UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Polichinelle, Jardin du Luxembourg

Impression: Hunterian Art Gallery
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) (Graphic with a link to impression #K4300103).
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.