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According to museum records, it was bought by the actor Henry Irving for £30.0.0 and given by him to the actress Ellen Terry, who sold it to Scott & Fowles. It is not clear when and where the painting was acquired or sold by the Jack Warner Collection, which owned it in 2001.
In 1886 the price of 'Harmony in blue and pearl The Sands, Dieppe' was estimated at £60 by Dowdeswell but finally priced at £30.0.0 by Whistler. 1
The Saturday Review on 22 May 1886 commented on 'the aerial sands and liquid water of the Harmony in Blue and Pearl (1), a strongly painted oil upright'. The Magazine of Art called it 'a solid oil upright, which is more than decorative, and gives admirably the flat, oily surface of a miniature lagoon inside the breaking waves on a flat sandy coast.' 2 A correspondent of the Dundee Evening Telegraph wrote even more admiringly, on 27 May 1886:
'Some of the drawings are particularly graceful and harmonious; one, for example, "A Harmony in Blue and Pearl – The Sands, Dieppe", gives the true feeling of sea and sky as none but a poet amongst painters could have ever seen it.'
Last updated: 15th November 2020 by Margaret