UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Etchings         Institutions search term: agnew

Cottage Door

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1888.1)
Number: 252
Date: 1886
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 68 x 100 mm
Signed: butterfly at upper left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 2
Known impressions: 8
Catalogues: K.250; M.246; W.204
Impressions taken from this plate  (8)

PUBLICATION

Cottage Door was not published.

EXHIBITIONS

An impression was shown in an exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900, lent by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) (Graphic with a link to impression #K2500203). 16 Impressions were also exhibited at print dealers' shows, at H. Wunderlich & Co. in New York and Obach & Co. in London in 1903.

16: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 180). See REFERENCES : EXHIBITIONS.

The etching figured in the comprehensive exhibitions following Whistler's death, including the Grolier Club in New York in 1904 and in Paris in 1905. At the London Memorial exhibition in 1905 a rich impression, in a very dark brown ink on laid paper, was lent by the Royal Collection, Windsor (Graphic with a link to impression #K2500206). 17 It was sold a year later, with the majority of that collection, through Messrs Agnew in London, and Messrs Obach. This impression was then bought by Margaret Selkirk Watson Parker (1867-1936), and bequeathed to the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

17: London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 204).

SALES & COLLECTORS

The first recorded sale was on 17 May 1887, to the London print dealer, Thomas M. McLean (b. ca 1832), for £5.5.0; others were sold for the same price to Messrs Dowdeswell in London in July and August 1887, and Wunderlich's of New York acknowledged receipt of one priced £4.4.0 as part of a large order on 3 May 1888. 18 This may be the one bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) (Graphic with a link to impression #K2500203).

One impression of the first state, from the important collection of the late Joshua Hutchinson Hutchinson (ca 1829 - d.1891) (Graphic with a link to impression #K2500103), was sold at auction to the print dealers Deprez & Gutekunst in 1892 for £1.8.0 - a very modest price. 19 A beautiful second state printed in black ink on ivory laid paper was acquired by Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934), in London (Graphic with a link to impression #K2500202). Mansfield's own impression of the second state was later sold to Harris G. Whittemore (d. ca 1937), and was bought with the Pennell Fund by the Library of Congress (Graphic with a link to impression #K2500207).

18: McLean, 17 May 1887; Dowdeswell, 27 July 1887 and 3 August 1889; G. Dieterlen to Whistler, 3 May 1888; GUW #13011, #08677, #13092 and #07158 respectively.

19: Sotheby's, 3 March 1892, lot 307.