UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Greenwich Park dates from 1859. It may have been done at the same time as Greenwich Pensioner [40], which is dated '1859' on the copper plate. The technique is consistent with this date.

Salaman wrote comparing the work of Francis Seymour Haden, Sr (1818-1910) and Whistler in Greenwich Park in 1859:

'Another plate of comparative interest in relation to these two artists, who at this time were exploring, often together, fresh woods and pastures new within the etcher's province, is Sub Tegmine on which "Greenwich Park, 1859" in Whistler's handwriting appears over Haden's signature. This was done one day when the brothers-in-law were out together on etching adventure... even when we look at Whistler's own record, made on a separate plate, of those trees in Greenwich Park, with the same little group of ladies sitting among them that we see in Haden's Sub Tegmine, it is interesting to note how the pictorial conception of the identical scene differs in each plate. In Whistler's the trees are deliberately grouped with a composing eye and artistic imagination at work, while Haden's is a summary transcript of that wooded bit of park-land, just as it appealed to be sketched then and there, with every line impulsively charged with the suggestion of scenic actuality'. 1