Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Red and blue – Lindsey Houses' (1884, Dowdeswell). 1
• 'A Note in Red' (1904, Copley Society, Boston). 2
• 'A Note in Red' (1948, B. A. Stubbs). 3
• 'Red and Blue: Lindsey Houses' (1980, YMSM). 4

The accepted title, 'Red and Blue: Lindsey Houses' as given in the 1980 catalogue, is based on the original Dowdeswell's title.

Description

In the foreground, several people walk or stand by the railings looking our on the riverside. Beyond the bank is a row of houses, including, to right of centre, a substantial four-storey red-roofed block of houses. The sky or blue, scattered with puffs of white cloud, in the centre of which appears to be a butterfly.

Site

Lindsey Houses on Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, was built in 1674 for the third Earl of Lindsey, and was remodelled in 1750 by Count Zinzendorf for the Moravian community in London. It was divided into seven separate houses in 1775, and runs from 96 to 101 Cheyne Walk.

Whistler lived at No. 2 Lindsey Row, Chelsea from February 1867 until he moved to the White House in 1879: in 1890 he was at No. 21 and in 1902 at No. 74 in Lindsey Row. However at the time this oil was painted he would have been living just round the corner at 13 Tite Street.

Whistler had etched Lindsey Houses [161] in 1876 or 1877.