UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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Sleeping Girl

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1892.10)
Number: 127
Date: 1874/1875
Medium: drypoint
Size: 139 x 217 mm
Signed: butterfly at upper left (2-final)
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 4
Known impressions: 9
Catalogues: K.125; M.122; W.112
Impressions taken from this plate  (9)
Etching: PK125_01
The plate bears the maker's rectangular stamp: 'HUGHES AND KIMBER / MANUFACTURERS / RED LION PASSAGE / FLEET STREET / LONDON'. It was close in size to several etchings including Nude Reclining 126, Wych Street, London 176, The Letter (Maud, seated) 116, Steamboat Fleet, Chelsea 155 and The Desk 129.
It is not known if Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) inherited the copper plate from Whistler or if it was sold at the time of his bankruptcy and later retrieved by her from Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851). In any case, she asked Nathaniel Sparks (1880-1956) to try and print from the plate but it was, he recorded on 18 June 1931, 'Apparently greatly worne [sic] some burr remains.' 8 It was then cancelled with a diagonal line across the lower right corner. The plate was given by Miss Philip to the University of Glasgow in 1935.

8: Martin Hopkinson, 'Nathaniel Sparks's Printing of Whistler's Etchings', Print Quarterly, 1999, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 340, 342, 349.