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Balustrade, Luxembourg Gardens

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1906.123)
Number: 465
Date: 1892/1894
Medium: etching
Size: 128 x 217 mm
Signed: no
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 2
Catalogues: K.427; M.422
Impressions taken from this plate  (2)
Balustrade, Luxembourg Gardens dates from between 1892 and the summer of 1894. The pencil butterfly signature on one impression is consistent with these dates (Graphic with a link to impression #K4270102).
It is probable that this was among etchings printed in the summer of 1893, with the assistance of Joseph Pennell (1860-1926), who later wrote that 'the ground, which [Whistler] laid, was bad and came off, and the prints he pulled, after he bit them as far as he could, were in many places weak. ' 1

1: Pennell 1921C, p. 80.

On 20 February 1894 Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932) wrote to ask Whistler, 'What are you doing or going to do with the Paris etchings? Can't you finish one or two plates? Or don't you care for them anymore?' 2

2: GUW #07231.

Whistler drew comparable scenes in lithography -The Pantheon, from the terrace of the Luxembourg Gardens [c070] and The Terrace, Luxembourg [c087] - in the Jardins du Luxembourg, in 1893 and 1894.