Object details
Object number
S.G.Sar.1.1.1.4
Creator(s)
James McNeill Whistler
(Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834 - 1903, London, England)
Title
First Venice Set: Nocturne
Date
1879-1880
Medium
Etching and drypoint printed on laid paper
State
IX/IX
Dimensions
19.9 x 29.4 cm (7 13/16 x 11 9/16 in.)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Signed in pencil (on tab): Whistler's butterfly signature [dated 1888-1889]
Inscribed (on tab): "imp." [hand of Whistler]
Inscribed (verso): "specially chosen" [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. 8.
Frederick Wedmore. Whistler's Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue (London, 1886), p. 66, no. 150.
James McNeill Whistler. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (London, 1890), p. 95.
Howard Mansfield. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (Chicago, 1909), pp. 115-16, no. 181.
Edward G. Kennedy. The Etched Work of Whistler (New York, 1910), p. 70, no. 184.
P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. An Exhibition of Etchings, Dry Points & Lithographs by James McNeill Whistler (London, 16 November - 10 December 1971). p. 28, no. 92.
Maragaret F. MacDonald. "Introduction" in M. Knoedler & Company, Inc.. Notes, Harmonies & Nocturnes. Exh. cat. (New York: M. Knoedler & Company, Inc., 1984), pp. 16, 68, no. 90.
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. 194-99, 281, no. 197.
Pierre Cabanne. Whistler (New York, 1985), p. 62, ill.
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. 100-103, no. 39.
Martha Tedeschi and Britt Salvesen. Songs on Stone: James McNeill Whistler and the Art of Lithography. Exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1998; Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1999), pp. 39, 43, fig. 29, no. 43.
Alastair Grieve. Whistler's Venice (New Haven, 2000), pp. 157-58, 189-90, 192, fig. 197.
Margaret F. MacDonald. Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice (Berkeley, 2001), pp. 69, 71, 77-79, 82, 82, 88, 92, 94, 128, pl. 94, 95.
Catherine E. Hutchina (ed.). Fleeting Impressions: Prints by James McNeill Whistler. Exh. cat. (Montgomery: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 2006), pp. 17, 20, 85-86, no. 24.
Margaret F. MacDonald et al. "Nocturne." James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné (University of Glasgow, 2012), no. 222, accessed 12 May 2016. http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/
Gallery
Short Gallery
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