UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

Home > The Catalogue > Browse > Etching

St James's Park

Impression: Hunterian Art Gallery
Hunterian Art Gallery
(46900)
Number: 250
Date: 1885
Medium: etching
Size: 68 x 100 mm
Signed: butterfly at lower left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 5
Catalogues: K.255; M.251; W.207
Impressions taken from this plate  (5)

TECHNIQUE

St James's Park is in pure etching, with no drypoint.

PRINTING

It is very rare. However, on 4 September 1887 Whistler had a production line going, and, with some assistance, printed impressions of nine etchings: 'Scaffolding / The Steps / Miss Pettigrew / Sweet Shop / the Park / Cottage Door / Greengrocer / Rag shop / Maunders'. These including three impressions of 'The Park'. 11 The etchings on the list include Savoy Scaffolding [317]; Little Steps, Chelsea [269] or The Steps, Gray's Inn [282]; 'Miss Pettigrew' may have been The Little Cloak [370]; The Village Sweet Shop [266]; this etching; Cottage Door [252]; Little Greengrocer's Shop, Chelsea [264] or T. A. Nash's Greengrocer's Shop [298]; Old-Clothes Shop, No. 2 (The Rag Shop, Milman's Row [290], Little Maunder's [273], Rag Shop, Milman's Row, Chelsea [329] or Rag Shop, St Martin's Lane [328]); and Fish-Shop, Chelsea [267] or Little Maunder's [273].

11: Whistler, list, [8 February-29 September 1887], GUW #12716.

The two impressions kept by Whistler are both printed in black ink, with light tone, on ivory wove paper, one with a ''H SMITH & Son / 1824' watermark (Graphic with a link to impression #K2550107), and are not trimmed. Of the other impressions, one is in black ink on buff wove paper and is trimmed and signed on the tab with Whistler's butterfly and 'imp.' to show that he had printed it (Graphic with a link to impression #K2550105). Two are in dark brown ink, one on an off-white - almost grey - laid paper, trimmed and signed as before (Graphic with a link to impression #K2550106) and the other on ivory laid paper removed from a ledger, trimmed but not signed on the tab (Graphic with a link to impression #K2550103). It is possible that it was not trimmed by Whistler, or that it was sold without his knowledge, and therefore was not signed.