Titles

Only one title is known:

• 'Blue and Green – Whitstable' (1889, Wunderlich). 1
• 'Blue and Green: Whitstable' (1980, YMSM). 2

The punctuation was amended in 1980 for consistency with other titles.

Description

The New York Times described it as 'an exquisite little landscape.' 3

Given the colours (green and blue) this may have been a view of the sea from the hills behind Whitstable, or a pure landscape with blue sky

Site

Whitstable is a fishing port and seaside resort in the county of Kent near Canterbury, and was easily reached by rail from London. It was famed for its oysters. Although Whistler certainly liked oysters, there is no other record of him visiting Whitstable. However, there are several etchings of another Kentish town, Sandwich, including Salvation Army, Sandwich [319] and The Ramparts, Sandwich [324], done in the summer or autumn of 1887 (Sandwich was originally a major port, one of the Cinque Ports).

Tankerton Bay at Whitstable has a long beach studded with breakwaters, sheltered to the east by the Street Stones. An oil painting of the harbour pier by John Fraser (1858-1927), Low Tide, Whitstable Harbour, Kent, dating from 1885, is in the Canterbury Museum and Galleries. 4