Detail from The Canal, Amsterdam, 1889, James McNeill Whistler, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

Home  > Catalogue > People > John Ruskin (related works) > Catalogue entry

M.1263
Butterfly

Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Date: 1890/1892
Collection: Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Accession Number: 2006685428
Medium: pen and black ink
Support: cream card, with printed butterfly on small square of paper cut from a book (Whistler 1890, p. 105) stuck to it
Size: 5 1/6 x 7 1/4" (123-127 x 182 mm)
Signature: butterfly
Inscription: 'Top/ page 309./ size / No. 3', and in an unknown hand '¼'

Butterfly

Composition

Butterfly, Library Of Congress
Butterfly, Library Of Congress

A design for Whistler 1892 [more] . The dancing butterfly is a wordless comment on the quotation from John Ruskin (1819-1900), 'We can paint a cat or a fiddle, so that they look as if we could take them up, but we cannot imitate the Ocean or the Alps...'. The quotation was used beside the entry for Symphony in Grey and Green: The Ocean [YMSM 072] in Whistler's 1892 exhibition catalogue (cat.no. 15), where the butterfly was reduced to a width of 11 mm (7/16").

Last updated: 19th March 2021 by Margaret