Titles

Only one title is known:

• 'The Grey House' (1904, Copley Society, Boston). 1
• 'The Grey House' (1980, YMSM). 2

Description

The Grey House, Freer Gallery of Art

A house front in vertical format. In the foreground is a canal, and several figures stand on the narrow road above it, in front of the houses, and on the steps leading up to a pair of doors at right. There is also a small door at left. A mosaic of many-paned windows surrounds the doors.

Site

The Embroidered Curtain, etching & drypoint, The Hunterian, GLAHA 46999 (G451 2/10)

The site was familiar to the Whistlers, being on the Palmgracht, near their hotel in Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands. Whistler drew several etchings, including The Embroidered Curtain [451] and The Steps, Amsterdam [452], of houses on the Palmgracht, fronting onto a picturesque little canal, the Jordaan. The Embroidered Curtain, reproduced above, shows two houses on the Palmgracht, numbers 52 and 54.

G. H. Breitner, Gezicht op de Palmgracht te Amsterdam, 1889/1895, photograph, RKD ( Netherlands Institute for Art History)

A photograph by George Hendrik Breitner (1857-1923), who greatly admired Whistler's etchings, shows the frontage of Palmgracht Nos. 54, 52 and 50. 3

In 1895 the canal was filled in; these houses were pulled down and replaced in the 20th century.