Whistler Etchings

Anacapa Island		Hunterian Art Gallery (46661)
Number:	2
Date:	1854
Medium:	etching
Size:	134 x 227 mm
Signed:	no
Inscribed:	no
Set/Publication:	U.S. Coast Survey, 1854
No. of States:	1
Known impressions:	16
Catalogues:	K.App.1; M.app. 1
Impressions taken from this plate (16)

PUBLICATION

It was published as part of the Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, Showing the Progress of the Survey During the Year 1854, by A. O. P. Nicholson, Washington DC, 1854, xi, [1], 288 pp., with 58 engraved charts and diagrams, bound in gilt-lettered dark brown cloth.

Mansfield desribed the subsequent publication of the image (not as an etching):

'A lithographic copy from this plate, taken through the use of transfer paper, was published on the same sheet with a map of a "Reconnaissance of Smith's or Blunt's Island, Washington," bearing, at the right, above the border enclosing both maps: "Lith. Bien & Sterner, N. Y.," in the "Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, showing the Progress of the Survey during the year 1854," issued as a "Senate Document" - Washington: Beverley Tucker, Public Printer, 1855.' 8

8: Mansfield 1909, App. 1.

Also according to Mansfield:

'The "View of the Eastern Extremity of Anacapa Island - from the Southward" was copied, with variations of line, additions of clouds in the sky and shadows in the water, but with the same title, on a government chart of "Anacapa Island and East End of Santa Cruz Island, California," published in 1857, and republished, on the same sheet with other charts, in 1896.' 9

9: ibid.

EXHIBITIONS

It was not, as far as is known, exhibited in Whistler's lifetime. The first exhibition and description was in the catalogue of the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in London in 1905 and it was shown in the same year in the Memorial Exhibiton in Paris. 10

10: London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 400); Paris Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 289).