Old Putney Bridge

Old Putney Bridge

Dundee Art Galleries & Museum: 272-1987-314

Artist: Whistler, James Abbott McNeill

Date: 1879

State: 3/7

Size: 20.3 x 29.9 cm

Medium: Etching and Drypoint

Details Etching and drypoint. Black ink on cream coloured laid paper. Butterfly signature in print at centre bottom. Also ‘Imp’ and butterfly signature on paper bottom right. Over 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.

It is known that Whistler offered the plate for publication to the Fine Art Society on 14th March 1879. This dilapidated old wooden bridge was replaced by a granite one designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in 1886.
Exhibited Dundee A print titled Putney Bridge was exhibited at the Dundee Fine Art Exhibition, Albert Institute in 1879 (West Gallery, No. 1161, no price). It is possible that it was this impression that was exhibited and that Orchar bought it during the exhibition. Dundee Fine Art Exhibition Catalogue 1879, The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum.Other impressions of this print were also exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in London in 1879 as Putney Bridge.
Catalogue Entry
  1. Edward G. Kennedy, The Etched Work of Whistler. New York, Grolier Club, 1910 (178)
  2. Howard Mansfield, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Chicago, Caxton Club, 1909 (175)
  3. Sir Frederick Wedmore, Whistler’s Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue. London, Thibaudeau, 1886 (145)
  4. Whistler Etchings Project (185)
Other Collections (UK)
  1. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
  2. British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London
  3. Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford
  4. Hunterian Art Gallery Collections, University of Glasgow, Glasgow
  5. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

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

 

Cookie preferences