UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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The Fleet: Monitors

Impression: Hunterian Art Gallery
Hunterian Art Gallery
(46923)
Number: 306
Date: 1887
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 143 x 223 mm
Signed: butterfly at lower left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 2
Known impressions: 12
Catalogues: K.318; M.315; W.239
Impressions taken from this plate  (12)
Etching: PK318_01 (plate)
Recto, above; verso, below:
Etching: PK318_02 (plate)
The Fleet: Monitors [306] is the same size as Jubilee Place, Chelsea [276] and Her Majesty's Fleet: Evening [310]. The latter bears the oval stamp of Hughes & Kimber, London copper merchants. Also close in size are the plates for The Cock and the Pump [321], and two Brussels etchings, Palaces, Brussels [338] (also a Hughes & Kimber plate) and Grand'Place, Brussels [335], all dating from 1887.
The original large copper sheets were probably stamped before being cut into smaller sizes. Thus some Hughes & Kimber plates do not have a stamp on the verso. Given the consistency in size of these etchings from 1887, it seems likely they were all made by Hughes & Kimber.
The copper plates for the 'Naval Review Set' were in Whistler's studio in Paris in the 1890s, and returned to London when the studio was sold at the turn of the century. 9 The copper plate for The Fleet: Monitors was in Whistler's studio at his death and bequeathed to Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), who gave it to the University of Glasgow in 1935. It was cancelled with a diagonal line across the lower left corner.

9: Whistler to R. B. Philip, [8 March 1901], GUW #04797.