UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Etchings         Institutions search term: grolier club

Fanny Leyland

Impression: Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
(1927.5946)
Number: 135
Date: 1874
Medium: drypoint
Size: 197 x 134 mm
Signed: butterfly at left (2-final)
Inscribed: 'Fanny Leyland' at upper left
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 6
Known impressions: 12
Catalogues: K.108; M.107; T.77; W.94
Impressions taken from this plate  (12)
Etching: PK108_01 (plate)
Recto, above; verso, below:
Etching: PK108_02 (plate)
The copper plate has the maker's oval stamp: 'J. ROBINSON / [2?] 1 GT BRIDGEWATER ST / MANCHESTER'. No other plate by Whistler is known to have been made by this maker. It may have been acquired by Whistler in Manchester or locally while he was in Liverpool.
The plate may have been in Whistler's studio at his death and bequeathed to Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), or acquired by her afterwards. She asked Nathaniel Sparks (1880-1956) to print from it but on 18 June 1931 he noted 'Plate greatly worne [sic], practically no burr remains - ' 11 It was later cancelled with a diagonal line across the lower part of the plate. Miss Philip gave the plate to the University of Glasgow in 1935.

11: Martin Hopkinson, 'Nathaniel Sparks's Printing of Whistler's Etchings', Print Quarterly, 1999, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 340, 342, 349.