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Shipping at Liverpool

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1898.330)
Number: 100
Date: 1867
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 231 x 155 mm
Signed: 'Whistler -' at lower right
Inscribed: '1867 -' at lower right
Set/Publication: 'Cancelled Plates', 1879
No. of States: 2
Known impressions: 22
Catalogues: K.94; M.94; W.84
Impressions taken from this plate  (22)
Shipping at Liverpool was dated '1867' by Whistler on the copper plate. It was etched in June 1867 when Whistler accompanied his mother, Anna Matilda Whistler (1804-1881), to Liverpool. She embarked on the Cunard Line American Royal Mail steamship Java, which left on 22 June, arriving in New York on 2 July 1867. 1

1: A. M. Whistler to J. A. Rose, 13 June 1867, GUW #12214.

It has been suggested that this was the only etching made by Whistler between 1863 and 1870. 2 However, although it is true that there is a gap in the etchings that were signed and dated by Whistler between 1867 and 1870, he was actively involved in printing and marketing them. In 1868 the Thames etchings were being marketed by his mother; Charles Augustus Howell (1840?-1890) was promoting them vigorously by February 1869; and the 'Thames Set' was published in 1871. 3

2: Lochnan 1984[more], p. 158.

3: A. M. Whistler to J. H. Gamble, 17 November [1868], GUW #06539; Howell to W. M. Rossetti, [18 February 1869], #12862.