Soho Alley
Clifford Isaac Addams (1876-1942), Soho Alley, etching and drypoint, 1912, signed in pencil lower right and annotated “imp A” lower left [initialed A in the plate lower right and dated 1912 lower left]. In excellent condition, printed on cream wove paper with the partial watermark GM, with margins, 4 7/8 x 13, the sheet 9 x 16 3/8 inches.
A fine impression.
Addams was born in Woodbury New Jersey, near Philadelphia, and attended Drexel Institute there, won a Philadelphia Academy Cresson Traveling Scholarship, and entered Whistler’s Academy in Paris in 1899. There Whistler introduced Addams to his wife-to-be, Inez Bate; they were married in 1900, and lived in London – where he created Soho Alley – from 1905 until 1914.
In the early 1900’s London’s Soho district housed working class Italian immigrants; this series of shops is similar to many of the Whistler shop-front prints such as T.A. Nash’s Fruit Shop. The horizontal format is comparable to many Whistler prints (such as Long Venice) and pastels as well. The density of the etching work may be compared to the inking of Whistler’s Amsterdam prints.
Soho Alley was exhibited and discussed in the famous exhibit (at the Boston MFA and the Philadelphia MA) and catalogue The Stamp of Whistler.
Detail
Detail