JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER (1834-1903)

The Steps, Amsterdam

Details

JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER (1834-1903)
The Steps, Amsterdam
etching and drypoint, 1889, on tissue thin laid Japan paper, signed with the butterfly on the tab and annotated imp, a fine impression of Glasgow's fifth, final state, also signed with the butterfly on the reverse and inscribed in pencil 'For Wünderlich' (presumably a reference to H. Wunderlich & Co. who exhibited prints from the 'Amsterdam set' in New York in 1898), and 1 Mar 7 (presumably a reference to the printing date), in addition to the 14 impressions in all states recorded so far by the Whistler Etchings Project, trimmed to the plate as published, a thin, un-inked printer's crease at the lower right, in very good condition
Image, Sheet: 9½ x 6½ in. (242 x 165 mm.)

Provenance

E.W. Martin (Lugt 914)
Charles C. Cunningham
Susan Sheehan Inc., New York, May 19, 1989

Literature

Kennedy 403; Glasgow 452

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Lot Essay

'In Amsterdam, the women in the houses on one of the canals, where Whistler sat in a boat working, objected, and emptied basins of water out of windows above him. He only managed to dodge them just in time, and he had to call on the police, when, he told us the next interruption was a big row above him, and "I looked up, dodging the filthy pails to see the women vanishing backward being carried off to wherever they carry people in Holland. After that, I had no more trouble, but I always had a policeman whenever I had a boat."'
(K. Lochnan, The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler, Ontario, 1984, p. 249)

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