UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Hôtel de la Croix Blanche

Impression: Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
(1917.584)
Number: 395
Date: 1888
Medium: etching
Size: 177 x 126 mm
Signed: butterfly at upper right
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 2
Known impressions: 3
Catalogues: K.373; M.373
Impressions taken from this plate  (3)

PUBLICATION

Hôtel de la Croix Blanche was never published. However, it is closely related to Whistler's unpublished 'Renaissance Set'.

EXHIBITIONS

Being very rare it was rarely exhibited. Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916) lent an impression of the first state to the exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (Graphic with a link to impression #K3770202). 9

Impressions were also shown after Whistler's death, in the Whistler Memorial shows, at the Grolier Club in New York in 1904 and in London in 1905. 10

9: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 296).

10: New York 1904a (cat. no. 358); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 321).

SALES & COLLECTORS

Whistler set the price at £8.8.0, and sold mostly to print dealers. He first sold an impression on 21 January 1889 to Messrs Dowdeswell, London. 11 He sold another (No. 11 in 24 etchings sold) on 27 March 1889 to the Fine Art Society, also in London. 12

Two years later, on 6 April 1891 (Graphic with a link to impression #K3730203), and again in 1899, Whistler sold impressions to H. Wunderlich & Co. in New York. 13 Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) owned an impression, which has the identifying number '11' written on the verso, possibly indicating that it came from the Fine Art Society (Graphic with a link to impression #K3730203). However, it also bears Wunderlich's stock number (a 19714) and was probably acquired from Wunderlich's by Mansfield. It was later owned by Harris G. Whittemore (d. ca 1937) and given by Claude Wampler (1895) to the Syracuse University Art Galleries.

Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916) owned an impression by 1900, possibly also bought from Wunderlich's (Graphic with a link to impression #K3770202). Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) bought an impression that was said to be from the Cox collection - probably meaning James Cox-Cox (ca 1849- d.1901) - from Obach & Co. in London on Whistler's birthday, 11 July 1903, a few days before the artist's death on 17 July (Graphic with a link to impression #K3730202).

11: GUW #13030.

12: Whistler to Ernest George Brown (1853/1854-1915), GUW #13000.

13: GUW #13097; Wunderlich's to Whistler, 24 March 1899, #07305.