UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Little Dordrecht

Impression: Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
(1938.1881)
Number: 260
Date: 1886
Medium: etching
Size: 95 x 132 mm
Signed: butterfly at lower right
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 12
Catalogues: K.243; M.240
Impressions taken from this plate  (12)

KEYWORD

barge, bridge, cart, horse, people, port, river, sailing boat, ship, wharf.

TITLE

Only one title is known, as in the following examples:

'Little Dordrecht' (1886, Whistler). 2
'Little Dordrecht' (1909, Howard Mansfield (1849-1938)). 3

2: Whistler to T. McLean, [1 November 1886], GUW #13010.

3: Mansfield 1909 (cat. no. 240).

DESCRIPTION

In the foreground three men are crossing a bridge, or a ramp, leading to a wharf. On the wharf are several figures, a horse and a cart. A group of small sailing boats or barges, some with sails partly raised, is moored in mid-stream. There are trees on the far bank.

SITE

A view of the quayside along the Merwekade from near the Bellevue Hotel in the town of Dordrecht, in the Netherlands. 4 A busy port and ferry terminal on the Dutch coast, it was frequently visited by Whistler, who made a number of watercolours there between about 1882 and 1902, including Dordrecht [m0876], r.: Gold and Brown: Dordrecht; v.: Dordrecht [m0968], A Little Red Note: Dordrecht [m0969], Note in Rose and Silver - Dordrecht [m0970], Silver and Red: Dordrecht [m0971], A silver note: Dordrecht [m0972], Gold and grey - The Sunny Shower, Dordrecht [m0973], Note en gris: Dordrecht [m0974], Grey and Green - Dordrecht [m0976] and Dordrecht [m1709], and two oil paintings, Note en gris: Dordrecht [y293], Bleu et argent: Dordrecht [y294]. Etchings of Dordrecht include Dordrecht [259] and Barges, Dordrecht [262].

4: Heijbroek 1997, pp. 55, 61.