UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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The Camp

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1893.46)
Number: 80
Date: 1861
Medium: drypoint
Size: 288 x 159 mm
Signed: 'Whistler.' at lower left
Inscribed: '1861.' at lower left
Set/Publication: 'Cancelled Plates', 1879
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 20
Catalogues: K.82; M.82; T.68; W.75
Impressions taken from this plate  (20)

PUBLICATION

It was published in an album of Cancelled Plates ('Cancelled Set') by The Fine Art Society, London, 1879.

EXHIBITIONS

An impression was lent by Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904) to the Union League Club in New York in 1881, described in the catalogue as 'The Encampment. Very rare'. (Graphic with a link to impression #K0820211), and to the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900. 16

Impressions were rarely exhibited, although one appeared at H. Wunderlich & Co. in New York in 1898. 17

After Whistler's death, an impression was exhibited in the comprehensive Memorial Show in the Grolier Club, New York in 1904, while another one was lent from the Royal Collection to the Whistler Memorial Show in London in 1905. 18

16: New York 1881 (cat. no. 104) Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 70).

17: New York 1898 (cat. no. 71); see REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.

18: New York 1904a (cat. no. 78); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 75).

SALES & COLLECTORS

Whistler sold what he described as the '2nd state' of 'The Camp', to the British Museum in October 1863 for £1.1.0 (Graphic with a link to impression #K0820101). 19 The Museum also bought a cancelled set in 1887 (Graphic with a link to impression #K0820207). Several of these albums of cancelled impressions may have come on the market around 1887, and certainly Thomas Glen Arthur (1858-1907) bought one in that year (Graphic with a link to impression #K0820213).

19: Whistler to W. H. Carpenter, 3 August 1863, GUW #11109.

Whistler sold another impression described as 'Encampment - (scratched)' - presumably cancelled - in November 1877 to Charles Augustus Howell (1840?-1890). 20

20: 14-16 November [1877], GUW #13668.

Cancelled sets were acquired by a number of private collectors, such as Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) (Graphic with a link to impression #K0820202), and George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909) (Graphic with a link to impression #K0820102). Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) bought two sets, probably when she acquired the copper plates from Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851); these included Graphic with a link to impression #K0820204 and Graphic with a link to impression #K0820203.