The Pool

Dundee Art Galleries & Museum: 272-1987-322

Artist: Whistler, James Abbott McNeill

Date: 1859

State: 6/6

Size: 14.0 x 31.3 cm

Medium: Etching

Details Etching. Black ink on ivory wove, possibly Asian, paper. ‘Whistler 1859’ bottom left. Over eighty 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.

Early impressions were published in A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames (‘The Thames Set’) by Ellis & Green in 1871. The site has been identified as the Pool of London which lies between London Bridge and Rotherhithe. In 1859 Whistler made a series of over thirty impressions of the area. On the signboards, from left to right, can be read ‘Cooper’, ‘Gr George’s Wf’, ‘New Crane’ and ‘To Let’. On the boat can be seen ‘Jane No. 6’. Whistler would return to the same area for the Tiny Pool and Wapping – The Pool an impression of which is also in The Orchar Collection.

Catalogue Entry
  1. Edward G. Kennedy, The Etched Work of Whistler. New York, Grolier Club, 1910 (43)
  2. Howard Mansfield, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Chicago, Caxton Club, 1909 (42)
  3. iRalph Thomas, A Catalogue of the Etchings and Drypoints of J.A M. Whistler. London, John Russell Smith, 1874 (47)
  4. Sir Frederick Wedmore, Whistler’s Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue. London, Thibaudeau, 1886 (41)
  5. Whistler Etchings Project (49)
Other Collections (UK)
  1. British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, London
  2. Hunterian Art Gallery Collections, University of Glasgow, Glasgow
  3. Museum of London, London
  4. National Maritime Museum, London
  5. National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
  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