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Shaving and Shampooing

Impression: Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
(1917.480)
Number: 442
Date: 1888
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 178 x 129 mm
Signed: butterfly at left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 4
Catalogues: K.273; M.269
Impressions taken from this plate  (4)

PUBLICATION

Shampoo Shop, St Martin's Lane was never published.

EXHIBITIONS

Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916) lent an impression to the exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (). 11

Impressions were shown after Whistler's death in the principal Memorial shows, in New York at the Grolier Club in 1904 and in London in 1905. Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) also lent one to the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in Boston in 1904 (). 12

11: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. E313).

12: New York 1904a (cat. no. 318); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 294); Boston 1904 (cat. no. 169).

SALES & COLLECTORS

Whistler sold an impression of Shampoo Shop, St Martin's Lane to the London art dealers Messrs Dowdeswell on 10 December 1888 for £8.8.0. 13 This may have been the impression bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) from Obach & Co. in 1903 (), which was bequeathed to the Freer Gallery of Art.

13: Whistler to Dowdeswell's, GUW #13029.

Whistler sold another impression, this time under the title 'Shampooing Shop’, to H. Wunderlich & Co. in New York for £8.8.0 on 16 April 1889. In both cases, the etching was 'No. 1' in Whistler's list of etchings for sale. 'No 1' was written on the verso of the first proof of the etching (), and presumably this refers to Whistler's list - an aid to the dealer when sorting and naming the prints for sale. Since this particular impression was bought by Howard Mansfield (1849-1938), and he bought a lot of his etchings from Wunderlich's, it is most likely that it was the one sold in 1889. It was later given by Lessing Julius Rosenwald (1891-1971) to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Whistler's next sale, under yet another title ('Shampooing'), was on 20 July 1889 to Knoedler & Co. 14 This, number '14' in the account, was bought by Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916), who bequeathed it to the Art Institute of Chicago (). At some time - possibly 1890 or 1891 - Whistler noted that he still had two unmounted impressions of 'Shampoo Shop' in stock. 15 One was in his studio at his death in 1903. It was bequeathed to Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) who in turn bequeathed it to the University of Glasgow ().

14: GUW #13080.

15: GUW #13236.