Robert Dunthorne

Identity:

Robert Dunthorne was a London print dealer and publisher. He was married to Jesse Dunthorne (b. ca 1854).

Life:

Dunthorne was the official publisher to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engavers. He had premises at 5-6 Vigo Street in London. In 1885 Paul-Cesar Helleu exhibited 59 works in drypoint at the Dunthorne Gallery, with a catalogue prefaced by Edmond de Goncourt. The show was visited by the Princess of Wales who commissioned a drypoint portrait of herself. In 1894 he opened the Rembrandt Gallery. The British Library holds catalogues of exhibitions held at the Rembrandt Gallery between 1894 and 1932.

As a print dealer Dunthorne sold a number of Whistler's etchings and lithographs. Several of Whistler's Dutch etchings were shown at his gallery in 1890. In 1893 Ernest G. Brown of the Fine Arts Society requested that Whistler should allow him to lend Dunthorne a number of unfinished states of the Venice plates. A number of paintings and sketches also passed through Dunthorne's hands, including Girl in Black y470, r.: Study for 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth'; v.: Study for 'Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland' m0454, Japanese lady decorating a fan m0460, Studies for the Mummy Cloth & Notes for Dress m0568 and Red and black m0934. He and Whistler were in correspondence from around the late 1880s until Whistler's death.

In 1881 Dunthorne was living at 42 Castle Street East with his wife. In 1901 he was living in Burnham, Buckinghamshire.

Bibliography:

UK census 1881, from http://www.familysearch.org (accessed 2004); UK Census 1901; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 ; MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 .