The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Cremorne, No. 1 dates from between about 1875 and 1877. ¹

Cremorne, No. 1, Fogg Art Museum

On 18 September 1875, Whistler's mother Anna Matilda Whistler (1804-1881) mentioned Whistler's 'Moonlight pictures' including 'one lately finished of Cremorne Gardens at Chelsea.' ²

Cremorne Gardens, No. 2 y164 and Nocturne: Cremorne Gardens, No. 3 y165 are particularly close to Cremorne, No. 1 y163 in date, technique and treatment of the subject.

Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea, was closed to the public in 1877, so Whistler's series of six known nocturnal paintings of them must date from before then.

Images

Subject

Titles

Suggested titles include:

• 'Nocturne in black and gold: The Gardens' (1887, Royal Society of British Artists). ³
• 'Nocturne of Cremorne - Booths on the lawn' (1892, Whistler). ⁴
• 'Cremorne, No. 1' (YMSM, 1980). ⁵

'Cremorne, No. 1' is the preferred title. The numbering of Cremorne Nocturnes was assigned rather arbitrarily, but is being retained to avoid further confusion.

Description

Cremorne, No. 1, Fogg Art Museum

A nocturnal scene in horizontal format. At left is a low building with people seated in balconies opening onto the open space of the park, where other people stroll or sit in groups. At right another building looms indistinctly. A few lights are strung across the middle distance. Smoke swirls in the gloom, and everything is indistinct, except for two woman to right of centre, one leaning down to pick up a white glove or handkerchief.

Site

Cremorne pleasure gardens in London, closed to the public in 1877. Whistler's paintings of Cremorne include Cremorne, No. 1 y163, Cremorne Gardens, No. 2 y164, Nocturne: Cremorne Gardens, No. 3 y165, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Gardens y166, Nocturne: Black and Gold - The Fire Wheel y169, and Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket y170.

Technique

Composition

Cremorne, No. 1, Fogg Art Museum

The Pennells wrote that it was easy in Cremorne Gardens 'to put down what he wanted under the lamps' in black and white chalk drawings. ⁶ The Greaves brothers – Henry Greaves (1843-1904) and Walter Greaves (1846-1930) – told the Pennells that Whistler 'never tried to use colour at night or at Cremorne Gardens, but made notes on brown paper in black and white chalk.' ⁷

Whistler, Nocturne, Whereabouts unknown

Curiously though, none have survived, except for one Nocturne m0570, which could be by Whistler or by Walter Greaves himself. Greaves painted several nocturnes of Cremorne, three of which were exhibited in London at the Goupil Gallery in 1911 (cat. nos. 29, 34, 67) including one showing Fireworks (cat. no. 67). ⁸

W. Greaves, Fireworks, Cremorne Gardens, The Hunterian, GLAHA 43537

One oil by Greaves, Fireworks, Cremorne Gardens, reproduced above, showing illuminated buildings and groups of figures watching, is in the Hunterian.

Technique

Cremorne, No. 1, Fogg Art Museum

Cremorne, No. 1 y163 is painted on a fine canvas of irregular thread. The colours of the figures in the foreground still retain their clarity but the background is extremely dark.

Conservation History

Cremorne, No. 1, photograph, n.d.

Cremorne, No. 1, photograph, 1980

Cremorne, No. 1, Fogg Art Museum

Unknown. Earlier photographs suggest that the colour balance of the painting may have changed.

Frame

ca 1877: Flat Whistler frame, painted frieze with Foord & Dickinson label ('FOORD & DICKINSON, Carvers & Gilders, / 90, Wardour Street. W.')

Cremorne, No. 1, photo

Cremorne, No. 1, frame

The panel is painted with a very rough seigaha pattern. The style of painted decoration on the frame of Cremorne, No. 1 y163 is unlike that on any other of Whistler's decorated frames, although it would seem to be a freer version of the more symmetrical seigaha patterning that Whistler introduced in the early to mid-1870's. It was probably not painted by Whistler.

History

Provenance

• 1870s?: 'John Calvocaressi' – probably John or Ioannis (Matthew) Calvocoressi (1846-1919).
• 1905: Mrs Alexandra Argenti (1858-1941), London.
• 1927: sold from the estate of William Bell Paterson (1859-1952), London art dealer, to Scott & Fowles, New York;
• 1934: sold by them to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943), 7 December 1934;
• 1943: his bequest to the Fogg Art Museum.

According to the 1905 Whistler Memorial catalogue, this painting was painted for 'John Calvocoressi', who was probably John or Ioannis (Matthew) Calvocoressi, one of the Turkish merchants who, like the Greek Ionides and Cavafy families, were patrons of Whistler. ⁹ John Calvocoressi's son, George John Calvocoressi (1880-1937) married Julia Argenti (1893-1963), the daughter of Pandeli Leonidas Argenti (1853-1911) and Francesca 'Fanny' Argenti née Schilizzi (d. 1926).

The second recorded owner, Alexandra Argenti (1858-1941), born in Liverpool, was the daughter of a Turkish East India merchant, Demetrius Emmanuel Petrocochino (1820-1887). In 1881 she married Leoni Ambrose Argenti (ca 1847-1890) in Kensington; they had two children, Ambrose (1882-1950) and Despina, born in 1885.

There appears to have been some relationship between the Calvocoressi and Argenti families, but their family trees are complex and the identity of Whistler's patrons, and exactly who owned Whistler's painting, and when, is unclear.

There is no actual record of a commission or sale, and it is not known whether it was sold before or after Whistler's bankruptcy in 1879, or who owned it when it was exhibited at the RBA in 1887.

Curiously, by 1892 Whistler appeared to have forgotten the name of the owner, for on 5 March he asked the London dealer David Croal Thomson (1855-1930) to ask Alexander Ionides (1840-1898) for 'the name and address of the Greek gentleman who once bought a Nocturne of Cremorne - Booths on the lawn' and try and borrow it for his Goupil exhibition. ¹⁰ Mrs Alexandra Argenti, another member of the Greek community in London, possibly related to the Ionides family, lent it to the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in London in 1905 (cat. no. 21). It is not known when it left her possession. A label on the verso states that it was bought in 1927 from 'the late W. B. Paterson' by Scott & Fowles, who sold it to G. L. Winthrop on 7 December 1934 for $12,500.

Exhibitions

• 1887: 64th Annual Exhibition, Royal Society of British Artists, London, 1887 (cat. no. 158) as 'Nocturne in black and gold: The Gardens'.
• 1905: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 21).

At the RBA it was priced at £367.10.0; it is identified from a drawing by Théodore Roussel (1847-1926). ¹¹ A reviewer described it: 'faintly illumined dancing figures are seen surrounded by a boundless contiguity shade.' ¹²

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980, cat. no. 163, plate 89.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 64th Annual Exhibition, Royal Society of British Artists, London, 1887 (cat. no. 158) as 'Nocturne in black and gold: The Gardens'.
• Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 21).

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Society of British Artists', Globe, London, 4 April 1887, p. 6.

Journals 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Art in April' in 'Chronicle of Art', Magazine of Art, vol. 10, 1887, supplement, pp. xxv-xxviii, at p. xxv.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907 (cat. no. 381).
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 1, pp. 107-08, repr. f.p. 164.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia, 1921, p. 117.
• Lechien, Isabelle Enaud, James Whistler: Le peintre et le polémiste, Paris, 1995, pp. 76-78, repr. p. 77.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908, p. 157 (cat. no. 51).

Books, General

• Graves, Algernon , Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912, London, 1913-1915, vol. 4, p. 1657.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr., Virginia Anderson, and Kimberly Orcutt, ed., American Paintings at Harvard, Volume Two, Paintings, Drawings, Pastels and Stained Glass by Artists Born 1826-1856, Harvard University Art Museums/Yale University Press, Cambridge, MA and New Haven, CT, 2008, p. 410-11 (cat. no. 439), repr. p. 410.

EXHIBITION:

• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, Freer Gallery of Art, New York and Washington, DC, 1984, p. 83, repr. fig. 217 (not exhibited).
• Spassky, Natalie, Linda Bantel, Doreen Bolger Burke, Meg Perlman, and Amy L. Walsh, American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume 2: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1816 and 1845, ed. Kathleen Luhrs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Princeton University Press, New York, 1985, listed p. 367.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Harvard Art Museums website at https://www.harvardartmuseums.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 85) 'Cremorne, No: 1'.

Other

• Siewert, John, 'Whistler’s Nocturnes and the Aesthetic Subject', PhD thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1994.