The Pool
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), The Pool, etching, 1859, printed in black on laid paper; with wide margins. Reference: Kennedy 43, third state (of four); Lochnan 46; watermark: crowned initials in circle. In very good condition, 5 3/8 x 8 3/8, the sheet 7 15/16 x 12 1/2 inches, archival mounting.
Provenance Samuel Henry Nazeby Harrington, Birkenhead, England (Lugt 1347 verso and 1349 recto in lower left corner)
The Pool was published as part of the Thames Set in 1871. It depicts the pool at Wapping, part of the port below London Bridge where ocean-going vessels docked and were unloaded. Together with Black Lion Wharf (Kennedy 42) and Eagle Wharf (Kennedy 41) The Pool is among a group of similar compositions that are probably among the major and most dramatic of the Thames prints. Each has a “lighter” man positioned in the immediate foreground. Here, he looks out at the viewer. Behind him, the lighters filled with coal in the middle-ground lead the eye to the docks in the distance.
“While the composition appears to recede, it also reads as a flat two-dimensional pattern, and hangs in a tense and delicate balance between the two and three dimensions;” it also betrays the influence of Japanese ukiyo-e prints (Katherine Lochnan, The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler, p. 87).
The previous owner of this impression, Samuel Harrington, was a well-known critic, colleague of Whistler and author of a catalogue raisonné of the etchings of Seymour Haden (Whistler’s brother-in-law). Harrington’s collection of Whistler prints was quite exceptional.