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The Abbey Jubilee

Impression: Hunterian Art Gallery
Hunterian Art Gallery
(46920)
Number: 296
Date: 1887
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 99 x 67 mm
Signed: butterfly at right
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 2
Known impressions: 3
Catalogues: K.316; M.326
Impressions taken from this plate  (3)

PUBLICATION

The Abbey Jubilee was not published.

EXHIBITIONS

Rarely exhibited, it was for sale by the New York print dealers H. Wunderlich & Co. in an exhibition in 1898 and again in 1903, when it was bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) (Graphic with a link to impression #K3160202). 12

After Whistler's death, an impression was shown at the Grolier Club in New York in 1904 and one in the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in London in 1905. 13

12: New York 1898 (cat. no. 229). New York 1903b (cat. no. 210).

13: New York 1904a (cat. no. 262); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 289).

SALES & COLLECTORS

Only two sales of this etching are recorded during Whistler's lifetime - to H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, for £3.3.0 on 6 April 1891 and in August 1897, and in fact the second is not entirely certain, and may only be the result of Wunderlich's stocktaking, and record that the etching had not been sold. 14

14: GUW #13097, #07289.

It is extremely rare. Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) owned an impression of the first state, possibly bought from Wunderlich's (stock no. a 19700) which is now in the Library of Congress (Graphic with a link to impression #K3160102); and Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) certainly bought one of the second state from Wunderlich's in 1903, which he bequeathed to the Freer Gallery of Art (Graphic with a link to impression #K3160202).
Finally Whistler kept another impression of the second state for himself (Graphic with a link to impression #K3160203); it was bequeathed to Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) and given by her to the University of Glasgow in 1935.