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In the 1860s and 1870s Whistler produced a body of work based on Battersea Bridge, London. Pivotal to his career, this beautiful group of paintings permits a detailed examination of his approach to composition, subject and technique. The earliest pieces, notably Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge, produced soon after his arrival in London, mark one of his most profound and successful challenges to the art establishment of the time and his influence on the aesthetics of the day. This comprehensive and handsomely illustrated study presents the definitive examples of Whistler's radical new approach to the time-honoured subject of the city and river. The works reveal to us Whistler's world - the exhibitions, personalities, buildings, style and atmosphere which inform his art and root this American cosmopolitan securely in the ranks of noted artists inspired by London and the Thames.
Citation preview
An AmericAn in London
WhistLerAnd the thAmes
An A
merican in London: W
histler and the tham
esm
argaret F. macd
onald Patricia de montfort
in the 1860s and 1870s Whistler produced a body of work based on the thames. Pivotal to his career, this beautiful group of paintings, prints and drawings permits a detailed examination of his approach to composition, subject and technique. the earliest paintings, notably Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge, produced soon after his arrival in London, mark one of his most profound and successful challenges to the art establishment of the time.
As well as allowing a detailed study of the evolution of an artist, these works show the thames under contrasting climatic conditions, from Chelsea in Ice to the lovely Nocturne: Grey and Gold – Westminster Bridge, which depicts the deep blue of warm summer evenings. they bring to life Victorian London: the workers and women who frequented the thames-side wharves and pubs, the shipping that thronged the Pool, the barges that navigated the perilous passage under the bridges, and the steamboats and ferries crowded with daytrippers.
the nocturnes of the 1870s mark an important breakthrough in Whistler’s art: his shift from French realism to sophisticated harmony, based on mood and atmosphere, but still rooted in a literal rendering of the thames waterside. the famous Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge is the culmination of his bridge paintings; here the influence of Japanese prints reached its fullest form.
this comprehensive and handsomely illustrated study presents the definitive examples of Whistler’s radical new aesthetic approach to the time-honoured subject of the city and river. in addition, the works reveal to us his world – the exhibitions, the personalities, the buildings, the style, and the atmosphere which inform his art and root this American cosmopolitan securely in the ranks of artists inspired by London and the thames.
Cover: Grey and Silver: Old Battersea Reach, 1863, oil on canvas, the Art institute of chicagoInside covers: James Wyld, Wyld’s New Plan of London, 1853, map on linen, University of Glasgow Library, special collections
Margaret F. MacDonald is Professor emerita and honorary Professorial research Fellow (history of Art) in the school of culture and creative Arts, University of Glasgow. she is Project director of a recently completed research project to produce an online catalogue raisonné of Whistler’s etchings.
Dr Patricia de Montfort is lecturer in history of Art at the University of Glasgow. her teaching and research interests include the life and work of James mcneill Whistler, nineteenth-century women artists and the nineteenth-century London art market.
Philip Wilson Publishersan imprint of i.B.tauris & co Ltd6 salem roadLondon W2 4BUwww.philip-wilson.co.uk 9 781781 300220
ISBN 978-1-78130-022-0
the smithsonian’s museums of as ian ar t
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AN AMERICAN IN LONDON
WHISTLERAND THE THAMES
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Margaret F. MacDonaldPatricia de Montfort
the smithsonian’s museums of as ian ar t
AN AMERICAN IN LONDON
WHISTLERAND THE THAMES
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Published on occasion of the exhibition An American in London: Whistler and the Thames Dulwich Picture Gallery, 16 October 2013 – 12 January 2014 Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, 1 February – 13 April 2014 Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 2 May – 17 August 2014
© Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2013
Published by Philip Wilson Publishers an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd6 Salem RoadLondon W2 4BUwww.philip-wilson.co.uk
Distributed in the United States and Canadaexclusively by Palgrave Macmillan175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
ISBN Hardback 978-1-78130-006-0ISBN Softcover 978-1-78130-022-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publishers.
The right of Margaret F. MacDonald and Patricia de Montfort to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by the authors in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Designed by Pippa Kate Bridle
Printed and bound in Spain by Grafo S.A.
SUPPORTERSADDISON GALLERY OF AMERICAN ART, PHILLIPS ACADEMYAn anonymous foundationEdward P. Bass (Phillips Academy Class of 1963) on his 50th reunion, in honor of Brian T. Allen (by The Bass Foundation)Michael Scharf (Phillips Academy Class of 1960) and Fiona ScharfAndrew Scharf (Phillips Academy Class of 2002)William Scharf (Phillips Academy Class of 2004)Thomas C. Foley (Phillips Academy Class of 1971) and Leslie Fahrenkopf FoleyLeslie G. Callahan III (Phillips Academy Class of 1968) and Barbara Keenan CallahanDavid Carter (Phillips Academy Class of 1941) and Louise Carter
DULWICH PICTURE GALLERYFriends of Dulwich Picture GalleryAmerican Friends of Dulwich Picture GalleryAmerican Art Supporters’ GroupMichael Marks Charitable TrustFarrow & Ball
This exhibition has been made possible for Dulwich Picture Gallery by the provision of insurance through the Government Indemnity Scheme. Dulwich Picture Gallery would like to thank HM Government for providing Government Indemnity and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.
FREER GALLERY OF ART, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONThe Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts
Half title: taken from Thames Warehouses, 1859, etching and drypointColby College Museum of Art, The Lunder Collection, Maine (cat. 8)Frontispiece: Wapping, 1860–64, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (cat. 29, detail) Endpiece: taken from Whistler with a hat, 1859, etching and drypoint British Museum, London (cat. 2)
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Contents
Directors’ Foreword
Curators’ Acknowledgements
Introduction: An American in London
Whistler and the Thames
Margaret F. MacDonald
‘Painting river pictures’: Whistler’s Chelsea subjects
Patricia de Montfort
Catalogue
Etching and Drypoint
The Thames set
The Oil Paintings: Whistler’s ‘Daylights’
Chelsea
Lithographs and Lithotints: from Limehouse to Old Battersea Bridge
Nocturnes
Old Battersea Bridge
Japonisme
Photographs
List of Works
Notes
Bibliography
Chronology
Chronology of Whistler’s Thames Subjects
Copyright and Photographic Credits
Index
6
7
9
13
31
51
53
57
81
99
113
125
133
147
153
168
177
182
184
186
188
189
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Catalogue
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The Oil Paintings:Whistler’s ‘Daylights’
The years between 1859, when Alexander Ionides first commissioned
Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge (cat. 25), and 1870 represent a
period of experimentation for Whistler but also one of uncertainty
and artistic self-doubt. On the one hand, he was writing excitedly
to his old friend in Paris, the dealer George Lucas:
‘The White Girl’ was refused at the Academy where they only
hung the Brittany Sea piece and the Thames Ice Sketch! both of
which they have stuck in as bad a place as possible – Nothing
daunted I am now exhibiting the White Child at another
exposition where she shows herself proudly to all London! that
is to all London who goes to see her! She looks grandly in her
frame and creates an excitement in the Artistic World here
which the Academy did not prevent, or forsee after turning it
out I mean.82
On the other, while Courbet’s method of applying thick layers of
impasto and treatment of subject matter had appealed to him in
works like The Coast of Brittany or Alone with the Tide (1861; Wadsworth
Athenaeum), Whistler became increasingly diverted by Japanese
Grey and Silver: Chelsea Wharf, 1864/68, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (cat. 36, detail)
art over the next few years, both in his etched work and in oils
like Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks (1863–64;
Philadelphia Museum of Art), with its blue and white porcelain
and other Oriental accessories, and in the Graeco-Japanese Battersea
Reach from Lindsey Houses (cat. 34).
Whistler’s letters to his friend Henri Fantin-Latour in Paris
reveal his often tortuous efforts to pursue his own artistic path.
‘I have also done two little pictures of the Thames – an old
bridge, and an effect of fog,’ he told him in January 1864, but,
he despaired, ‘I thought they were all right when I finished but
now I don’t care for them – Oh Fantin I know so little – things
do not go quickly! ’83 Indeed, according to Arthur Severn,84
he took many weeks over The Last of Old Westminster (cat. 26),
the wooden piles supporting the bridge and the appearance of
the workmen. However, views like Grey and Silver: Chelsea Wharf
(cat. 36) exhibit a freer handling of the paint and a lighter
palette, if much reworking – evidence of Whistler’s continuing
technical experiments. By the time that he was painting Variations
in Pink and Grey: Chelsea (cat. 38) in 1871–72, he was beginning
to evolve his liquid paint technique that enabled him to work
faster in thin layers of pigment.
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An American in London: Whistler and the Thames
82
Cat. no. 25Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge, commissioned 1859, signed 1863, oil on canvas,
Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts
This was Whistler’s first painting of Old Battersea Bridge. Commissioned by the Greek shipping merchant
Alexander C. Ionides after the Royal Academy exhibition of 1859, it was completed and exhibited at the R.A. in
1865. It was painted thickly in muted shades of grey, greyish blue and brown on a fine weave canvas over a self-
portrait of the artist. It shows the view down river from Lindsey Row, Chelsea, with the factories of Battersea
seen across the river and the Crystal Palace on the horizon. A critic wrote: ‘So true are the gradations, so correct
the relative tone fixed on for each object, so unaffected the arrangement of the boats, the bridge, and the shore,
that one seems to be looking back right into last November, through a little square in the Academy walls.’85
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83
The Oil Paintings: Whistler’s ‘Daylights’
Cat. no. 26The Last of Old Westminster, 1862, oil on canvas,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A. Shuman Collection
The new Westminster Bridge was built over the old bridge; it was operational in 1860 but work
continued into 1862. Whistler painted it over several weeks, from Walter Severn’s rooms in Manchester
Buildings (site of New Scotland Yard). Severn described Whistler at work: ‘He would look steadily
at a pile for some time, then mix up the colour, then holding his brush right at the end, with no
mahlstick, make a downward stroke and the pile was done.’ He added, ‘these piles looked all about the
same grey, and the shirts of the little figures working looked to me all the same white, but Whistler
spent much time getting various tones out of the heaps of colour on his large palette. After securing
the exact shade of grey or white which he wanted he did his pile or shirt with a few dexterous dabs.’86
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An American in London: Whistler and the Thames
84
Cat. no. 27Grey and Silver: Old Battersea Reach, 1863, oil on canvas
The Art Institute of Chicago
An impressionistic panorama of Battersea, to right of the view seen in Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge
(cat. 25). The factories are shown in considerable detail, painted in a limited range of greys, blue-greys and
browns, colours picked up in the boldly sketched sailing barges on the river, and boats on the foreshore, where
workmen – probably from the Greaves boatyard – beach their rowing boats. Although painted in 1863, it was
exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867 as ‘Battersea’, and renamed for Whistler’s retrospective exhibition of
Nocturnes, Marines & Chevalet Pieces at Goupil’s in 1892 – when most of his Thames pictures were reunited. At that
time it was sold for £450 to Mrs Potter Palmer and described by Whistler as ‘one of the most readily accepted’.87
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85
The Oil Paintings: Whistler’s ‘Daylights’
Cat. no. 28Battersea Reach, ca 1863, oil on canvas
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
‘It was a view of the opposite bank of the river, from out of my window, on a brilliant autumn
evening, and the painting is a favourite of mine,’ said Whistler at the Whistler v. Ruskin trial.
He told a picture restorer that it was painted ‘as well as I remember, in one go and consequently
... not much impasted’. It is indeed painted thinly, except for the vigorous brushstrokes on
the boats in the foreground. Whistler described it later as ‘a most gorgeous bit of colour’.88
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An American in London: Whistler and the Thames
86
Cat. no. 29Wapping, 1860–64, oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Wapping was painted from a balcony over the Thames at The Angel, a pub at Cherry Gardens, Bermondsey. In
the same pub he etched Rotherhithe (cat. 12), with two sailors seated, smoking, on the balcony. The painting
was started in 1860, with the passing shipping carefully observed, and painted impressionistically in fresh,
bright colours. The figures were altered, repositioned, replaced and repainted several times both on site and
back in the Lindsey Row studio over several years. In particular, the figure of Whistler’s mistress, the red-
haired Irish model, Joanna Hiffernan, originally shown as a sailor’s ‘molly’ or prostitute, was repainted to
assume a darker, more modest and reflective persona before the painting went to the Royal Academy in 1865.
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Chelsea
In March 1863 Whistler settled at 7 Lindsey Row, on the Thames
in Chelsea. Neighbours included Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the
poet Algernon Swinburne. In 1867 he moved down to 2 Lindsey
Row (96 Cheyne Walk) where he stayed for the next eleven years.
The Greaves brothers – Walter and Henry – lived a few doors up
at 9 and 10 Lindsey Row. They rowed Whistler about the river,
helped in the studio, and themselves worked on paintings of the
Thames. Literary editor and biographer of the Italian nationalist
Guiseppe Mazzini, Mme Emilie Venturi, also lived a few doors
along. A friend and patron, she acquired from the artist the vivid,
impressionistic oil painting Chelsea In Ice (cat. 35) and she greatly
admired his Ten O’Clock Lecture.99
He moved out in June 1878 to live briefly at the White House
in Tite Street, designed by E.W. Godwin as a studio and house.
The White House was lost, along with everything he owned –
art, collections, pots (Chinese and every-day) and pans – when
he went bankrupt less than a year later. However, except for
fourteen months in Venice 1879–80 and several years in Paris
in the 1890s, he lived close to the Thames in Chelsea for the rest
of his life. He died at 72 Cheyne Walk in 1903.
No. 2 Lindsey Row was a three-storey townhouse (plus attic),
with the kitchen and dining room on the ground floor, sitting
room and studio on the first floor. Across the road was the River
Thames, with Battersea Bridge to the left, the factories of Battersea
across the river, and a gentle curve up-river past the pleasure
gardens of Cremorne, to the right. Over forty years, Whistler
drew and painted the river in all seasons and weather from the
riverbank, from the bridge and nearby jetties and piers, and from
Pink and Silver – Chelsea, the Embankment, 1885, watercolour on white wove paper, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (cat. 50, detail)
the first-floor room of Lindsey Row with its balcony.
The streets of Chelsea were lined with small shops – the decaying
façade of Maunder’s Fish Shop in Lombard Street (later 72
Cheyne Walk) attracted many local artists, including Whistler.
The streetscape also attracted the local photographer James
Hedderly (1814–1885) who worked from a studio at 2 Duke
Street from 1868 to 1871 and later at 21 Riley Street, Kings Road.
Hedderly’s photographs record the lives of local street traders,
shoppers and promenaders before and after the construction of
the Chelsea Embankment, completed in 1874. Sections of the
streetscape between Beaufort Street and Cheyne Walk – Duke
Street and Lombard Street – were partly demolished to make
way for this new stretch of the Embankment and the picturesque
winding roadway along the riverbank was replaced by a wide new,
modern highway. Hedderly’s photographs (cats. 92–96) convey
these dramatic changes vividly.
The proximity of Lindsey Row to the Thames meant that the
river was a daily feature of Whistler’s existence there. There were
panoramic views from the upper floors of both his houses from
which he could observe passing barges, but through journeys on
the river itself he could become more closely acquainted with its
wharves and creeks and the riverside topography of Chelsea –
from the gardens at the Royal Hospital, along Cheyne Walk, past
the Pier Hotel at Cadogan Pier, past Battersea Pier and under
the narrow arches of Old Battersea Bridge to Cremorne Road
and beyond. The advent of passenger steamboats on the Thames
during the 1840s increased leisure traffic. As Herbert Fry advised
in 1880, ‘the small Steamers which ply every five minutes from
Chelsea to London Bridge for 2d., and to Woolwich for 5d.,
touching at the various piers on either side of the river, will enable
the visitor to London to make himself easily acquainted, at the
smallest possible expense, with this “great silent highway”’.100
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Chelsea
107
Cat. no. 48Battersea, 1878, watercolour on off-white wove paper
British Museum, London
An almost monochromatic study, this may be connected with Whistler’s lithotints, such as the Early Morning
of 1878 (cat. 55). The colours are shades of grey, having a wonderful misty quality: some were mixed with
white; others have a touch of blue, as on the barges at right. Whistler built up the picture with a series of
washes. The reflection of the boat’s sail and the two barges behind were only one wash, but the boat itself
had at least three washes, laid on with plenty of water and drying with a hard line at the edge. Some of
the brushwork is angular, some spiky. Some effects, like the smoke, were obtained by carefully removing
paint, after the washes had dried. Further subtleties were achieved in the slender reflections of the three
chimneys, which were brushed hard over a couple of horizontal brushstrokes when the washes were nearly dry.
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An American in London: Whistler and the Thames
108
Cat. no. 49Blue and Silver: The Thames, 1882, watercolour on off-white paper
Private Collection, Ann Arbor, Michigan
In 1882 Whistler’s friend, the architect E.W. Godwin, was living at Westminster, looking down to Hungerford
Bridge and St Paul’s. This was not Whistler’s first watercolour (he had been painting watercolours since he was
ten) but it marked his increased interest in the medium. The view was vignetted, with details drawn delicately
with a small brush in shades of pink and orange, grey and purple. The masses of cloud and still water were
painted freely, using the rough texture of the paper for added effect. For the lights, areas of paper were left bare.
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Chelsea
109
Cat. no. 50Pink and Silver – Chelsea, the Embankment, 1885, watercolour on white wove paper
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
This was done while Whistler was out sketching, with the young lithographer T.R. Way, on a windy
day on the Embankment.103 The Albert Bridge is seen in the background. The figures are touched
with pale orange, pink and red, set against the grey and blues of the sky. It was painted quickly, with
untidy washes, catching the effects of a moment in time. The brushwork is expressive, fluttering
selectively over the figures and the embankment, before settling, very precisely, on the butterfly.
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An American in London: Whistler and the Thames
110
Cat. no. 51Nocturne: Chelsea Embankment, 1883/84, pen and brown ink on cream wove paper
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow
This elaborate drawing – possibly started from nature and completed in the studio – shows the young trees
planted along the Embankment.102 In the distance are the lights of Chelsea shops. A few years later, in 1888,
one of Whistler’s ‘followers’, Theodore Roussel, etched the same scene in one his earliest etchings, Chelsea
Embankment with Albert Bridge in the Background (H.6). The free, scratchy use of the pen, the effect of the lights,
and figures not outlined but indicated by rough hatching, plus the impressionistic observation of the hansom
cab and figures superimposed on the drawing on the right, make this unique among Whistler’s drawings.
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Chelsea
111
Cat. no. 52Copy of ‘Nocturne: Black and Gold – The Fire Wheel’, 20 April 1893, watercolour on off-white
paper laid down on cardThe Hunterian, University of Glasgow
This is a copy of Nocturne: Black and Gold – The Fire Wheel (Tate: YMSM 169). The original, showing
fireworks at Cremorne Gardens, was painted in the mid-1870s; despite several attempts by Whistler
to sell it to rich Americans in the 1890s, it was eventually bought by the painter and collector Arthur
Studd who left it to the Tate. The oil painting has darkened, and this watercolour records its earlier
appearance. The area of the fire wheel itself was painted in watercolour, with the paler areas left
bare, and the rest of the surface with deep greys and blues. The washes ran into each other, and the
drifting smoke and lights were applied in body colour, light over dark, to imitate the effect of the oil.
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