Nude Model Reclining by James McNeill Abbott Whistler (1834-1903). Estimate £80,000-£120,000
Dreweatts will offer three significant works by one of the most important American artists in history, James McNeill Abbott Whistler (1834-1903). They have emerged from an important private collection after 40 years. Whistler was considered the greatest exponent of a form of ‘total art’, which combines poetry, music and the art of living. His work not only made an impression on the public and his patrons, but also on a generation of artists behind him, both in Europe and America. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA in 1834 Whistler was well-travelled having studied at a young age in Russia, the US, Paris and London, the latter becoming his adopted home. Whistler would live between London and the US, while also travelling across Europe, for most of his life.
In the last 20 years of his life Whistler created over 100 prints, pastel drawings and paintings of sparsely clad, or nude female models. Early collectors of Whistler’s work, including the American industrialist Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919), believed these images to be among the artist’s greatest achievements and they proved so popular that they rarely appear at auction. One such work is Nude Model Reclining, one of three pastels Whistler drew on the same day (June 4th, 1900 in his studio on Fitzroy Street, London), of the actress and artist’s model, Ethel Warwick (1882-1951). This study is more fully worked up than the other two versions, which are in the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow. This work shows a reclining female figure worked up in coloured pastels. Whistler often created a new work over the top of an old drawing that he was dissatisfied with, as is the case here, with the faint form of a woman in blue underneath, against a yellow background. In chalk and pastel on brown paper, this work features Whistler’s signature butterfly monogram, based on a stylised design of his initials. Whistler developed this in the late 1860s, following criticism of his overtly conspicuous signature. Interestingly the monogram was carefully positioned in his works, as part of the overall composition and not merely as a maker’s mark.
The work has exceptional provenance and has been included in some notable collections. It was first owned by Whistler’s sister-in-law Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), who was his secretary and model during his lifetime and executor and heir on his death. It was also in the private collection of Sir Bruce Ingram (1877-1963), a journalist, entrepreneur and newspaper editor. It has been in the current private collection for over 40 years and carries an estimate of £80,000-£120,000.
From the same private collection are two works from one of Whistler’s most popular periods – his time in Venice. His Venice period came about following a very public court case with the English writer, art critic and philosopher John Ruskin(1819-1900), who publicly criticised his work. Whistler was keen to avoid public scrutinization and took a commission by the Fine Art Society in 1879, to go to Venice to create a series of twelve etchings. Captivated by the city, he stayed for fourteen months instead of the designated three and completed approximately fifty etchings and 90 pastels, as well as other paintings, much to the Society’s delight. His Venetian works encapsulated a ‘Venezia minore’, meaning a ‘Venice of the Venetians’, exploring daily life of the Venetians in locations used by the locals, rather than typical views of tourist monuments. The resulting artworks portray small squares, back alleys and isolated canals, rather than the traditional sights of San Marco, the Grand Canal, and the Rialto Bridge.
Passionate about discovering the ‘hidden’ Venice, Whistler worked ‘en plein air’, drawing directly on to etching plates, to create a mirror image of what was in front of him. His belief was that the ‘artist is born to pick and choose and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful—as the musician gathers his notes and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos, glorious harmony.’ This was a deliberate process, emphasised by the fact that Whistler reversed any lettering, such as street, or shop signs on his plates, so that they read correctly in the print. 1.
A Venetian Canal by James McNeill Abbott Whistler (1834-1903). Estimate £40,000-£60,000
While etchings were having a revival in popularity at the time, Whistler was intent on developing his pastels and it was in Venice where they became more sophisticated. They are described at the time as: ‘broad films of pigments with sharp, concentrated brilliant strokes’ 2. His Venetian pastels, many of which were produced while exploring the city in a gondola, had a considerable influence on the American artistic community, as well as on the Society of American Painters in Pastel, founded in 1882. Otto Bacher, one of the many American art students in Venice in 1880, gives this description of seeing Whistler: “Kitted out virtually ashis studio, with materials, and the old gondolier would take him to his various sketching points… He generally selected bit of strange architecture, windows, piles, balconies, queer water effects, canal views….He always carried two boxes of pastels, an older one for instant use... and a newer box with which he did his principal work” 3.
Venetian Canal (on the front) by James McNeill Abbott Whistler (1834-1903)
Estimate £40,000-£60,000
His work in Venice was innovative and fresh and enabled Whistler to re-establish himself again as a major artist in Europe and America. His first series of Venetian etchings were exhibited by the Fine Art Society in 1880, on his return to London and were a huge success. The following year they held an exhibition of 53 of his Venetian pastels and a third exhibition presented his second series of Venetian etchings.
A Venetian Canal shows theentrance to the Rio de la Do Torre, one of several smaller canals that runs from the Grand Canal into an intricate maze of buildings in the Sante Croce region of Venice. Captured from a moored gondola at the Palace Ca’Peasro, Whistler chose a narrow format of paper to capture this scene. A former pupil of Whistler, the artist Mortimer Mempes (1855-1938), recounts how Whistler described his technique there as follows: “I began first of all by seizing upon the chief point of interest. Perhaps it might have been the extreme distance – the little palace and the shipping beneath the bridge. If so, I would begin doing that distance in elaboration, and then would expand from it until I came to the bridge, which I would draw with one sweep. If by chance, I didn’t see the whole of the bridge I would not put it in. In this way the picture must necessarily be a perfect thing from start to finish” 4.
Bridge Over Canal (on the back), by James McNeill Abbott Whistler (1834-1903)
Estimate £40,000-£60,000
Whistler created the pastel in chalk, on distinctive brown paper, which was provided by London lithographer, Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913), who was a great friend (and had taught Whistler lithography). As well as providing him with good quality paper, Way and his son helped Whistler with his exhibition of Venetian pastels in 1881 and even created a series of colour lithographs of the works, for a publication called Studio, which included the present pastel. A Venetian Canal proved extremely popular and was also selected to be exhibited at the Rotterdam exhibition of 1906, one of several posthumous exhibitions of Whistler’s work. It carries an auction estimate of £40,000-£60,000.
The second work titled Venetian Canal (on the front) and Bridge Over Canal (on the back), also in chalk on brown paper, captures the Rio dei Tre Ponti from the Fondamenta San Marco, with the Ponte del Guglie depicted on the back. Art Historian Dr Alastair Grieve (1940-2022) noted: “Whistler has drawn the view from a slightly elevated position so that he is lo from the Fondamenta San Marco looking down on the Fondamenta, from a bridge that is no longer extant. He has used the edge of the structure to form a vertical axis in the centre of his paper. The bridge with two arches in the distance in his pastel is part of the Ponte dei Tre Ponti, a knotty interchange of bridges which was rebuilt in 1933 when the Rio Novo was made. It is obscured…today by a bridge with a pointed top, the Ponte del Pagan”5.
Whistler’s delight in the architecture and the constantly changing views of Venice, is evident in the present work, which seems to embody the lively portrayal that Whistler wrote in a letter to his mother describing “the colours of the walls and their reflections on the canals are more gorgeous than ever – and with sun shining upon the polished marble, mingled with rich, toned bricks and plaster - this amongst the city of palaces becomes really a fairyland – created one would think especially for the painter”6. It carries an estimate of £40,000-£60,000.
All three exceptional works will be offered in Dreweatts Old Master, British and European Art sale on June 12, 2024. Commenting on the works Brandon Lindberg, Head of Dreweatts Old Master, British & European Art department, said: “Dreweatts is delighted to be selling such fantastic examples of Whistler’s ever popular Venetian series and even more so, to offer alongside, such a finished example of one of his nude sketches, the likes of which are rarely seen at auction.”
ABOUT JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER
Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA in 1834 Whistler spent part of his childhood in Russia, where his father was employed as a civil engineer building the country’s first railroad. He eventually enrolled at West Point, where he was known to draw pictures on tent flaps, chairs and anything else he could get his hands on. By the end of his life, the highly influential artist would develop a distinctive style across his many hundreds of paintings, lithographs, drawings, watercolors, pastels and etchings; he would be remembered, perhaps best, for his masterpiece Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, a triumph of decorative mural art and one of the Smithsonian’s must-see treasures at the Freer Gallery of Art.
1 Mr Whistler’s 10 O’Clock lecture, 1885, published in the Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, https://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/miscellany/tenoclock/
2 R. Getscher, James Abbott McNeill Whistler pastels, 1991, p. 22
3 Otto Bacher, With Whistler in Venice, New York, 1906, pp. 74-5
4 M. Mempes, Reminiscences of Whistler, London, 1903, p. 22-3
5 Grieve, op. cit.p.59
6 M. Schwander, op. cit, p. 95