Polichinelle, Jardin du Luxembourg |  Hunterian Art Gallery (46649) | |
| Number: | 467 | |
| Date: | 1892/1894 | |
| Medium: | etching | |
| Size: | 122 x 161 mm | |
| Signed: | butterfly at lower right | |
| Inscribed: | no | |
| Set/Publication: | no | |
| No. of States: | 1 | |
| Known impressions: | 2 | |
| Catalogues: | K.430; M.424 | |
| Impressions taken from this plate (2) | ||
TECHNIQUE
This is an unfinished etching.
PRINTING
It is very rare. The two extant impression are in dark brown ink, one on a very unusual brown paper with a hunting horn watermark (D. C. BLAUW) (
).
).Whistler's biographer, Joseph Pennell (1860-1926) was closely involved in the history of the printing of Whistler's late Paris etchings, which may well have included this etching:
'[Whistler] explained that
he wanted J. to help with his printing - he was biting and printing
the last Paris plates which no one had seen. This was arranged,
though only after endless postponements ...
the printing began and the friendship became more intimate ...
For weeks in the summer of 1893, either at the printing press in
the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs or at the Rue du Bac, J. was
with Whistler almost daily.' 9
9: Pennell 1921C, p. 12.
But, unfortunately: '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.
Curiously, Whistler was afraid to re-ground them, or to allow
Lamour, the old etching material maker in Paris, to do it, though
Lamour offered to and sent Whistler and J. re-grounding rollers
for the purpose.' 10
10: Ibid, p. 80.