Wych Street

Wych Street

Dundee Art Galleries & Museum: 272-1987-323

Artist: Whistler, James Abbott McNeill

Date: 1877

State: 1/2

Size: 21.3 x 13.3 cm

Medium: Etching and Drypoin

Details Etching and drypoint. Black ink on ivory coloured laid paper. A rare work – only around 12 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 illustrates the delicacy of the printmakers’ art. The plate was never fully worked and therefore the scene captures only the top floors of the buildings, with the steeple of St Clement Danes in the distance. It is possible that Whistler was inspired by photographs of the area which was intended for demolition. Wych Street stood just north of the prominent theatre district of the Strand and was demolished around 1901.
Catalogue Entry
  1. Edward G. Kennedy, The Etched Work of Whistler. New York, Grolier Club, 1910 (159)
  2. Howard Mansfield, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Dry-Points of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Chicago, Caxton Club, 1909 (156)
  3. Sir Frederick Wedmore, Whistler’s Etchings: a Study and a Catalogue, London, Thibaudeau, 1886 (132)
  4. Whistler Etchings Project (176)
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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