The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Shop – an exterior dates from 1883/1885. It is dated from the technique and butterfly signature.

The Shop – an exterior, Colby College Museum of Art

It was catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 949).

Images

Subject

Site

The Shop – an exterior, Colby College Museum of Art

Not identified. It has been suggested that it was in Chelsea. The south coast of England is equally possible. The wood timbering on the buildings is a distinctive feature. The presence of chickens suggests that, on the whole, it is more likely to have been a country village or town than a street in London.

Technique

Technique

The Shop – an exterior, Colby College Museum of Art

This is a large watercolour, and the street scene was painted with considerable variety of brush-strokes, producing areas of wash, varied textures and patterns, and fine, almost calligraphic details. A few touches of body-colour were also used, in the windows and on the children painted over the shop, in the foreground.

History

Provenance

• By 1904: owned by Mrs Frances Maria Stratton-French (1842-1911), Boston;
• 1911: passed to her estate;
• By 1934: passed by family descent to her son Hollis French (1868-1940), a consulting engineer, Boston.
• 1946: sold by Knoedler's, New York dealers, to Grand Central Galleries, New York;
• 1951: bought by IBM Corporation;
• 1995: sold by the IBM Corporation on 25 May 1995.
• 2013: given by Paula Crane Lunder (b. 1935) and Peter H. Lunder (b. 1933) to the Colby College Museum of Art.

The Hollis family applied for passports for travel abroad on 26 March 1895, and it is possible that the watercolour was purchased on that trip.

Exhibitions

• 1904: Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 139) as ' "The Shop" An Exterior'.

No exhibitions in Whistler's lifetime have been identified.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 949) as 'The Shop – an exterior'.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 139) as ' "The Shop" An Exterior'.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Oils, Water-colors, Drawings and Prints by James McNeill Whistler, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1934 (cat. no. 33).
• McCann, Justin (ed.), Whistler and the World: The Lunder Collection of James McNeill Whistler at the Colby College of Art, New York, 2015.

Websites

• Colby College Museum of Art, Website (acc. 2017).
• 'Whistler and the World: The Lunder Collection of James McNeill Whistler at the Colby College Museum of Art, 2015-2017', Art History News Report, Website (acc. 2018).