UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

balcony, building, door, doorway, Renaissance, stable, woman standing.

There are several titles that although radically different appear to refer to the same etching:


'Doorway Stables - Loches (French Plates)' (1887/1888, Whistler). 1
'Stables doorway' (1888, Whistler). 2
'Stables - (Doorway. -) Loches' (1890/1892, Beatrice Whistler (1857-1896)). 3
'Doorway in Stable Yard. Loches' (1903/1935, possibly Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958)). 4
'Cellar Door? Hotel Tours' (1897, Wunderlich's). 5
'Cellar Door, Tours' (1898, Wunderlich's). 6
'Cellar-Door, Tours' (1902, Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932)). 7



The preferred title, 'Doorway, Stables - Loches', is based on the original titles used by Whistler and his wife. It appears to have been E.G. Kennedy of Wunderlich's who suggested that it was Tours rather than Loches, and, in the first instance (in 1897, as seen above), the firm queried the title.

On the right is an open doorway at the corner of a building, with the tendrils of a climbing plant on the bare wall above. Immediately inside the doorway a staircase curves round to the right. On the fourth step is a woman reaching into a cupboard behind the stairs. To left of the door, across a small cobbled yard, is a two-storey building with a tiled roof; a woman stands in front of a narrow opened window, looking out from the balcony. The sun casts shadows below the balcony, and in the dark interiors. In the yard there are bits of wood and other materials heaped in the corner to left of the door.

Loches, a town in the Loire valley, France. Whistler etched a number of scenes there including Hôtel de Ville, Loches [412] and Hôtel de la Promenade, Loches [415]. Kennedy and others recorded the site as Tours but Whistler and his wife, shortly after their honeymoon, listed it as Loches. 8 Another etching that may show the same building is Hôtel de la Promenade, Loches [415].