Object details
Object number
S.G.Sar.1.1.1.10
Creator(s)
James McNeill Whistler
(Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834 - 1903, London, England)
Title
First Venice Set: The Venetian Mast
Date
1880
Medium
Etching and drypoint printed on laid paper
State
VIII/XII
Dimensions
34 x 16.3 cm (13 3/8 x 6 7/16 in.)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Signed in etching: Whistler's butterfly signature
Signed (on paper, verso): Whistler's butterfly signature
Inscribed (on paper, verso): "Specially chosen Proof" [hand of Whistler]
Signed (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. 36.
Frederick Wedmore. Whistler's Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue (London, 1886), p. 70, no. 160.
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. 128-29, no. 184.
Edward G. Kennedy. The Etched Work of Whistler (New York, 1910), p. 79, no. 195.
Denys Sutton. James McNeill Whistler: Paintings, Etchings, Pastels, and Watercolours (London, 1966), pp. 192-193, pl. 85. (as "The Mast")
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. 193, 214, 280, no. 185.
Otto Henry Bacher. "With Whistler in Venice" (New York, 1908), in Robin Spencer (ed.). Whistler: A Retrospective (New York, 1989), p. 156, ill.
Margaret F. MacDonald. James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours, a Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 1995), pp. 314-15, no. 836r.
Alastair Grieve. Whistler's Venice (New Haven, 2000), pp. 54-56, 128, 136, 189, fig. 42. fig. 56.
Margaret F. MacDonald. Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice (Berkeley, 2001), pp. 68-70, 84, 88.
Margaret F. MacDonald et al. "The Venetian Mast." James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné (University of Glasgow, 2012), no. 219, accessed 16 May 2016. http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/
Gallery
Short Gallery
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