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Bunting

Impression: Hunterian Art Gallery
Hunterian Art Gallery
(46934)
Number: 304
Date: 1887
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 178 x 127 mm
Signed: butterfly at lower left
Inscribed: no
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 2
Known impressions: 11
Catalogues: K.324; M.318; W.241
Impressions taken from this plate  (11)

PUBLICATION

Bunting was part of the 'Jubilee Set', as presented to Queen Victoria, and sold to collectors, but it was not published by a dealer.

EXHIBITIONS

It was shown first in a print dealer's show, by H. Wunderlich & Co. in New York in 1898 and again in 1903. Bryan Lathrop (1844-1916) lent an impression to the exhibition organised by the Caxton Club in Chicago in 1900 (). 8

After Whistler's death impresssions were shown in the big Memorial Exhibitions, in the Grolier Club, New York in 1904, Paris in 1905, and a particularly fine impression was exhibited in London in 1905 (), lent by King Edward VII). 9

8: Chicago 1900 (cat. no. 210); see REFERENCES: EXHIBITIONS.

9: New York 1904a (cat. no. 254); Paris Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 394); London Mem. 1905 (cat. no. 241).

SALES & COLLECTORS

Whistler's first sale to a London print dealer, Thomas M. McLean (b. ca 1832), was on 20 August 1887; another went to Messrs Dowdeswell, and a third was sold through Wunderlich's to a relative of Whistler, Ross Revillon Winans (1850-1912), in 1888, each for £8.8.0. 10

In December, when Whistler was not very well, his son Charles Hanson offered another set of Naval Review etchings to Craibe Angus & Son in Glasgow. 11

10: GUW #13089; [September 1887/1888], #08679; 3 May 1888, #07158.

11: 16 December 1887, GUW #01959.

Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) bought a sensitively wiped impression (), Bernard Buchanan MacGeorge (1845?-1924) one with slightly richer inking (). The latter was later owned by Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932) and Henry Harper Benedict (1844-1935); it was rare for Kennedy to actually stamp his collector's mark on a print, since he usually dealt entirely through Wunderlich's, and indeed the firm's stock number ('a 37380') is written on the verso.
Sales were modest; the next sales in Whistler's records were to Wunderlich & Co. in 1897, and again in 1900-1901 when the price was still £8.8.0. 12

As a result Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) inherited seven impressions, five of which are in the Hunterian Art Gallery (i.e. ). One of these was from the Jubilee Album originally given by Whistler to Queen Victoria (). A similar album was given by Walter Stanton Brewster (1872-1954) to the Art Institute of Chicago ().

12: [August 1897], 6 April 1900 and 16 April 1901, GUW #07289, #07322, #07330.