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A Sketch of Shipping

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1898.361)
Number: 57
Date: 1859
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 154 x 228 mm
Signed: no
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: 'Cancelled Plates', 1879
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 20
Catalogues: K.151; M.48; T.84; W.127
Impressions taken from this plate  (20)
A Sketch of Shipping may date from 1859. It is unfinished and difficult to date.
Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) thought it dated from about 1859. 1 The copper plate is close in size to a number of etchings dating from 1859 (Stevens' Boat Yard [56], Whistler with a hat [44], Fumette's Bent Head [58], Arthur Haden [66], Mr Mann [73]). Of these, only Stevens' Boat Yard [56] is of a similar subject, and might help to confirm the dating.

1: Mansfield 1909 (cat. no. 48).

However, a similar size was used for some works in the early 1870s, including several subjects done at Speke Hall near Liverpool (Mrs Leyland, Sr. [123], Sketches of Heads [138], Speke Shore [139]) and others that must date from London in the second half of the 1870s (such as Irving as Philip of Spain, No. 1 [158], Agnes [146]).
The latest possible date is 1879 when it was published with the set of Cancelled Etchings by the Fine Art Society.