Balustrade, Luxembourg Gardens |  Freer Gallery of Art (1906.123) | |
| Number: | 465 | |
| Date: | 1892/1894 | |
| Medium: | etching | |
| Size: | 128 x 217 mm | |
| Signed: | no | |
| Inscribed: | no | |
| Set/Publication: | no | |
| No. of States: | 1 | |
| Known impressions: | 2 | |
| Catalogues: | K.427; M.422 | |
| Impressions taken from this plate (2) | ||
Balustrade, Luxembourg Gardens dates from between 1892 and the summer of 1894. The pencil butterfly signature on one impression is consistent with these dates (
).
).It is probable that this was among etchings printed in the summer of 1893, with the assistance of Joseph Pennell (1860-1926), who later wrote that 'the ground,
which [Whistler] laid, was bad and came off, and the prints he pulled,
after he bit them as far as he could, were in many places weak. ' 1
1: Pennell 1921C, p. 80.
On
20 February 1894 Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932) wrote to ask Whistler, 'What are you doing or going to do with the Paris etchings? Can't you finish one or two plates? Or don't you care for them anymore?' 2
2: GUW #07231.
Whistler drew comparable scenes in lithography -The Pantheon, from the terrace of the Luxembourg Gardens [c070] and The Terrace, Luxembourg [c087] - in the Jardins du Luxembourg, in 1893 and 1894.