UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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Chelsea Embankment

Impression: Hunterian Art Gallery
Hunterian Art Gallery
(46901)
Number: 268
Date: 1886
Medium: etching
Size: 45 x 135 mm
Signed: butterfly at lower right
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 23
Catalogues: K.260; M.256; W.211
Impressions taken from this plate  (23)

TECHNIQUE

It is lightly etched, with no drypoint.

PRINTING

The number of early impressions printed by Whistler is difficult to establish. The plate seems to have been printed by someone else after his death, and to have deteriorated rapidly.
In 1903 Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) bought one impression (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600102), which is trimmed to the platemark with a large tab but no butterfly, and a second impression, similarly trimmed, which has a pencil butterfly on the tab but this butterfly was definitely not drawn by Whistler (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600103).
Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) owned an unusual impression in brown ink on off-white, almost light grey, paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600109). Fairly good impressions on cream and ivory laid paper are in the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600112) and the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600110), and a rather fainter impression on buff laid paper in Honolulu Academy of Arts (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600115). These may be life-time impressions.
Examples with minor plate damage entered collections during the 1940s and 1950s (see Graphic with a link to impression #K2600106, Graphic with a link to impression #K2600105 and Graphic with a link to impression #K2600104.) They were presumably printed by others, after Whistler's death. An impression on cream laid paper in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600106) has heavy inking, which somewhat disguises the deterioration of the plate. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, also has a late impression, with marks of pitting across the surface, which was printed at an angle on the sheet of 'modern' laid paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600105). The Hunterian also acquired a late impression, clearly taken from the damaged plate (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600104).
Of six impressions from the deeply corroded plate sold in 2004, one is on a lightweight wove paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K2600117) and the others on coarse wove paper (i.e. Graphic with a link to impression #K2600120); two are printed at an angle on the paper. The provenance on these various late impressions suggests that some may have been printed by 1920, and others possibly later, in the 1960s. It is possible that more impressions were printed from the corroded plate.