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The Doorway

1879/1880
Etching and drypoint on laid paper (watermark, possibly 'VAN GELDER')
K.188 (1/7)
The Whistler Estate, bequeathed by Rosalind Birnie Philip, 1958
Hunterian Art Gallery, GLAHA 46815

Whistler worked from a gondola on the canals near San Marco. The Palazzo Gussoni on the Rio de la Fava 1. had become a carpenter's workshop, with chairs hanging from the roof. Whistler asked the owner to replace the original wrought-iron grating over the door and painstakingly etched the Renaissance carvings and ironwork, experimenting with a variety of textural effects, including foul biting.

Notes

1. The doorway, which still survives, is seen in a photograph in Otto Bacher's With Whistler in Venice, 1909.