The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Tobacco Warehouse dates from 1879/1880.

The Tobacco Warehouse, Hirschhorn Museum

It is fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no 762).

Images

Subject

Site

The Tobacco Warehouse, Hirschhorn Museum

Venice, Italy: the tenement, a Renaissance building intended to house the poor, was on the Fondamenta dei Cereri; Whistler drew it from the Ponte Rosso, west of the Campo Santa Margherita. ¹

Technique

Technique

The Tobacco Warehouse, Hirschhorn Museum

See details in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no 762).

History

Provenance

• 1914: with Kennedy, New York dealers.
• Before 1935: owned by Henry Harper Benedict (1844-1935);
• 1935: bequeathed to his widow, Katherine Geddes Benedict (1879-1961), and daughter, Mrs James Douglass Sharpe;
• 1962: sold at auction, Sotheby's, London, 21 November 1962 (lot 11, repr.) and bought by Graham, New York art dealer, for Joseph Herman Hirshhorn (1899-1981);
• 1966: given to the Hirschhorn Museum.

The early provenance is not known. ²

Exhibitions

• 1881: Venice Pastels, Fine Art Society, London, 1881 (cat. no. 5) as 'The Tobacco Warehouse'.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no 762) as 'The Tobacco Warehouse'.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Venice Pastels, Fine Art Society, London, 1881 (cat. no. 5) as 'The Tobacco Warehouse'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Mr. Whistler's Venice Pastels', Daily News, London, 31 January 1881, p. 2.

Books on Whistler

• Grieve, Alastair, Whistler's Venice, New Haven and London, 2000, pp. 56-57, repr. pl. 44, view repr. pl. 43.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice, Aldershot and California, 2001, pp. 44, 57.
• Way, Thomas Robert, Memories of James McNeill Whistler, the Artist, London and New York, 1912, repr. f.p. 52.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Denker, Eric, Whistler and his circle in Venice, London, 2003.
• Venice: From Canaletto and Turner to Monet, Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland, 2008-2009, p. 94, repr. p. 104.

Websites

• Hirshhorn Museum website at https://hirshhorn.si.edu, as 'Canal in Venice (Tobacco Warehouse)'..