UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

The Little Venice

Impression: Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
(1934.570)
Number: 238
Date: 1880
Medium: etching
Size: 185 x 264 mm
Signed: butterfly at lower left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: 'First Venice Set', 1880
No. of States: 2
Known impressions: 54
Catalogues: K.183; M.180; W.149
Impressions taken from this plate  (54)
The copper plate has not been located. It was the same size as that for The Steamboat, Venice [212], which has also not been located. It was cancelled with two horizontal lines, crossed diagonal lines, and a series of diagonal zigzag lines.
Whistler was printing the 'First Venice Set' for the Fine Art Society until the end of his life. The plates were dispersed and this is one of three that have not been located (Nocturne [222], The Palaces [223]).

According to Joseph Pennell (1860-1926), the plate was owned by Mortimer Luddington Menpes (1860-1938). 12 Menpes helped Whistler to print some of the Venetian etchings and that may be how he acquired it.

12: J. Pennell, n.d., draft catalogue of Whistler's etchings (cat. no. 221), Library of Congress, Pennell Collection, Box 353.