Object details
Object number
S.G.Sar.1.1.2.17
Creator(s)
James McNeill Whistler
(Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834 - 1903, London, England)
Title
Second Venice Set: The Balcony
Date
1879-1880
Medium
Etching and drypoint printed on paper
State
XIV/XIX
Dimensions
30 x 20 cm (11 13/16 x 7 7/8 in.)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Signed in etching: Whistler's butterfly signature
Signed in pencil (on tab): Whistler's butterfly signature [dated 1886]
Inscribed (on tab) "imp." [hand of Whistler]
Provenance
Purchased by Messrs Dowdeswell and Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau (1840-1892), print dealer and collector, from the artist by 16 July 1887 for £0.4.4.
Purchased by the art dealers H. Wunderlich & Co., New York from Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau for £52.10.0 in May 1888 through the print dealer Gustave Lauser (b. 1841), stock no. 14359. (as part of an album of "The Second Venice Set")
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from 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. 32.
Frederick Wedmore. Whistler's Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue (London, 1886), p. 75, no. 177.
James McNeill Whistler. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (London, 1890), p. 100.
Howard Mansfield. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (Chicago, 1909), pp. 142-44, no. 204.
Edward G. Kennedy. The Etched Work of Whistler (New York, 1910), pp. 89-91, no. 207.
Denys Sutton. James McNeill Whistler: Paintings, Etchings, Pastels, and Watercolours (London, 1966), p. 193, pl. 87.
P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. An Exhibition of Etchings, Dry Points & Lithographs by James McNeill Whistler (London, 16 November - 10 December 1971). p. 24, no. 81, pl. XX.
From Realism to Symbolism: Whistler and His World. Exh. cat. (New York: Wildenstein; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1971), p. 52, no. 36, pl. 48.
David Park Curry. James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art. Exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, 1984), pp. 25, 89, 220, 266, figs. 168-171.2, 259.2.
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, 188-89, 191, 232, 241, 281, no. 202.
Otto Henry Bacher. "With Whistler in Venice" (New York, 1908), in Robin Spencer (ed.). Whistler: A Retrospective (New York, 1989), p. 168, ill.
Margaret F. MacDonald. James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours, a Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 1995), pp. 272, no. 743.
Alastair Grieve. Whistler's Venice (New Haven, 2000), pp. 32, 40, 43-44, 94, 192, fig. 24.
Margaret F. MacDonald. Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice (Berkeley, 2001), pp. 65-65, 78-79, 120, 122, pl. 75.
Richard Linger. "James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)" in Elizabeth Anne McCauley et al. Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Venice: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, 2004), pp. 266-67, fig. 220.
Catherine E. Hutchina (ed.). Fleeting Impressions: Prints by James McNeill Whistler. Exh. cat. (Montgomery: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 2006), pp. 20, 72-73, no. 19.
Margaret F. MacDonald et al. "The Balcony." James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné (University of Glasgow, 2012), no. 202, accessed 1 June 2016. http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/
Gallery
Short Gallery
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