. 251.1.
Otto Henry Bacher. "With Whistler in Venice" (New York, 1908), in Robin Spencer (ed.). Whistler: A Retrospective (New York, 1989), pp. 168.
Margaret F. MacDonald. James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours, a Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 1995), pp. 314-15, no. 836r.
Carole McNamara and John Siewert. Whistler: Prosaic Views, Poetic Vision. Exh. cat. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1996), pp. 104-105, nos. 40, 41.
Alastair Grieve. Whistler's Venice (New Haven, 2000), pp. 92, 94, 97, 189, fig. 104.
Margaret F. MacDonald. Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice (Berkeley, 2001), pp. 64, 70, 76-77, 84, 88, 94-95, 101, 115, 129-32, pl. 90, 133.
Catherine E. Hutchina (ed.). Fleeting Impressions: Prints by James McNeill Whistler. Exh. cat. (Montgomery: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 2006), pp. 19-20, 54-55, no. 12.
Meg Hausberg. "Whistler Etchings: New Observations." Print Quarterly (Mar. 2007), pp. 15-19, 21, figs. 11-13.
Margaret F. MacDonald et al. "The Doorway." James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné (University of Glasgow, 2012), no. 193, accessed 12 May 2016. http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/
Gallery
Short Gallery
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