Greenwich Park |  Freer Gallery of Art (1898.260) | |
| Number: | 41 | |
| Date: | 1859 | |
| Medium: | etching and drypoint | |
| Size: | 128 x 208 mm | |
| Signed: | 'Whistler.' at lower left | |
| Inscribed: | no | |
| Set/Publication: | no | |
| No. of States: | 3 | |
| Known impressions: | 38 | |
| Catalogues: | K.35; M.34; T.18; W.33 | |
| Impressions taken from this plate (38) | ||
Greenwich Park dates from 1859. It may have been done at the same time as Greenwich Pensioner [40], which is dated '1859' on the copper plate. The technique is consistent with this date.
Salaman wrote comparing the work of Francis Seymour Haden, Sr (1818-1910) and Whistler in Greenwich Park in 1859:
'Another plate of comparative interest in relation to these
two artists, who at this time were exploring, often together,
fresh woods and pastures new within the etcher's province, is
Sub Tegmine on which "Greenwich Park, 1859" in
Whistler's handwriting appears over Haden's signature. This
was done one day when the brothers-in-law were out together
on etching adventure... even when we look at Whistler's own record, made
on a separate plate, of those trees in Greenwich Park, with the
same little group of ladies sitting among them that we see in
Haden's Sub Tegmine, it is interesting to note how the pictorial
conception of the identical scene differs in each plate. In
Whistler's the trees are deliberately grouped with a composing
eye and artistic imagination at work, while Haden's is a summary
transcript of that wooded bit of park-land, just as it appealed to
be sketched then and there, with every line impulsively charged
with the suggestion of scenic actuality'.
1
1: Malcolm C. Salaman, The Etchings of Sir Francis Seymour Haden, P.R.E., London, 1923, pp. 5-6.