UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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Lindsey Houses

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1905.172)
Number: 161
Date: 1876/1877
Medium: drypoint
Size: 153 x 230 mm
Signed: butterfly at left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: 'Cancelled Plates', 1879
No. of States: 4
Known impressions: 25
Catalogues: K.166; M.162; W.136
Impressions taken from this plate  (25)

PUBLICATION

It was published in an album of Cancelled Plates ('Cancelled Set') by The Fine Art Society, London, 1879.

EXHIBITIONS

Lindsey Houses was fairly rare and rarely exhibited, and as a drypoint was perhaps intended for particular connoisseurs and collectors. An impression owned by Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904) was certainly exhibited to connoisseurs at the Union League Club in New York in 1881 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660305). 13

An impression from the collection of Francis Seymour Haden, Sr (1818-1910) was shown by H. Wunderlich & Co. in New York in 1898 and bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660102). 14 Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) lent one to the exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900. 15

Others were shown in the Memorial Exhibitions after Whistler's death, at the Grolier Club in New York in 1904, in Paris in 1905, and in London in 1905. 16

13: New York 1881 (cat. no. 146). See REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.

14: New York 1898 (cat. no. 115).

15: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 120).

16: New York 1904a (cat. no. 138); Paris Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 346); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 136).

SALES & COLLECTORS

Priced at £6.6.0, it was sold by Whistler to the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, to print dealers - Messrs Hogarth and the Fine Art Society - and to Charles Augustus Howell (1840?-1890). 17 Howell played a distinctive role in urging and assisting Whistler to print his copper plates. He acted as intermediary between Whistler and some print dealers, like Jane Noseda (b. 1813 or 1814). According to Whistler:

17: [19/22 October 1877], GUW #12736; 22-27 October [1877], #12737; 10 October 1877, #12734.

'In the afternoons Howell would go and see Mr Graves, the print seller, and there were orders flying about, and cheques - it was all amazing, you know! Howell profited, of course. But he was so superb. One evening we had left a pile of eleven prints just pulled, and the next morning only five were there. 'It's very strange!' Howell said, 'we must have a search. No one could have taken them but me, and that, you know, is impossible!'" 18

18: Pennell 1908 , 1, pp. 214-15.

It was rarely seen on the open market, although an impression from the collection of the late Joshua Hutchinson Hutchinson (ca 1829 - d.1891) was sold at Sotheby's, 3 March 1892 (lot 218) and bought by the print dealer Edmund F. Deprez (1851-1915) of Deprez & Gutekunst for only £4.0.0.
Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904) bought an impression of the third state, which was signed by Whistler, probably at Avery's request, about 1879 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660305). Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) bought one from the cancelled set in 1893 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660402), followed by the first proof, originally from the collection of Francis Seymour Haden, Sr (1818-1910), which Freer bought from Wunderlich's in New York in 1898 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660102) and finally, a third state in 1905 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660302). Other early collectors included Margaret Selkirk Watson Parker (1867-1936) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660103) and Clarence Buckingham (1855-1913) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660202).
Sets including the cancelled impression of Lindsay Houses were bought by several collectors. George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909) bought a set, which passed eventually to the Baltimore Museum of Art (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660405). The British Museum acquired a set in 1887 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660406). Thomas Glen Arthur (1858-1907) acquired a set in the same year, 1887 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660412). Freer bought a set from Knoedler & Co. in 1893 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660402). Yet another was bought at the Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau (ca 1840- d.1892) sale in 1889 by Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851) for £0.6.0; 19 this was later acquired by Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), who bequeathed it to the University of Glasgow (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660404). J. Littauer (fl. 1896) of Munich sold another set to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, in 1896 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660409). In Paris, Alfred Strölin sold a fine set to Jacques Doucet in 1907, which he gave to the Bibliothèque Jacques Doucet in 1918 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1660413).

19: Sotheby's, 13 December 1889 (lot 787 or 789).