Turkeys | ||
Number: | 236 | |
Date: | 1880 | |
Medium: | etching and drypoint | |
Size: | 209 x 135 mm | |
Signed: | butterfly at lower left (2) | |
Inscribed: | no | |
Set/Publication: | 'Second Venice Set', 1886 | |
No. of States: | 2 | |
Known impressions: | 42 | |
Catalogues: | K.199; M.196; W.165 | |
Impressions taken from this plate (42) |
PUBLICATION
Whistler delivered in all 1093 prints and was paid £2.10.6 for printing each dozen prints. 13
13: Dowdeswell to Whistler, invoice 16 July 1887, GUW #00891.
EXHIBITIONS
The Saturday Review responded with its own brand of humour :
14: London FAS 1883 (cat. no. 7).
An impression was shown at the New York Etching Club show at the National Academy of Design in 1889. Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916) lent one to a show organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (). 18 An impression was included in a large group of etchings lent by James Cox-Cox (ca 1849- d.1901) to the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1901. 19
After Whistler's death, it was shown in the Memorial Exhibitions in New York, Boston, Paris and London. Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934) lent an impression to the Whistler Memorial Show in London in 1905. 20
17: New York 1898; New York 1903b (cat. no. 128); London Obach 1903 (cat. nos. 141, 142)
18: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 145). See REFERENCES : EXHIBITIONS.
19: Glasgow 1901 (cat. no. 216).
20: New York 1904a (cat. no. 165); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 165).
SALES & COLLECTORS
Most sales were made by the publishers Messrs Dowdeswell after 1886. However, Whistler was also allowed to give away or sell the proofs of new states, and apparently gave one impression of the second state to George Moore (1852-1933); it has not been located. 22
Among the later sales, another London print dealer, Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851), bought one impression from Whistler, for £10.10.0 in December 1902, possibly for a Christmas present, and another - presumably a choice one - for £14.14.0, in June 1903, just before the artist's death. 23
At auction, impressions brought much lower prices, and were bought mainly by print dealers. One fetched only £1.1.0 in 1888; then, at the 1892 sale of the collection of the late Joshua Hutchinson Hutchinson (ca 1829 - d.1891), another - a second state - fetched £2.2.0 (). By comparison, a complete second Venice set, from the collection of Mrs Edward Fisher, fetched £82.0.0 in 1897. 24
21: 28 August 1882, GUW #13643; [23 June 1884], GUW #01175; September 1897, GUW #07287.
22: Catalogue of Etchings, Drypoints, Wood Engravings and Lithographs, Anderson Galleries, [New York], 10 April 1919, priced $975.
23: 24 December 1902, GUW #13040; 17 June 1903, #13042.
24: Christie's, 27 November 1888 (lot 164), bought by Gustave Lauser (b. ca 1841); Sotheby's, 3 March 1892 (lot 260), bought 'Blunt'; Christie's, 13-14 July 1897 (lot 316), bought by Colnaghi's.
25: Mansfield 1909[more] (cat. no. 196).