UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Sunflowers, Marché St Germain, Paris

Impression: Hunterian Art Gallery
Hunterian Art Gallery
(49908)
Number: 437
Date: 1888/1893
Medium: etching
Size: 223 x 282 mm
Signed: butterfly at upper centre
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 5
Catalogues: K.422; M.417; W.258
Impressions taken from this plate  (5)

TECHNIQUE

Sunflowers, Marché St Germain is pure etching.

PRINTING

The etching is rare. One of the first impressions was printed in black ink on ivory Japanese paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K4220102). Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) owned an early impression, which was inscribed '2nd proof' (Graphic with a link to impression #K4220106), and fully worked over by the artist in pen and ink. Both Mansfield and Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932) thought that this was a second state but much if not all of this work is pen and ink. 12 It is a beautiful proof, on exceptionally thin, transparent paper. The suggested alterations were never made.

12: Mansfield 1909 (cat. no. 417); Kennedy 1910 (cat. no. 422).

Impression: K4220106
The plate was printed after Whistler's death, on the instructions of Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), in a very small edition of three by Nathaniel Sparks (1880-1956). On 18 June 1931 Sparks noted, with his distinctive spelling and writing:
'Sunflowers - (Plate in fine condition)
Etched Plate - (Three proofs)
On thin paper with Fine silkey surface
Two on same paper one with
Fluer-de-Lys combined in design
other (Fellows / 1804)' 13

13: Martin Hopkinson, 'Nathaniel Sparks's Printing of Whistler's Etchings', Print Quarterly, 1999, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 340, 345, 352.

His impressions are both effective and sympathetic. They were printed in black ink on ivory Asian laid paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K4220103), on off-white laid paper with a Strasbourg Lily 'FF' watermark (Graphic with a link to impression #K4220104) and on ivory laid paper (Graphic with a link to impression #K4220205).