UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Etchings         Institutions search term: copley society

Stables

Impression: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la photographie
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la photographie
(Rés EC 123 Folio 3)
Number: 228
Date: 1879/1880
Medium: drypoint
Size: 167 x 236 mm
Signed: no
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 3
Known impressions: 2
Catalogues: K.225; M.222; W.198
Impressions taken from this plate  (2)

PUBLICATION

Stables was not published.

EXHIBITIONS

Stables was first exhibited at the Fine Art Society, London in 1883. It is not at all clear which of the few roughly printed impressions were exhibited, but the most likely is the impression he inscribed '1st proof' (Graphic with a link to impression #K2250101). In the catalogue designed by Whistler for the show he added short excerpts from earlier reviews that provided ironical contrasts or complements to the prints on show. For Stables he selected a short and unattributed comment: '"An unpleasing thing, and framed in Mr. Whistler's odd fashion."—City Press.' 11 Whistler's 'odd fashion' was a severe, elegant narrow white frame with incised or painted dark brown parallel lines, and a pale oatmeal mount. 12

11: London FAS 1883 (cat. no. 35).

12: A later etching, Clothes-Exchange, Houndsditch. No. 1 [358], in Whistler's frame is in the Hunterian, GLAHA 46521.

Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) lent an impression to an exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (Graphic with a link to impression #K2250101) and perhaps to the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in Boston in 1904. 13

In New York impressions were shown by H. Wunderlich & Co., in 1903, and at the Grolier Club in 1904. F. Keppel & Co. of New York lent an impression to the Whistler Memorial in London in 1905. 14

13: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 176); see REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.

14: New York 1903b (cat. no. 158); New York 1904a (cat. no. 200); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 198).

SALES & COLLECTORS

This is extremely rare. Whistler sold one impression on 28 August 1882 to the London print dealer, Thomas M. McLean (b. ca 1832), for £4.4.0. 15 He sold another on 28 April 1887 to Messrs Dowdeswell at the same price. 16 One of these was probably acquired by Joshua Hutchinson Hutchinson (ca 1829 - d.1891) and sold, after his death, at Sotheby's, 3 March 1892 (lot 301) when it was bought by Edmund F. Deprez (1851-1915) of Deprez & Gutekunst, for £3.15.0.

In America, both H. Wunderlich & Co. and F. Keppel & Co. of New York had examples of this rare etching, but it is not known where they got them or to whom they were sold. American collectors certainly acquired impressions, including Howard Mansfield (1849-1938), who owned one by 1900 (Graphic with a link to impression #K2250101); Louisine Waldron Havemeyer (1855-1929) (Graphic with a link to impression #K2250z01); Atherton Curtis (1863-1944) (Graphic with a link to impression #K2260302) and Thomas Jefferson Coolidge jr (1863-1912) (Graphic with a link to impression #K2250301).

15: GUW #13643.

16: GUW #13020.