UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Recto, above; verso, below:

The copper plate bears the stamp of 'B. MAIRE / PLANEUR A PARIS'. This stamp has been found on only seven extant copper plates: this drypoint, Lindsey Houses, Shipping at Liverpool [100], Sketches of Heads [138], Speke Shore [139], Battersea Morn [174], Greenhithe [173], and Irving as Philip of Spain, No. 2 [159]. The size of these copper plates is not identical but ranges from 150 x 225 mm to 231 x 155 mm. The dates appear to range from about 1867 to 1877.

Several of these plates were executed in Liverpool but Lindsey Houses, The Thames towards Erith and Battersea: Dawn were drawn on the River Thames.

Whistler could have bought several plates at the same time or on different occasions when visiting Paris, and evidently used them at times as an alternative to his more usual suppliers, Hughes & Kimber in London.

The copper plate was cancelled with crossed diagonal lines across the image. The cancelled plate was probably among plates bought at Whistler's bankruptcy sale by the Fine Art Society, London. It was published in an album of Cancelled Plates ('Cancelled Set') by The Fine Art Society, London, 1879.

The copper plate was probably among those acquired in exchange for lithographs from Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851), by Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958). 10 The plate was given by Miss R. B. Philip to the University of Glasgow in 1935.