UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Doorway and Vine

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1887.2)
Number: 191
Date: 1879/1880
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 233 x 170 mm
Signed: butterfly at lower right
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: 'Second Venice Set', 1886
No. of States: 18
Known impressions: 45
Catalogues: K.196; M.193; W.161
Impressions taken from this plate  (45)

TECHNIQUE

Like a number of plates started in Venice, Doorway and Vine began as an almost fully realised composition in pure etching. Whistler then employed both etching and drypoint for many minor changes to the copper plate. These were mostly adjustments to the shading within the passageway and alterations to the distant view across the canal and the figures in the window above the passageway.
It is possible that Whistler was influenced to make changes to the figures by an 1883 review which commented 'the figures (are they figures?) are as impalpable as those spectral forms which Mr. Listless scoffed at in Nightmare Abbey.' 10

10: Anon., 'Mr Whistler's Exhibition', Saturday Review, 24 February 1883 (GUL PC 25/32).

PRINTING

The first state of Doorway and Vine was printed in black ink on ivory laid paper with a small margin (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960101). No impression of the second state has been located. The third state was printed in dark brown ink on ivory laid paper with a hunting horn watermark (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960302, Graphic with a link to impression #K1960305). This state of the etching was selected for publication, and an impression was printed by Émile Frédéric Salmon (1840-1913) in black ink on thin pale buff laid paper - possibly an Asian paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960304). However, this looked distinctly thin and flat, and the etching was considerably reworked and printed by Whistler for publication. For a start he usually printed it in dark brown ink, creating a warmer effect of colour, sun and shade.
Doorway and Vine was published by Messrs Dowdeswell and Thibaudeau with the Twenty-six Etchings or the 'Second Venice Set' in 1886. The record of impressions for this edition lists fourteen delivered on 21 October and one on 26 October 1886; four on 28 June, five on 2 July, and twenty-three on 7 July 1887, a total of 47. 11

11: Whistler to W. Dowdeswell, GUW #08717.

Fourth and sixth states - kept by the artist - were printed on ivory laid paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960402, Graphic with a link to impression #K1960403). One seventh state is on dark ivory wove paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960606). These could be considered 'proofs' as Whistler worked out what the main published edition should be. All were almost certainly printed in 1886. The edition was printed on a variety of Asian and western papers, mainly in the ninth and subsequent nine states, touching up the drypoint throughout in order to maintain the shadows and delicate detail.
For the main edition, Asian papers include ninth states on ivory Asian laid (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960502) and buff Japan (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960508). Later (tenth to twelfth) states include ones on cream laid paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960505, Graphic with a link to impression #K1960613); ivory 'antique' (pre-1800) paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960612, Graphic with a link to impression #K1960603) and paper watermarked with a crown over a posthorn (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960604). Another impression is printed in a lighter brown ink on light grey paper with 'S WISE & CO / 1825' watermark (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960605). A late - 16th - state is on ivory laid paper with Strasbourg Lily 'LVG' watermark (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960902) and a 17th state on cream laid paper watermarked with a crown over the Strasbourg lily over '4/BVG' (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960z02).
Whistler retained two eleventh states, one on medium-weight cream laid paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960613) and one on ivory laid (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960602); two twelfth states on 'antique' laid (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960612, Graphic with a link to impression #K1960603), a 13th state in black ink on ivory laid paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K1960802) and two cancelled impressions. Presumably these were 'printer's proofs', the printer's perquisites, that he could have sold separately from the impressions delivered to the publishers.
Cancelled impressions are in dark brown ink on ivory laid paper with Marlowe watermark (Graphic with a link to impression #K1961104), cream laid with 'IV' countermark (Graphic with a link to impression #K1961102); and ivory laid with a Strasbourg Lily over 'LVG' watermark (Graphic with a link to impression #K1961103) similar to that used for the 16th state mentioned above.