Becquet
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Becquet, 1859, etching, printed in black on very thin Japan paper (the sheet has various condition problems and is laid down on wove paper). References: Kennedy 52, second state (of four); Lochnan 55
Provenance
Knoedler & Co., New York (their stock no. in pencil on the verso MK31679)
An impression of the very rare second state.
Whistler titled the plate The Fiddler when he published it as part of the Thames Set in 1871. It is one of the two non-Thames
subjects included in the set (the other is The Forge, Kennedy 68). The print shows the French sculptor and musician Just Becquet
(1829–1907), a friend of the artist who, according to Joseph Pennell’s Whistler Journal, lived in his studio among “disorder and his
cello” (quoted after Lochnan, p. 104).
“The plate on which the portrait was drawn had previously been used for an oblong view of West Point which a friend of Whistler
brought to him for his opinion; stacked muskets can still be seen at the lower right corner of this print”.