UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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The Steps, Gray's Inn

Impression: Freer Gallery of Art
Freer Gallery of Art
(1888.17)
Number: 282
Date: 1887
Medium: etching
Size: 67 x 179 mm
Signed: butterfly at upper left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 7
Catalogues: K.295; M.290
Impressions taken from this plate  (7)
Etching: PK295_01
The copper plate has no maker's mark. It is close in size to several plates of similar date including Dry Docks, Southampton 302, The Canal, Ostend 352, and Flower Market, Brussels 339 - all dating from 1887.

It was in Whistler's studio at his death and was bequeathed to his sister-in-law Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), who asked Nathaniel Sparks (1880-1956) to print some proofs. 6 It was then cancelled with a diagonal line at right. She gave the plate to the University of Glasgow in 1935.

6: Martin Hopkinson, 'Nathaniel Sparks's Printing of Whistler's Etchings', Print Quarterly, 1999, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 340, 343, 349.