UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

F. R. Leyland

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1907.150)
Number: 121
Date: 1874/1875
Medium: etching, drypoint and open bite
Size: 304 x 177 mm
Signed: butterfly at right
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: 'Cancelled Plates', 1879
No. of States: 2
Known impressions: 20
Catalogues: K.102; M.103; W.93
Impressions taken from this plate  (20)

PUBLICATION

It was published in an album of Cancelled Plates ('Cancelled Set') by The Fine Art Society, London, 1879 (see Graphic with a link to impression #K1020302).

EXHIBITIONS

An impression was exhibited by H. Wunderlich & Co. in New York in 1898. 12 Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) lent his impression to the exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020203) and to a later show in Boston in 1910. 13

After Whistler's death an impression was lent to the Grolier Club exhibition in New York in 1904, and Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934) lent an impression to the Whistler Memorial exhibition in London in the following year. 14

12: See REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.

13: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 88); Boston 1910; see REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.

14: New York 1904a (cat. no. 97); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 93).

SALES & COLLECTORS

This etching is very rare. An impression from the collection of Joshua Hutchinson Hutchinson (ca 1829 - d.1891) was bought after his death by the print dealers Deprez & Gutekunst for £12.12.0 in 1892. 15 Howard Mansfield's impression of the first state was later acquired by Lessing Julius Rosenwald (1891-1971), who gave it to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020203). Two impressions of the second state are recorded, which were acquired by George Washington Vanderbilt (1862-1914) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020201) and Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020202).

15: Sotheby's, 3 March 1892 (lot 144).

Cancelled sets were sold by the Fine Art Society and Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau (ca 1840- d.1892). One such set was sold at the Thibaudeau sale in 1889 for the derisory sum of £0.6.0. 16 It was bought by Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851), who exchanged it with Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), and she bequeathed this set to the University of Glasgow (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020303). She also owned another set that was cut up, the impressions being stuck on the envelopes holding the copper plates (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020302).

Other cancelled impressions, often in the album in which they were originally published, were acquired by the British Museum in 1887 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020305); by Thomas Glen Arthur (1858-1907) in the same year (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020203); by Freer from Knoedler & Co. in 1893 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020301); from J. Littauer by the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 1896 (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020308); and by other collectors and collections including George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020304) and Walter M. Hill (1868-1952) (Graphic with a link to impression #K1020309).

16: Sotheby's, London, 13 December 1889 (lot 787 or 789).