UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Man Fishing

Impression: Whistler Etchings Project
Whistler Etchings Project
(-)
Number: 404
Date: 1888
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 220 x 131 mm
Signed: no
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 1
Catalogues: K.-; M.-; T.-; W.-
Impressions taken from this plate  (1)

KEYWORD

fishing, landscape, man, tree.

TITLE

Whistler's original title is not known. The only recorded title is as follows:

'Man Fishing' (1903/1935, Hunterian Art Gallery). 1

'Man Fishing', the descriptive title recorded by the Hunterian Art Gallery, may have been suggested by Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958). The title may have had Whistler's approval because Miss Birnie Philip sorted his copper plates at his request in 1901, and was his executrix. However, it might have been written later, when the plates were sorted after Whistler's death in 1903, or when they were given to the University of Glasgow in 1935, or even by later cataloguers in the Hunterian Art Gallery.

1: Museum records.

DESCRIPTION

A man wearing a loose jacket and trousers and a round brimmed hat stands to left of centre, on the low grassy bank of a tree-lined pool, his fishing rod extending over the water to right.

SITTER

Not identified.

SITE

Not identified. Whistler did make occasional forays into the country, in, for instance, southern England, the Loire valley and Brittany in France, and in Holland.

DISCUSSION

Although such landscape scenes are rare in Whistler's etched work, there were several early Thames-side subjects that included fishing: Landscape with Fisherman [85], as well as The Camp [80], The Punt [82], and Sketching [83]. A later landscape etching, drawn in Holland, is Zaandam [458].