Long Lagoon | ||
Number: | 215 | |
Date: | 1879/1880 | |
Medium: | etching and drypoint | |
Size: | 154 x 228 mm | |
Signed: | butterfly at lower left (2) | |
Inscribed: | no | |
Set/Publication: | 'Second Venice Set', 1886 | |
No. of States: | 2 | |
Known impressions: | 40 | |
Catalogues: | K.203; M.200; W.169 | |
Impressions taken from this plate (40) |
PUBLICATION
Whistler delivered in all 1093 prints and was paid £2.10.6 for printing each dozen prints. 9
9: Dowdeswell to Whistler, invoice 16 July 1887, GUW #00891.
EXHIBITIONS
For the Long Lagoon he chose a rather parochial comment from a London newspaper, the Daily News, 'We think that London fogs and the muddy old Thames supply Mr. Whistler's needle with subjects more congenial than do the Venetian palaces and lagoons.' 10 The original quotation - which Whistler did not include in full - continues: 'Our river is naturally full of effects in black and white and bistre. Venetian seas and skies and marbles have colour you cannot suggest with a point and some printer's ink.' 11 Whistler appears to have enjoyed this review and used other excerpts elsewhere in the Venice catalogue; see, for instance The Little Venice 238.
Reviewers of the 1883 F.A.S. show had mixed feelings about the etching. The Queen compared it with the 'very slight' Little Salute 210 and found it 'also slight, but cleverly suggestive.' 12 Saturday Review commented slightly confusingly: 'The "Long Lagoon" is one of several instances that the artist is less happy in dealing with a long wide stretch than with a detached strip or slip of water. The command shown elsewhere of the peculiar effect of water seems here to fail him.' 13
10: London FAS 1883 (cat. no. 14).
11: 'Mr Whistler's Venice Etchings', Daily News, 2 December 1880 (GUL Whistler PC 4/14).
12: 'The Studio. An Arrangement in White and Yellow', The Queen, 24 February 1883 (GUL PC 25/24).
13: 'Mr Whistler's Exhibition', Saturday Review, 24 February 1883 (GUL PC 25/32).
An impression was lent by Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916) to a show organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (). 15 James Cox-Cox (ca 1849- d.1901) lent an impression from his 'Venice Set' to the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1901. 16
After Whistler's death two impressions were shown at the Grolier Club in New York in 1904, and Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) lent one (which has not been located) to the Memorial Exhibition organised by the Copley Society in Boston in 1904. 17 Others were exhibited at the Memorial Exhibitions in London and Paris in 1905 - King Edward VII lent an impression to the London show (). 18
14: See REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.
15: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 149).
16: Glasgow 1901 (cat. no. 231).
17: New York 1904a (cat. nos. 171, 171b); Boston 1904 (cat. no. 135).
18: London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 169).
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 Long Lagoon 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 (). Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) bought one from Frederick Keppel & Co. in 1887 () and another from Obach & Co. in 1905 ().
19: GUW #12990.
20: GUW #13072.
Atherton Curtis (1863-1944) owned a lightly inked first state () and Bernard Buchanan MacGeorge (1845?-1924) a more richly inked and sensitively wiped impression (). Early American collectors included George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909) (, ); Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904) (); Harry Brisbane Dick (1855-1916) (); Margaret Selkirk Watson Parker (1867-1936) (); Alfred Atmore Pope (1842-1913) (); and Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916) ().
21: 'The Venice Sets', Fitzwilliam Museum website, http://www. fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk (accessed 2010).