Titles

Variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'Blue and orange: Sweet Shop' (1886, Dowdeswell). 1
• 'The note in orange and blue (sweet shop)' (1886, Whistler). 2
• 'Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop' (1980, YMSM). 3

This may be the same painting as The Blue Band [YMSM 262].

'Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop' is the preferred title.

Anna Robins comments that this title 'combines orange and blue colours taken from Chevreul's six-part scheme of complementary colour, and invites the viewer to see the colour before the sweetshop'. 4 Robins is referring here to M. E. Chevreul's The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours (1839: 1854 in English), and suggests that Whistler could have been informed about Chevreul's theories through friends such as Ignace-Henri-Jean-Théodore Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) and Albert Joseph Moore (1841-1893).

Description

A small shop front in horizontal format. The facade is dominated by a pale blue painted beam above the window and door. The shop window is full of bottles of sweets and a pile of orange bags. A child in a cream hat and white pinafore stands on the pavement staring in the window. The shop-door to her right is open. At far right is a group of three girls, who stand in the road, chatting. The bottom of the windows on the first storey of the building are visible.

Site

This was probably painted in St Ives, on the Cornish coast, in south west England, UK. In the 1881 census Martha Sandow (b. 1831) had a sweet shop at No. 59, St Andrews Street, and in 1891 she was at No. 62. 5 St Andrews Street is a steep, narrow street in St Ives.