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The Cock and the Pump

Impression: Hunterian Art Gallery
Hunterian Art Gallery
(46914)
Number: 321
Date: 1887
Medium: etching
Size: 222 x 144 mm
Signed: butterfly at lower right
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 7
Catalogues: K.304; M.299; W.235
Impressions taken from this plate  (7)

PUBLICATION

The Cock and Pump was never published.

EXHIBITIONS

Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) lent an impression to the exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (). 9

An impression was also shown in a print dealer's show at Obach & Co. in London in 1903, and in the Memorial Exhibitions after Whistler's death. Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) lent an impression to the Boston show of 1904 () and Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934) to the London show in 1905 (). 10

9: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 205); see REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.

10: Boston 1904 (cat. no. 171); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 235).

SALES & COLLECTORS

The price asked by Whistler was £12.12.0 and sales to print dealers were brisk. He sold the first on 21 December 1887 to the London dealer, Thomas M. McLean (b. ca 1832) and others shortly afterwards, on 1 and on 10 February 1888, to Messrs Dowdeswell. 11 One of these was almost certainly bought by Margaret Selkirk Watson Parker (1867-1936) (), from whom it passed to the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Another may have been bought by Thomas Glen Arthur (1858-1907), and was later owned by Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932) of Wunderlich & Co., by Charles C. Cunningham (1910-1979), and finally by the National Gallery of Australia ().

11: GUW #13017, #13026; #13027.

Whistler's next sales were to New York dealers: on 29 June 1888 to H. Wunderlich & Co., and a few days later, on 2 July 1888 to Frederick Keppel (1845-1912) of F. Keppel & Co. 12 This may have been the one bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) in 1898 ().

12: GUW #13052, #13063.

An impression was sold from the collection of the late Joshua Hutchinson Hutchinson (ca 1829 - d.1891) at Sotheby's, 3 March 1892 (lot 326) and bought by another London print dealer, Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851) for £5.10.0 (). This was later owned by Henry Harper Benedict (1844-1935), and bought in 1970 at a local auction by the University of Glasgow, to join the Whistler collection based on the artist's estate.