The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore dates from 1880.

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, National Gallery of Art

It is fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 805). The record has been revised and updated.

Images

Subject

Site

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, National Gallery of Art

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, photograph, 1990s, M. F. MacDonald, Whistler Paintings Project, Glasgow University Library, 1990s

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, photograph, 1997, M. F. MacDonald, Whistler Paintings Project, Glasgow University Library

Venice, Italy. Palladio's great church, San Giorgio Maggiore on the island of the Giudecca, was drawn from the Riva degli Schiavoni, a little west of the Casa Jankowitz. ¹

Technique

Technique

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, National Gallery of Art

See discussion in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 805).

History

Provenance

• 1898/1901: lent by Hannah 'Anna' Sears Amory (1866-1901) of 7 Fairfield Street, Boston, to Boston Museum of Fine Arts (label);
• Date unknown, after 1901: lent by her husband (m. 1898) Revd George Francis Weld Sr (1866-1933), Hingham, MA, to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (626.09, label).
• Date unknown: with Doll & Richards, 2 Park Street, Boston dealers (label).
• Date unknown: with Arthur H. Hahlo, 569 Fifth Avenue, New York dealers (label).
• 1931: bequeathed by James Parmelee (1855-1931) to the Corcoran Gallery of Art;
• 1941: accessioned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art;
• 2015: transferred from the Corcoran Gallery of Art to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

It is likely that the pastel was acquired in the 1890s but no proof of this has been located. Further details are given in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 805). The record has been revised and updated.

Exhibitions

No record has been located of an exhibition in Whistler's lifetime.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 805) as 'The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore'.

Books on Whistler

• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, p. 260.
• Getscher, Robert Harold, James Abbott McNeill Whistler Pastels, New York, 1991p. 115, no. 38.
• Grieve, Alastair, Whistler's Venice, New Haven and London, 2000, pp. 119-20, repr. pl. 142 as 'San Giorgio', view repr. pl. 143.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice, Aldershot and California, 2001, p. 45.

Books, General

• Honour, Hugh, and John Fleming, The Venetian Hours of Henry James, Whistler, and Sargent, London, 1991, p. 99.
• Simmons, Linda Crocker, with the assistance of Adrianne J. Humphrey, et al., American Drawings, Watercolors, Pastels, and Collages in the Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1983, p. 73 (cat. no. 462).

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Whistler Loan Exhibition, Macbeth Gallery, New York, 1947, (cat. no. 35).
• James McNeill Whistler Seventeenth Anniversary Exhibition, Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT, 1949 (cat. no. 46).
• Young, A. McLaren, James McNeill Whistler, Arts Council Gallery, London, and Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1960, p. 79 (cat. no. 84).
• Spencer, Robin, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1969 (cat. no. 83).
• American Pastels from the Corcoran Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1978.
• Sargent's Contemporaries, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1983 (cat. no. 26).
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Notes, Harmonies, and Nocturnes: Small Works by James McNeill Whistler, M. Knoedler and Co., New York, 1984 (cat. no. 83).
• Venice: The American View, 1860-1920, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH, 1984-1985, pp. 142-143 (cat. no. 92), repr.
• Dorment, Richard, and Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler, Tate Gallery, London, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1994-1995, p. 302 (cat. no. 113).
• Denker, Eric, Whistler and his circle in Venice, London, 2003, p. 81 (cat. no. 27), repr.
• Impressionism, Realism, Modernism: Works on Paper from the American Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2007.
• Focus on the Corcoran: Works on Paper, 1860-1990, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2015.
• The Touch of Color: Pastels at the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 2019-2020 (unnumbered catalogue).

Websites

• National Gallery of Art website at https://www.nga.gov.