The Dam Wood

The Dam Wood

Dundee Art Galleries & Museum: 272-1987-343

Artist: Whistler, James Abbott McNeill

Date: 1875

State: 3/4

Size: 17.5 x 11.1 cm

Medium: Drypoint

Details Drypoint. Dark brown ink on ivory coloured, possibly laid, paper. Butterfly stamp on far right. Along with further stamp in remarque along with ‘imp.’ A very rare piece both in terms of subject and impressions – Whistler rarely depicted pure landscapes and only around eleven impressions were made.
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.

The scene depicts the grounds of Speke Hall, a country mansion near Liverpool which belonged to the ship-owner, art collector and patron of Whistler, Frederick Richards Leyland (1832-1892). Whistler painted Leyland’s portrait, Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland, 1870-3 (Freer Gallery of Art, Washington) and there are a number of etchings of Leyland’s family in The Orchar Collection. Whistler stayed at Speke Hall between January and March 1875.

The Dundee jute baron Sir James Key Caird (1837-1916) had links with both Leyland and Whistler. Indeed Sir James’s wife, Sophie, was the sister of Lady Effie Gray who married the critic John Ruskin and then the artist Sir John Everett Millais. Whistler was invited, late in 1894, to visit the family at their Dundee home at 8 Roseangle but it seems unlikely Whistler ever visited the city. Glasgow University Library MS Whistler C2, The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, 1855-1903, edited by Margaret F. MacDonald, Patricia de Montfort and Nigel Thorp; including The Correspondence of Anna McNeill Whistler, 1855-1880, edited by Georgia Toutziari. On-line edition, University of Glasgow. http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence
Catalogue Entry
  1. Edward G. Kennedy, The Etched Work of Whistler. New York, Grolier Club, 1910 (145)
  2. Howard Mansfield, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Chicago, Caxton Club, 1909 (143)
  3. Sir Frederick Wedmore, Whistler’s Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue. London, Thibaudeau, 1886 (120)
  4. Whistler Etchings Project (133)
Other Collections (UK) No others in UK collections.
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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