UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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A Man Reading

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1893.84)
Number: 107
Date: 1873/1877
Medium: drypoint
Size: 280 x 190 mm
Signed: no
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: 'Cancelled Plates', 1879
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 18
Catalogues: K.137; M.136
Impressions taken from this plate  (18)

PUBLICATION

It was published in an album of Cancelled Plates ('Cancelled Set') by The Fine Art Society, London, 1879.

EXHIBITIONS

None.

SALES & COLLECTORS

Surviving impressions are almost all still in the album of cancelled impressions. For instance, the British Museum bought an album in 1887 () and Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) bought a set from Knoedler & Co. in 1893 (). Thomas Glen Arthur (1858-1907) also acquired a set in 1887 () which later went to Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Early owners included George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909) () and Walter M. Hill (1868-1952) (). Boston Public Library also acquired a set (). A set acquired by J. Littauer, Munich was sold to the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 1896 ().
Prices were low but collectors and collections were keen to have the set of cancelled etchings, as a record of a substantial number of otherwise unrecorded etchings and drypoints. A set, probably acquired from the Fine Art Society by Alphonse Wyatt Thibaudeau (ca 1840- d.1892), was auctioned in 1889 and bought by Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851) for £0.6.0. 4 Dunthorne exchanged it for other works with Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) who bequeathed it to the University of Glasgow (see ). She acquired another set, trimmed the impressions and stuck them on the envelopes containing the copper plates, which did not improve them at all (i.e. ).

4: Sotheby's, London, 13 December 1889 (lot 787 or 789).