Market Place, Ostend |  National Gallery of Australia (78.422) | |
| Number: | 350 | |
| Date: | 1887 | |
| Medium: | etching | |
| Size: | 92 x 134 mm | |
| Signed: | butterfly at lower left | |
| Inscribed: | no | |
| Set/Publication: | no | |
| No. of States: | 1 | |
| Known impressions: | 2 | |
| Catalogues: | K.350; M.439 | |
| Impressions taken from this plate (2) | ||
Market Place, Ostend was probably drawn in September 1887 when Whistler visited Ostend and Brussels, although stylistically it could have dated from earlier. The butterfly signature is consistent with a date of 1886 or 1887.
There is no record of a trip to Ostend in 1886 except for a newspaper, which stated that he had been working in Ostend during the summer of 1886:
'Ostend has been the scene of Mr. Whistler's summer tasks. He has
etched and sketched the busy stir of life on the Digue and in the
Kursaal. There are under a dozen etchings, besides the two nocturnes [Petite Bonne à la porte d'une auberge [y367]] in
oil for the coming show in Suffolk-street. A limited number only of
the plates will be issued from the Fulham studio press, for in this
instance Mr. Whistler will be his own pressman.'
1
1: Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 29 October 1886.
Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) wrote that Elizabeth Robins Pennell (1855-1936) 'thinks that this etching was done in September, 1896.' This was incorrect, and may have been derived from Mansfield's own suggestion that the image represented Calais. 2
2: Mansfield 1909 (cat. no. 439).