Titles

Two titles have been recorded:

• 'The Selsey Shore' (Before 1890, C. A. Howell). 1
• 'Selsie Beach, or Sands' (1894, Whistler). 2
• 'Beach at Selsie Bill' (1894, Whistler). 3
• 'Selsey Shore' (1890, Christie's). 4
• 'The Selsey Shore' (1980, YMSM) 5

'The Selsey Shore' is the preferred title.

Description

The Selsey Shore, Hill-Stead Museum of American Art

A beach scene, painted in horizontal format. The dark beach in the foreground runs from lower right at a diagonal up to left. The sea is fairly calm, blue under a cloudy sky.

Site

C. A. Howell lived at Selsey Bill in Sussex (between Chichester and Portsmouth) on the south coast of England. Whistler made one etching there and a watercolour, both of which date from about 1880. Whistler visited Howell several times when he took the house Old Denner at Selsey Bill in the late 1870s.