The Lime Burner

The Lime-Burner

Dundee Art Galleries & Museum: 272-1987-319

Artist: Whistler, James Abbott McNeill

Date: 1859

State: 2/2

Size: 25.4 x 17.8 cm

Medium: Etching

Alternative Title(s) W. Jones, Lime-Burner, Thames Street
Details Etching. Black ink on ivory coloured wove paper. ‘Whistler 1859’ bottom right in print. Over 100 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.

This etching was published in A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames (‘The Thames Set’) by Ellis & Green in 1871.

An impression was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1860 and included the name and address of the male figure; ‘W. Jones, Lime-burner, Thames Street.’ The business has been identified as William Jones & Co. 241 and 242 Wapping High Street, which backed onto East London Lime Wharf.

The subject is a typical ‘modern life’ scene as proposed by the influential French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire who Whistler met in the 1850s. Since the 1840s Baudelaire had urged artists to focus on realist, typically urban, subject matter and the ‘Thames Set’ is a good example of his influence.

The use of a frame within a frame – to suggest depth and recession – was a common compositional device used by Whistler in his etchings. Here Whistler also contrasts strong areas of light and dark for atmospheric effect.
Catalogue Entry
  1. Edward G. Kennedy, The Etched Work of Whistler. New York, Grolier Club, 1910 (46)
  2. Howard Mansfield, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Chicago, Caxton Club, 1909 (45)
  3. Ralph Thomas, A Catalogue of the Etchings and Drypoints of J.A M. Whistler. London, John Russell Smith, 1874 (38)
  4. Sir Frederick Wedmore, Whistler’s Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue. London, Thibaudeau, 1886 (47)
  5. Whistler Etchings Project (55)
Other Collections (UK)
  1. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham
  2. British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London,
  3. Glasgow Museums, Glasgow
  4. Hunterian Art Gallery Collections, University of Glasgow, Glasgow
  5. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh
  6. Victoria and Albert Museum: Print Collection, London
  7. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

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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