Robert Barr |  Hunterian Art Gallery (49931) | |
| Number: | 478 | |
| Date: | 1894/1895 | |
| Medium: | etching | |
| Size: | 112 x 90 mm | |
| Signed: | no | |
| Inscribed: | no | |
| Set/Publication: | no | |
| No. of States: | 1 | |
| Known impressions: | 9 | |
| Catalogues: | K.App.4; M.app.5 | |
| Impressions taken from this plate (9) | ||
Several newspapers reported that the copper plate was found by Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) in his Dieppe studio in the summer of 1908. It had been 'etched but never bitten in' according to a Sunday Times journalist, who continued:
'This last Mr Sickert proceeded to do - with perchloride of iron, not nitric acid - and the plate proved to be a delightful sketch portrait of Mr Robert Barr, the novelist, by Whistler, a first proof it was my privilege to see the other day. I understand that Mr Barr remembers giving Whistler a sitting for an etching in 1894, so this, though the plate itself is neither signed nor dated, fixes the period of execution and confirms the sefl-evident authenticity.' 9
9: Sunday Times, 4 October 1908 (GUL PC 22//83).
According to Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932), writing in 1910: 'This plate, ... came into the possession of Mr Walter Sickert, and was bitten-in several years after Whistler's death. An edition of forty-five impressions was published by Messrs Baillie and Gardiner, in London, in 1908. The plate was then cancelled.' 10
Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) objected that Whistler had left instructions for his copper plates to be cancelled. 11 Sickert replied:
Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) objected that Whistler had left instructions for his copper plates to be cancelled. 11 Sickert replied:
10: Kennedy 1910 (cat. no. App. IV).
11: R.B. Philip, Letter to the Editor, The Times, London, 17 October 1908 (GUL PC22/55).
'Mr Whistler's instructions as to the plates he left Miss Phillip, plates which had already yielded their due harvest of proofs, cannot be made to apply to the unbitten and, therefore, unproved plate he gave me. ... To destroy it, unprinted, would be to commit an act of vandalism ... My opinion as a Whistler expert ... is that the plate should exist, and that it adds an interesting items to the sum of his etched work.' 12
12: Sickert 1908 in Robins 2002, op. cit., p. 177.
The copper plate has not been located. No other plate of this date is similar in size.