Old Battersea Bridge

Old Battersea Bridge

Dundee Art Galleries & Museum: 272-1987-315

Artist: Whistler, James Abbott McNeill

Date: 1879

State: 5/7

Size: 20.3 x 29.9 cm

Medium: Etching and Drypoint

Details Etching and drypoint. Black ink on dark ivory coloured laid paper. Butterfly signature at bottom right. Also butterfly ‘imp’ (from 1881) on paper at bottom. Forty impressions are known.
Description Detailed information concerning the Whistler prints held in The Orchar Collection comes from the University of Glasgow’s excellent Whistler Etchings Project. (Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2012, on-line website at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk). Considerable thanks are due to Professor MacDonald for allowing us to use their research in these entries.

Impressions of this etching were published by the Fine Art Society in August 1879. The old timber bridge was built between 1771 and 1772 by John Philips and linked Chelsea with Battersea. The bridge was demolished in 1890 and a new one, designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, was built in its place.
Catalogue Entry
  1. Edward G. Kennedy, The Etched Work of Whistler. New York, Grolier Club, 1910 (177)
  2. Howard Mansfield, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Chicago, Caxton Club, 1909 (174)
  3. Sir Frederick Wedmore, Whistler’s Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue. London, Thibaudeau, 1886 (141)
  4. Whistler Etchings Project (188)
Other Collections (UK)
  1. Hunterian Art Gallery Collections, University of Glasgow, Glasgow

See the Whistler Etchings Project for a list of impressions.
References
  1. Emmanuel Bénézit, Dictionary of Artists. Paris, Gründ, 2006
  2. Rodney K. Engen, Dictionary of Victorian Engravers, Print Publishers and Their Works. Cambridge, Chadwyck-Heley, 1979
  3. Kenneth M. Guichard, British Etchers 1850-1940. London, Robin Garton Ltd., 1977
  4. Katharine A. Lochnan, The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1984
  5. Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1995
  6. William Rough, ‘A cluster of butterflies: James Guthrie Orchar and his collection of Whistler etchings and drypoints’, Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History, Volume 16, 2011-12

 

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