UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Venetian Court

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1905.201)
Number: 189
Date: 1879
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 293 x 200 mm
Signed: no
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 3
Known impressions: 3
Catalogues: K.230; M.227
Impressions taken from this plate  (3)

KEYWORD

building, canal, courtyard, lantern, , people.

TITLE

Two different titles have been recorded, as follows:


'Court Yard, Venice' (1904, Boston). 1
'Venetian Court' (1909, Howard Mansfield (1849-1938)). 2


Mansfield's title 'Venetian Court' has been generally accepted by later cataloguers.

1: Boston 1904 (cat. no. 156).

2: Mansfield 1909 (cat. no. 227).

DESCRIPTION

A tall, rectangular entrance flanked by pillars opens into a passage roofed with heavy wooden beams. Just inside the entrance, at top right, is a lantern on a bracket. This passage leads to a small courtyard, with an open door at the back left, in which a woman is sitting. Above it is a small window covered with a rectangular iron grid, and above and to right a larger window similarly barred; between these is what is either a buttress or chimney. On the left wall there are windows above door level, some with louvered shutters, and on the floor above them, windows with open shutters.

SITE

Sottoportico e Calle de la Panada, Cannaregio, Venice, Italy. Grieve points out that Whistler sat in a gondola to draw the view, and drew another etching nearby, Gondola under a Bridge [227]. 3 Also in the area Whistler drew Ponte Piovan [220] and Quiet Canal [224].

3: Grieve 2000, p. 91, fig. 98.