UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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A Man Reading

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1893.84)
Number: 107
Date: 1873/1877
Medium: drypoint
Size: 280 x 190 mm
Signed: no
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: 'Cancelled Plates', 1879
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 18
Catalogues: K.137; M.136
Impressions taken from this plate  (18)

PUBLICATION

It was published in an album of Cancelled Plates ('Cancelled Set') by The Fine Art Society, London, 1879.

EXHIBITIONS

None.

SALES & COLLECTORS

Surviving impressions are almost all still in the album of cancelled impressions. For instance, the British Museum bought an album in 1887 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1370206) and Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) bought a set from Knoedler & Co. in 1893 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1370207). Thomas Glen Arthur (1858-1907) also acquired a set in 1887 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1370212) which later went to Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Early owners included George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1370202) and Walter M. Hill (1868-1952) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1370211). Boston Public Library also acquired a set (Graphic with a link to impression #K1370209). A set acquired by J. Littauer, Munich was sold to the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 1896 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1370210).
Prices were low but collectors and collections were keen to have the set of cancelled etchings, as a record of a substantial number of otherwise unrecorded etchings and drypoints. A set, probably acquired from the Fine Art Society by Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau (ca 1840- d.1892), was auctioned in 1889 and bought by Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851) for £0.6.0. 4 Dunthorne exchanged it for other works with Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) who bequeathed it to the University of Glasgow (see Graphic with a link to impression #K1370203). She acquired another set, trimmed the impressions and stuck them on the envelopes containing the copper plates, which did not improve them at all (i.e. Graphic with a link to impression #K1370205).

4: Sotheby's, London, 13 December 1889 (lot 787 or 789).