UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Etchings         Institutions search term: caxton club

Speke Hall

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1898.403)
Number: 140
Date: 1875
Medium: drypoint
Size: 178 x 302 mm
Signed: no
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 2
Known impressions: 3
Catalogues: K.143; M.141
Impressions taken from this plate  (3)

PUBLICATION

It was never published.

EXHIBITIONS

Rarely exhibited, an impression of Speke Hall was lent by Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904) to exhibitions organised by the Union League Club in New York in 1881 and by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1430104). 6

It was also shown in the Memorial Exhibitions after Whistler's death. In New York, two states were shown at the Grolier Club in 1904, one a second state lent by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1430202), and another impression was lent from the Royal Collection in London in 1905. (Graphic with a link to impression #K1430102). 7

6: New York 1881 (cat. no. 82); Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 82). See REFERENCES : EXHIBITIONS.

7: New York 1904a (cat. nos. 90, 90b); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 269).

SALES & COLLECTORS

The earliest impression acquired by any dealer or collector was almost certainly that owned by Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904), which was signed '1875' and inscribed '1st proof-' by Whistler about 1875 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1430104).
Another early collector was Francis Seymour Haden, Sr (1818-1910), whose impression (Graphic with a link to impression #K1430202) was sold through H. Wunderlich & Co. in 1898 to Freer and bequeathed by him to the Freer Gallery of Art..
Whistler sold an impression of 'Speke' to the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle for £5.5.0 in 1877 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1430102); it was lent by King Edward VII to the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in London in 1905. 8 It was later owned by Howard Mansfield (1849-1938), then Harris G. Whittemore (d. ca 1937), and was eventually given by Lessing Julius Rosenwald (1891-1971) to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1949.

8: 19/22 October 1877, GUW #12736; London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 269).