Object details
Object number
S.G.Sar.1.1.1.1
Creator(s)
James McNeill Whistler
(Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834 - 1903, London, England)
Title
First Venice Set: The Little Venice
Date
1880
Medium
Etching and drypoint printed on laid paper
State
II/II
Dimensions
18.4 x 26.5 cm (7 1/4 x 10 7/16 in.)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Signed in pencil (on tab): Whistler's butterfly signature [dated 188-1889]
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's husband John L. Gardner, Jr. (1837-1898) from the art dealers H. Wunderlich & Co., New York on 12 June 1889 for $28 or 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. 20.
Frederick Wedmore. Whistler's Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue (London, 1886), pp. 65-66, no. 149.
James McNeill Whistler. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (London, 1890), p. 97.
Howard Mansfield. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (Chicago, 1909), p. 115, no. 180.
Edward G. Kennedy. The Etched Work of Whistler (New York, 1910), p. 70, no. 183.
Thomas Robert Way. Memories of James McNeill Whistler, the Artist (London, 1912), p. 45.
M. Knoedler & Company, Inc.. Notes, Harmonies & Nocturnes. Exh. cat. (New York: M. Knoedler & Company, Inc., 1984), p. 68, no. 89. (as "Study: Seated Figure")
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. 195, 214, 281, no. 209.
Carole McNamara and John Siewert. Whistler: Prosaic Views, Poetic Vision. Exh. cat. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1996), pp. 90-91, no. 33.
Alastair Grieve. Whistler's Venice (New Haven, 2000), pp. 180, 189, fig. 235.
Margaret F. MacDonald. Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice (Berkeley, 2001), pp. 68, 88, 90-91, 94, 120, 128, 139.
Catherine E. Hutchina (ed.). Fleeting Impressions: Prints by James McNeill Whistler. Exh. cat. (Montgomery: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 2006), pp. 20, 110.
Margaret F. MacDonald et al. "The Little Venice." James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné (University of Glasgow, 2012), no. 238, accessed 11 May 2016. http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/
Gallery
Short Gallery
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