UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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Shaving and Shampooing

Impression: Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
(1917.480)
Number: 442
Date: 1888
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 178 x 129 mm
Signed: butterfly at left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 4
Catalogues: K.273; M.269
Impressions taken from this plate  (4)

KEYWORD

birdcage, child, children, hairdresser, passageway, shop-front, streetscape.

TITLE

There are numerous variations in the titles used by Whistler and later cataloguers, as follows:


'SHAVING and SHAMPOOING' (1888, Whistler). 2
'Shampoo Shop' (1888, Whistler). 3
'Shampoo Shop, - St Martin's Lane' (1888, Whistler) 4
'Shampooing Shop' (1889, Whistler) 5
'Shampoo Shop. St Martin's Lane' (1890/1892, Beatrice Whistler (1857-1896)). 6
'Shaving Shop, Chelsea' 7
'Shaving and Shampooing' (1902, Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932)). 8
'The Shaving-And-Shampooing Shop' (1909, Howard Mansfield (1849-1938)). 9


'Shampoo Shop, St Martin's Lane' combines the main elements of the titles used by Whistler and his wife.

2: Etched on copper plate.

3: Written on Graphic with a link to impression #K2730103.

4: Whistler to Dowdeswell's, 10 December 1888, GUW #13029.

5: Whistler to Wunderlich's, 16 April 1889, GUW #13055.

6: List, [1890/1892], GUW #12715.

7: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. E313).

8: Kennedy 1902 (cat. no. 294).

9: Mansfield 1909 (cat. no. 269).

DESCRIPTION

A single shop-front fills the top two-thirds of the plate (drawn parallel to the edges of the plate) with the pavement and part of the street in the foreground below. A woman is seen through the open door at left, then a shop window with large panes, filled with sheets of paper (notices or posters), then, at right, an open door or narrow, dark passage. Above the shop is the lower part of an open sash window, and below that, the large sign, 'SHAVING and SHAMPOOING.' In front of the door at left is a small boy with a stick, and at right, in front of the window, a woman flanked by two girls, looking at the viewer. At far right, in the corner, is the start of a building at right angles to the shop, with a large pot at the edge of the pavement.

SITE

According to Whistler, this was a shop in St Martin's Lane, in central London. 10

10: Whistler to Dowdeswell's, 10 December 1888, GUW #13029.

DISCUSSION

This is one of many shop fronts etched in the 1880s, including T. A. Nash's Greengrocer's Shop [298], Fish-Shop, Chelsea [267], J.H. Woods' Fruit Shop, Chelsea [327], Furniture Shop [278], The Barber's Shop, Chelsea [263], Rag Shop, Milman's Row, Chelsea [329], Bird-Cages, Chelsea [297], Little Maunder's [273],Bird Shop - Seven Dials [384], Rag Shop, St Martin's Lane [328].