Harris Schrank Fine Prints

James Whistler (1834-1903), Venus, 1859.Etching and drypoint, printed in black ink on laid paper, an impression in the second (final) state: there was no published edition. 6 x 9 inches (15 x 22.6 cm) sheet 73/8 x 117/8 inches (18.8 x 30.3 cm) Reference: Kennedy 59; Glasgow 60

A study of Fumette, asleep in bed, her head pressed into the pillow and the bedclothes covering her lower legs. This is one of three portraits Whistler made of Fumette in 1859: one of the others shows her standing and in the third only her head and shoulders are depicted. Venus is a work in the Realist tradition, and may be compared with Courbet’s nudes of the same period. The artist may also have had in mind Rembrandts study of Antiope in his etching Jupiter and Antiope.

Venus was never published and there is no record of it being shown until 1898 when it was included in an Exhibition of Etchings, Drypoints and Lithographs by Whistler at H. Wunderlich Co., New York. To have been overlooked for exhibition until so late in Whistler’s life might suggest that the subject was considered improper. Frederick Wedmore, whose catalogue of Whistler etchings was published in 1886, certainly disapproved of the image and described it as the nude seen by Mr Whistler with rather common eyes, for once as an animal, whom sleep has overcome.

James Whistler (1834-1903), Penny Passengers, Limehouse, 1860. Etching and drypoint, signed in pencil with a butterfly and inscribed imp, printed in black ink on laid paper, trimmed at the platemark, leaving a signature tab, an impression in the second (final) state, one of only six recorded, 31/4 x 81/8 inches (8.2 x 20.7 cm)

Provenance: Otto Gerstenberg, stamp verso [Lugt 2785]

Reference: Kennedy 67; Glasgow 71

The buildings on the far bank of the Thames and the ship and their masts moored there show the distinctive draughtsmanship of the period 1859–1860 when Whistler worked in Limehouse and made an etching there which was published in the Thames Set. Penny Passengers, Limehouse is very rare, with only five impressions known, all but our impression in public collections. It shows in outline a group of passengers waiting for the ferry to cross the river. Whistler inscribed the impression from the Samuel P. Avery collection Thames – Limehouse (now in the New York Public Library).