JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER PRINTS james mcneill whistler: prints I The Fine Art Society 5 to 28 April 2016 148 new bond street · london w1s 2jt + 44 (0)20 7629 5116 · [email protected] www.faslondon.com C.G. Boerner May 11 to 27, 2016 23 East 73rd Street ∙ New York NY 10021 + 1 212 772 7330 ∙ [email protected] www.cgboerner.com Harris Schrank Fine Prints + 1 212 662 1234 · [email protected] www.harrisschrank.com II THE FINE ART SOCIETY · LONDON dealers since 1876 JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER PRINTS C.G. BOERNER · NEW YORK dealers since 1826 ORGANIZED IN COLLABORATION WITH HARRIS SCHRANK FINE PRINTS INTRODUCTION It is appropriate in our 140th year that The Fine Art Society should celebrate with an exhibition of work by James McNeill Whistler, one of the first and most illustrious artists to show in our galleries. As a painter in oils and in watercolour, as an etcher and a lithographer, Whistler excelled. He also made a stand for the cause of art for art’s sake, and this cost him dear. Although he won the case, he was bankrupted by the costs of his libel action against the critic John Ruskin. He also lost his new home, the White House, designed for him by E.W. Godwin and in which he had lived for less than a year. According to tradition, The Fine Art Society opened its doors at 148 New Bond Street on 14th February 1876 and we still occupy the original premises. Within our building Whistler staged a sensational show in 1883 which was to affect exhibition design radically so that his principles still guide curators today, more than 130 years later. He was equally a pioneer in the print market, and produced a signed, limited edition of his Venice etchings in 1880, the prototype for print publishing of the future. This is the sixth and largest exhibition of Whistler’s work presented at The Fine Art Society since 1994. It will also be shown at C.G. Boerner gallery in New York and it is a collaborative effort with Armin Kunz and Harris Schrank, both of whom share with me a passion for Whistler’s prints. In the past twenty years interest in Whistler has grown. The period has seen many new publications on the artist and the building of several important collections of his work. The most significant development has been the creation of a new catalogue raisonné of Whistler’s etchings by the University of Glasgow. A century after Edward Kennedy’s stand- ard work appeared, this unprecedented research project, led by Margaret MacDonald, with Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg and Joanna Meacock, has resulted in an online catalogue which gives access to virtually all that is known about Whistler’s etchings. It was completed thirteen years after the Art Institute of Chicago published a lavish two-volume catalogue of Whistler’s lithographs, written by Nesta Spink, Harriet Stratis and Martha Tedeschi. The authors of these two new catalogues raisonnés, which update those published shortly after Whistler’s death, have devoted much of their lives to their research. Their meticulous work and insights have inspired others to collect and study the work of Whistler, a man who exemplified much that was important in nineteenth-century art and who has had such a profound influence on those who followed him. When I first became inter- ested in Whistler, there were two books, both published in 1984, the 150th anniversary of his birth, which proved invaluable guides. Katharine Lochnan and Ruth Fine both brought James McNeill Whistler 1834–1903 by an unknown photographer, c.1860–65 Modern silver print, Charles Lang Freer Papers, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., Gift of the Estate of Charles Lang Freer 5 their subject to life in their studies. I should also mention the work of Alastair Grieve, who his patron, Frederick Leyland, and John Ruskin’s damning review of his painting Nocturne had the inspired but simple idea of spending as much time as he could in Venice, identifying in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket drew the artist into a libel action to counter its effect on the sites where Whistler had worked. His book has been a revelation. his work. He had also signed a contract with E.W. Godwin to design and build a new house In the past two decades The Fine Art Society has sold more than 250 prints by Whistler. for him in Tite Street, Chelsea. Our guiding principle has been to buy only works of real quality. The artist was fanatical His debts piled up as Leyland refused to pay him and the cost of the White House soared. about the way his prints looked, about the papers he chose and in his own determination At about this time, Whistler received a visit from Ernest Brown who wished to publish an to aim for perfection. When he first started to trim the sheets on which he had printed the etching in the Portfolio magazine. The artist gave him Billingsgate and it appeared in the issue etchings to the platemarks, leaving a small tab of paper at the lower edge of each for his of January 1878. pencil butterfly signature, he was expressing his approval of the finished product as well as Whistler was declared bankrupt in May 1879, but Brown, who had joined The Fine Art presenting his work in a singular manner. Imagine the walls of the ground-floor galleries of Society, came to his rescue. The gallery bought the Thames Set etching plates and published The Fine Art Society in 1883, with his etchings floating in their mounts in white frames on a second edition, and Brown persuaded them to commission a set of twelve etchings of walls covered with white felt. Elsewhere in the building we offered prints made by profes- Venice from the artist. Whistler arrived in Venice in September 1879. sional engravers which reproduced paintings by the leading artists of the day, in substantial This proved to be the turning point in his career. Over fourteen months he made 50 etch- black and gilt oak frames. ings, 100 pastels and seven or eight paintings. The set Venice, a Series of Twelve Etchings was Whistler’s life story is in itself fascinating. He was the first American artist to enjoy an exhibited at The Fine Art Society in December 1880 and 53 pastels the following month. international reputation and before his fellow Americans began to collect their work, he A second exhibition of prints, ‘Etchings & Dry Points Venice: Second Series’, which the was a friend of Degas, Manet, Monet and the other leading artists working in Paris in the artist called Arrangement in White and Yellow was held in 1883. For this the gallery was trans- middle of the nineteenth century. When he sent his most famous work, Arrangement in Grey formed: the walls were covered in white felt, the mouldings, skirting board, carpet and and Black: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother to the Paris Salon in 1883, the courier was his young fireplace were painted yellow and the etchings were hung in white frames in a single line. assistant Walter Sickert. Whistler gave him introductions to Degas and Manet. These same Venice etchings commissioned by The Fine Art Society will hang with works It was in Paris that Whistler chose to begin his life as an artist. He arrived in the city in from other phases of Whistler’s career as a printmaker in an exhibition to celebrate our 1855 as a revival of interest in etching was gathering pace. Charles Meryon’s etchings of 140th anniversary in the gallery where they were first seen. Paris had recently been shown at the Salon and Auguste Delâtre had set up as a printer. gordon cooke These two men were central to the revival. During the late 1850s Whistler divided his time between Paris and his sister’s house in London. His early prints included studies of Deborah and her family, works drawn en plein air, working people seen on the streets of Paris and more ambitious etchings based on drawings made in Alsace and Cologne. The French Set, which included subjects carefully CATALOGUE NOTE chosen to reflect all these interests, contained the seeds of much of his later work. References are to the standard catalogues raisonnés. For etchings, Edward G. Kennedy, The The French Set demonstrated Whistler’s skilled and highly individual draughtsmanship, Etched Work of Whistler, New York 1910 (Kennedy) and Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka and he soon expanded his repertoire with a group of etchings made on the Thames in the Petri, Meg Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue late summer of 1859. The Thames Set was not published until 1871, after almost a decade raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2011, on-line website at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk. during which he had made very few etchings. They were enthusiastically received. (Glasgow). For lithographs, Thomas R. Way, Mr Whistler’s Lithographs: The Catalogue, 2nd The Thames was to remain Whistler’s principal source of subjects during the 1870s and, ed., London and New York 1905 (Way) and Nesta R. Spink, Harriet K. Stratis and Martha encouraged by the response to his earlier work, he sought to create an equivalent for his Tedeschi The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, Chicago 1998 (Chicago). There are also painted Nocturnes in a print. This led Whistler to Thomas Way, who introduced him to many textual references to Katharine A. Lochnan, The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler, lithography, and the late 1870s saw him making etchings alongside the new medium.