Etchings Institutions search term: copley society
The Little Forge, Liverpool |  Hunterian Art Gallery (46779) | |
| Number: | 141 | |
| Date: | 1875 | |
| Medium: | drypoint | |
| Size: | 228 x 152 mm | |
| Signed: | butterfly at lower left (8); removed (9); butterfly at lower left (10-final) | |
| Inscribed: | no | |
| Set/Publication: | no | |
| No. of States: | 16 | |
| Known impressions: | 19 | |
| Catalogues: | K.147; M.145; W.115 | |
| Impressions taken from this plate (19) | ||
PUBLICATION
EXHIBITIONS
Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904) lent an impression to the Union League Club in New York in 1881 (
or ). 9 Another major collector, Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) lent an impression to the exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (). 10 A late impression, exhibited by Obach & Co. in London in 1903, was either a final state sold by that firm to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) () in 1906 or an earlier impression sold to the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, in 1907, for £40 (). Impressions were shown in the Memorial Exhibitions after Whistler's death. Two different states were exhibited at the Grolier Club in New York in 1904, an early state lent by Henry Harper Benedict (1844-1935) (
) and a later one by Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) (). 11
A particularly interesting worked proof from the Royal Collection, Windsor, reproduced below, was included in the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in London in 1905, sold soon after through Messrs Agnews, and possibly exhibited a few years later by Frederick Keppel (1845-1912) of F. Keppel & Co. in New York (
). 12
8: London Grosvenor 1879 (cat. no. 269) 'The Little Forge'. See REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.
9: New York 1881 (cat. no. 134).
10: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 103).
11: New York 1904a (cat. nos. 116a,b,c) ; Boston 1904 (cat. nos. 86, 87).
12: London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 115); New York 1909 (cat. no. 63).
SALES & COLLECTORS
Whistler signed some impressions about 1886 (
, ), presumably for sale. He sold impressions on 1 November 1886 to the London print dealer Thomas M. McLean (b. ca 1832), and on 28 April 1887 and 21 January 1889 to Walter Dowdeswell (1858-1929). 15 Dowdeswell sold one - a final state - to John Charles Sigismund Day (1826-1908), and it was later sold through Obach & Co. to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) (). ); this joined the fourth of Hutchinson's drypoints, originally signed about 1879, and bought in 1892 by Frederick Keppel (1845-1912) for £1.15.0 and immediately sold on to Freer (). The latter had also been marked with an 'x' by Whistler to indicate it was selected, possibly for exhibition. 16: Sotheby's, 3 March 1892 (lots 157, 158, 159, 160).
), which was signed by Whistler about 1874/1875) and a twelfth state (); Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) (); and Margaret Selkirk Watson Parker (1867-1936) (). Bernard Buchanan MacGeorge (1845?-1924) owned a fourth state, which was sold through H. Wunderlich & Co. and later bought by Henry Harper Benedict (1844-1935) and Lessing Julius Rosenwald (1891-1971), who bequeathed it to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (). Obach & Co. sold one to the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, in 1907 for £40 (). ). Caird took the Leyland ladies and friends on an excursion by Pullman to the Scottish Highlands in 1876, and it is possible that this Liverpool connection aroused Caird's interest in the drypoint. 17 This print was given by Caird to the McManus Art Galleries and Museum, Dundee in 1914. There it was joined by a later impression bequeathed by James Guthrie Orchar (1825-1888), to the Orchar Gallery, Broughty Ferry, in 1898, and transferred to the McManus Art Galleries in 1987 (). 17: See Howard Geddes, 'A Peripatetic Picnic of August 1876', Highland Railway Journal, No. 103, Autumn 2012, pp. 4-12. Our thanks to John MacDonald for this reference.