UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Under Old Battersea Bridge

Impression: Hunterian Art Gallery
Hunterian Art Gallery
(46792)
Number: 168
Date: 1876/1878
Medium: etching, drypoint and open bite
Size: 216 x 139 mm
Signed: no
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: 'Cancelled Plates', 1879
No. of States: 3
Known impressions: 24
Catalogues: K.176; M.173
Impressions taken from this plate  (24)

PUBLICATION

It was published in an album of Cancelled Plates ('Cancelled Set') by The Fine Art Society, London, 1879.

EXHIBITIONS

It has rarely been exhibited. Impressions were shown at the Union League Club in New York in 1881, lent by Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760104), and two different states shown in the exhibition organised by the Caxton Club, Chicago, in 1900, lent by Avery and by Howard Mansfield (1849-1938). 9

It was also shown in a print dealer's show, at H. Wunderlich & Co. in 1903, and Messrs Brown & Philips lent an impression to the Whistler Memorial show in London in 1905. 10

9: New York 1881 (cat. no. 150); Chicago 1900 (cat. nos. 317, 317a). See REFERENCES : EXHIBITIONS.

10: New York 1903b (cat. no. 206); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 280).

SALES & COLLECTORS

Francis Seymour Haden, Sr (1818-1910) owned the first proof, which was sold with his collection through H. Wunderlich & Co., New York and bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) in 1898 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760102). According to Howard Mansfield (1849-1938), first states were owned by Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760104), Freer, and himself. Kennedy listed a first state owned by Thomas Jefferson Coolidge jr (1863-1912) in 1910 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760101), a second (this time a worked proof) by Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934), and a third, by Henry Harper Benedict (1844-1935) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760301). Theobald's impression was owned at one time by Mortimer Luddington Menpes (1860-1938) and later, by Charles C. Cunningham (1910-1979) before being bought by the National Gallery of Australia (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760z01). Menpes also owned a third state, which was bought by Freer from Obach & Co. in 1904, and bequeathed with the rest of his collection to the Freer Gallery of Art (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760302). Another first state was acquired by Lessing Julius Rosenwald (1891-1971) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760103) and given to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Cancelled impressions often remained in the album as published in 1879. They were snapped up by collectors eager to have representations of a wide range of Whistler's works, and presumably because they could check the condition of the plate when it was cancelled. Buyers included the British Museum in 1887 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760405) and a private collector, Thomas Glen Arthur (1858-1907), also in 1887 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760410); Freer bought it from Knoedler & Co. in 1893 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760402) and the Hamburger Kunsthalle bought a set from J. Littauer in 1896 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760408). A set owned by Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau (ca 1840- d.1892) was sold at auction at Sotheby's, 13 December 1889 (lot 787 or 789) and bought by Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851) who exchanged it for more negotiable Whistlers with Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1760404).