UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Recto, above; verso, below:

The copper plate has no maker's stamp, but it is very close in size to a number of etchings, including Soupe à trois sous [64], Bibi Valentin [34] and Under Old Battersea Bridge [168], dating from 1859-1861, and Sleeping Girl [127], Steamboat Fleet, Chelsea [155], Nude Reclining [126], The Desk [129] and Wych Street, London [176], from the mid-late 1870s. Most of these were bought from Hughes & Kimber in London. It is a size that Whistler favoured both for vertical and horizontal compositions.

It was probably among those plates cancelled at the time of Whistler's bankruptcy in 1879. It was cancelled with numerous diagonal and crossed lines on the upper two thirds of the plate. The cancelled copper 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 from Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851), in exchange for lithographs, by Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958). 8 The plate was given by Miss Philip to the University of Glasgow in 1935.