The Riva | ||
Number: | 229 | |
Date: | 1879/1880 | |
Medium: | etching and drypoint | |
Size: | 202 x 298 mm | |
Signed: | butterfly at upper left | |
Inscribed: | no | |
Set/Publication: | 'First Venice Set', 1880 | |
No. of States: | 4 | |
Known impressions: | 55 | |
Catalogues: | K.192; M.189; W.157 | |
Impressions taken from this plate (55) |
PUBLICATION
EXHIBITIONS
15: 'Mr. Whistler's Venice', St James' Gazette, 9 December 1880 (GUL Whistler PC4/16).
REFLECTION: Like Eno's Fruit Salt or the "Anti-mal-de-Mer."
"Even such a well-worn subject as the Riva degli Schiavoni is made original (?) by being taken from a high point of view, and looked at lengthwise, instead of from the canal." 16
16: London FAS 1883 (cat. no. 30); the question mark is Whistler's.
In 1881 The Riva was at the centre of what Whistler called 'The Haden-Piker-Painter etcher Plot'. Frank Duveneck (1848-1919) had exhibited etchings of Venice, including one of The Riva looking towards the Grand Ducal Palace, in the exhibition of the newly formed Painter Etcher's Society, at the Hanover Gallery in London.
Whistler queried Haden's account and asked: 'Of what nature, pray, is the "necessary duty" that has led two medical men and a Slade Professor to fail as Connoisseurs, and blunder as Detectives? -' 18 The related correspondence was published by Whistler as a pamphlet (The Piker Papers. The Painter-Etchers' Society and Mr Whistler.) 19 Maud Franklin (1857- ca 1941) wrote to another American etcher who had known both Duveneck and Whistler in Venice:
17: 21 March 1881, GUW #10992.
18: Whistler to Haden, 9 March [1881], GUW #13147; partly published in The Cuckoo, 30 April 1881.
19: Whistler 1881 A
20: [12/30 April 1881], GUW Otto Henry Bacher (1856-1909).
Later exhibitions included those at print dealers, including H. Wunderlich & Co. in New York, first in 1883, followed by one in 1898 and two in 1903; Obach & Co. in London in 1903, and F. Keppel & Co. in New York in 1904. 23 Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) bought a fourth state (reproduced above) from Wunderlich's in 1898 ().
One impression was lent by Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916) to the show organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (). 24 In the same year, under the title 'The Rival' (a mistake or a joke?) an impression was shown in East Melbourne by Messrs Robertson & Moffatt. 25 In 1901, an impression was shown in an International Exhibition in Glasgow.
Later, after Whistler's death, impressions were shown at the Grolier Club in New York and the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1904, and at the Whistler Memorial Exhibitions in London - lent by King Edward VII - and Paris in 1905. Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) lent an impression to the big Whistler exhibition held in Rotterdam in 1906 (). 26
21: New York 1881 (cat. nos. 156-167).
22: Berlin 1881 (cat. no. 714).
23: New York 1898 (cat. no. 136); see REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.
24: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 138).
25: Punch, East Melbourne, 14 June 1900.
26: New York 1904a (cat. no. 159); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 157); Rotterdam 1906 (cat. no. 46).
SALES & COLLECTORS
27: Inventory books, Kupferstichkabinett Berlin.
28: 2 July 1890, GUW #13044.
Whistler sold an impression in 1897 to H. Wunderlich & Co. of New York for £6.6.0, and sold them another in 1900 for a much higher price, £10.10.0. 29