The Band, Luxembourg Gardens |  Whistler Etchings Project (-) | |
| Number: | 466 | |
| Date: | 1893/1894 | |
| Medium: | etching | |
| Size: | 181 x 152 mm | |
| Signed: | no | |
| Inscribed: | no | |
| Set/Publication: | no | |
| No. of States: | 1 | |
| Known impressions: | 1 | |
| Catalogues: | K.-; M.-; T.-; W.- | |
| Impressions taken from this plate (1) | ||
TECHNIQUE
The trees and figures to right have been drawn in some detail and fully etched. There is also drypoint shading. However, the band has either not been drawn fully, or has not been etched properly, and has not been completed.
PRINTING
There is still ink in the lines so the plate must have been printed although no impressions survive. It could have been among etchings printed with the help of Joseph Pennell (1860-1926) during the summer of 1893:
'... [Whistler] explained that
he wanted J. to help with his printing he was biting and printing
the last Paris plates which no one had seen. ... For weeks in the summer of 1893, either at the printing press in
the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs or at the Rue du Bac, J. was
with Whistler almost daily.' 8
8: Pennell 1921C, p. 12.
But, unfortunately: '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.
Curiously, Whistler was afraid to re-ground them, or to allow
Lamour, the old etching material maker in Paris, to do it, though
Lamour offered to and sent Whistler and J. re-grounding rollers
for the purpose. This was in 1893, and it was not until 1900 that
he did anything with the plates ...' 9
9: Ibid, p. 80.