UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

The Pantheon from the Terrace, Luxembourg Gardens

Impression: Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
(1948.38)
Number: 473
Date: 1893/1894
Medium: etching
Size: 82 x 200 mm
Signed: butterfly at lower left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 2
Catalogues: K.429; M.419
Impressions taken from this plate  (2)
The Pantheon from the Terrace, Luxembourg Gardens probably dates from 1893 or 1894. It is closely related to several similar subjects including the lithograph, The Pantheon, from the terrace of the Luxembourg Gardens [c070], as well as several etchings including Little Terrace, Luxembourg Gardens [443], The Little Terrace, Luxembourg Gardens, No. 2 [444], Balustrade, Luxembourg Gardens [465] and Bébés, Jardin du Luxembourg [463].
Joseph Pennell (1860-1926) was helping Whistler to print his etchings during the summer of 1893:
'... he explained that he wanted J. to help with his printing he was biting and printing the last Paris plates which no one had seen. ... For weeks in the summer of 1893, either at the printing press in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs or at the Rue du Bac, J. was with Whistler almost daily.' 1

1: Pennell 1921C, p. 12.

But, unfortunately: 'the ground, which [Whistler] laid, was bad and came off, and the prints he pulled, after he bit them as far as he could, were in many places weak. Curiously, Whistler was afraid to re-ground them, or to allow Lamour, the old etching material maker in Paris, to do it, though Lamour offered to and sent Whistler and J. re-grounding rollers for the purpose. This was in 1893, and it was not until 1900 that he did anything with the plates ...' 2

2: Ibid, p. 80.