Titles
Suggestions for the title are as follows:
- 'Variations in Violet and Green' (1871, Dudley). 1
- 'Green & Pink' (1886/1887, Whistler). 2
- 'Variations in Violet and Green' (1980, YMSM). 3
'Variations in Violet and Green' is the preferred title.
Description
Variations in Violet and Green, Musée d'Orsay
The view of a river, in vertical format. At lower left, a woman is sitting on a bench with a woman standing to right of her on a riverside-road, which runs diagonally across the foreground from lower left, upwards to right. At lower right another woman stands looking over the shore to the river. A sailing boat is on the river, and in the distance there are grey buildings under a cloudy sky.
Site
The River Thames in Chelsea, London.
A copy of, or painting inspired by, this oil, was painted, possibly by Walter Greaves, and was by 2015 in a private collection.
Comments
Andrew McLaren Young (1913-1975) observed that the foreground arrangement was still reminiscent of Whistler's Greco-Japanese sketches of 1867-1870, but the setting, showing the Thames at Battersea Reach, presaged the Thames Nocturnes of the 1870s. 4
Notes:
1: 5th Winter Exhibition of Cabinet Pictures in Oil, under the Management of the Committee of the Dudley Gallery, London, 1871 (cat. no. 225).
2: List, [1886/1887], formerly dated [4/11 January 1892], GUW #06795.
3: YMSM 1980 [more] (cat. no. 104).
4: Young, A. McLaren, James McNeill Whistler, Arts Council Gallery, London, and Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1960 (cat. no. 24).
Last updated: 31st December 2020 by Margaret
