Etchings Institutions search term: dowdeswell
The Garden | ||
Number: | 194 | |
Date: | 1879/1880 | |
Medium: | etching and drypoint | |
Size: | 307 x 240 mm | |
Signed: | butterfly at lower left | |
Inscribed: | no | |
Set/Publication: | 'Second Venice Set', 1886 | |
No. of States: | 15 | |
Known impressions: | 43 | |
Catalogues: | K.210; M.207; W.180 | |
Impressions taken from this plate (43) |
PUBLICATION
Whistler delivered in all 1093 prints and was paid £2.10.6 for printing each dozen prints. 10
10: Dowdeswell to Whistler, invoice 16 July 1887, GUW #00891.
EXHIBITIONS
11: London FAS 1883 (cat. no. 40).
12: 'Mr Whistler's "Venice," at the Fine-Art Society, New Bond Street', Spectator, 11 December 1880 (GUL Whistler PC 4/12).
A brief exhibition of 40 etchings including the newly published 'Second Venice Set' at the Hogarth Club in 1887 inspired one art critic to write lyrically:
13: Anon., 'Mr Whistler's Exhibition', Saturday Review, 24 February 1883 (GUL PC 25/32).
"Spring for the tree and herb - no Spring for us!"' 14
14: Anon., 'Mr Whistler's Etchings', The Standard, London, 3 March 1887 (GUL PC7/18-19).
An impression was shown at an exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900, lent by Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916) (). 16 In the following year James Cox-Cox (ca 1849- d.1901) lent one from his 'Second Venice set' to the Glasgow International Exhibition. 17 It was shown, usually with other impressions from the 'Second Venice Set', at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 and an Art and Industrial Exhibition in Wolverhampton in 1902. Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) lent an impression to the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, the first Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1902, and the Whistler Memorial exhibition held in Boston in 1904. 18
After Whistler's death, three impressions were shown at the Grolier Club in New York in 1904 and another (lent from the Royal Collection) at the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in London in 1905 (). 19
15: New York 1898 (cat. no. 159); see REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.
16: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 160).
17: Glasgow 1901 (cat. no. 224).
18: Chicago 1893 (cat. no. 2243 [1667]); Philadelphia 1902 (cat. no. 947 [180]); Boston 1904 (cat. no. 141).
19: New York 1904a (cat. nos. 182a,b,c); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 180).
SALES & COLLECTORS
From 1886 most impressions were sold by Messrs Dowdeswell and Thibaudeau with the 'Second Venice Set'. Dowdeswell's gave a set including an impression of The Garden to the British Museum in 1887 (). Thibaudeau sold a set for £52.10.0 through Gustave Lauser (b. ca 1841) to H. Wunderlich & Co. in May 1888, and it was bought by Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) in 1890 ().
Whistler also sold impressions in 1902 to Dunthorne, one for the enormous sum of £31.10.0 and another for £15.15.0, and a third impression in the same year to Freer for £12.12.0 21
21: 24 December 1902, GUW #13040; Merrill 1995, p. 164 (Letter 67), FGA Whistleriana 276.