UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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The Courtyard, Brussels

Impression: Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
(1938.1870)
Number: 345
Date: 1887
Medium: etching
Size: 215 x 126 mm
Signed: butterfly at right
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 7
Catalogues: K.355; M.353; W.250
Impressions taken from this plate  (7)

PUBLICATION

The Courtyard, Brussels was not published officially, but is considered part of a 'Brussels Set'.

EXHIBITIONS

Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932) lent an impression to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. 7 His firm, H. Wunderlich & Co., exhibited an impression in New York in 1898.

Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) lent one to the exhibition organised by the Caxton Club - also in Chicago - in 1900, to the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts in 1902 and the Whistler Memorial show in Boston in 1904. 8

Impressions were also shown at Obach & Co. in London in 1903, and, after Whistler's death, at the Grolier Club in New York in 1904 and at the Whistler Memorial show in Paris in 1905, and Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934) lent one to the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in London in 1905 (Graphic with a link to impression #K3550102). 9

7: Chicago 1893 (cat. no. 2253 [1675]); see REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.

8: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 216); Philadelphia 1902 (cat. no. 947 [250]); Boston 1904 (cat. no. 178).

9: London Obach 1903 (cat. no. 209); New York 1904a (cat. no. 270); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 250).

SALES & COLLECTORS

Whistler set the price at £12.12.0. He sold impressions to the London print-dealer Thomas M. McLean (b. ca 1832) on 21 December 1887, to Messrs Dowdeswell on 1 and 10 February 1888; and another to McLean in February. 10 British collectors included Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934) (Graphic with a link to impression #K3550102) and John Charles Sigismund Day (1826-1908) (Graphic with a link to impression #K3550103). The latter was later bought for the Royal Collection, and sold through Obach's to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919).

10: GUW #13017; #13026 and #13027; #13018.

At auction, an impression was sold from the collection of the late Joshua Hutchinson Hutchinson (ca 1829 - d.1891) at Sotheby’s, 3 March 1892 (lot 335) and bought by another London print dealer, Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851) for £5.5.0.
As for American print dealers, Whistler sold an impression to Knoedler & Co. on 27 July 1888. 11 On 3 and 14 May and 15 September 1888, and in September 1897, he sold several to H. Wunderlich & Co. 12 The etching that was no. 32 in the 14 May sales list was sold to Howard Mansfield (1849-1938), but for some reason he returned it, after which it went to Harry Brisbane Dick (1855-1916), and was finally bought with the Dick Fund for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Graphic with a link to impression #K3550107). 13 Richard Hartshorne (dates unknown) likewise bought one from Wunderlich's (Graphic with a link to impression #K3550109, stock no. 15256), and George Washington Vanderbilt (1862-1914) probably bought one from Wunderlich's (Graphic with a link to impression #K3550106, stock no. 'A. 66607').

11: GUW #13660.

12: GUW #07158, #13659 and #13053, #07287.

13: Wunderlich's stock nos. a 16392 and a 59410.