Irving as Philip of Spain, No. 1 | ||
Number: | 158 | |
Date: | 1876/1877 | |
Medium: | drypoint | |
Size: | 228 x 153 mm | |
Signed: | no | |
Inscribed: | no | |
Set/Publication: | no | |
No. of States: | 4 | |
Known impressions: | 6 | |
Catalogues: | K.170; M.167; W.139 | |
Impressions taken from this plate (6) |
Irving as Philip of Spain may have been started in late 1876. It is closely related to the oil portrait Arrangement in Black, No. 3: Sir Henry Irving as Philip II of Spain y187 started in 1876. The drypoint is first mentioned in early 1877. On 28 January 1877 Alan Summerly Cole (1846-1934) wrote in his diary, 'Round to see J. who had begun an etching of Irving'. 1 It was actually a drypoint, not an etching.
1: GUW #03432.
Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932) commented: 'It is impossible to say which of the two plates of Philip was etched first. Neither of them was completed, but this one is given priority, as it is a little more rigid than the other and less successful as a portrait.' 2 The 'other' is Irving as Philip of Spain, No. 2 159.
2: Kennedy 1910[more] (cat. no. 170).
Few portraits date from this period, except Sir Garnet Wolseley 177, Whistler with the White Lock 162 and Irving as Philip of Spain, No. 2 159.