The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Selsey Shore probably dates from just before or after Whistler's trip to Venice, and was thus painted between 1878 and September 1879 or between late 1880 and 1881. ¹ Whistler visited Charles Augustus Howell (1840?-1890), first owner of this painting, several times at Selsey Bill in the late 1870s, up to 1882.

In 1894 Whistler wrote to David Croal Thomson (1855-1930):

The painting "Selsea Bill Sands" - I am not going to sign it at all - The Goupils shall send it back to you at once -

You can tell your man that it is nothing but an odd scrap that I left at Howells when I once went down there, and that I never meant should exist at any price! - I ought to have thrown it in the fire at once - but probably there was no fire handy, & doubtless I would have scraped the canvas the next day, if I had staid to do it - I suppose that, being miserable without painting something, I strolled out on the beach, and found all "Nature" in a shocking state! bleak sky - hard as nails, in an east wind - cheap mean sea - and cold sands - In short every thing abominable and only fit for the British landscapist! - Of course I could do nothing - and ought never to have dipped my brush in such company! - There is no excuse for it - However rather than go in, and[8] much better had I gone in, I weakly attempted to put this common combination on canvas, & immediately sickened with it! - Howell kept it - & of course finally Dowdeswell got it! [butterfly signature]

I left that last page as it is, thinking that now that you have taken to giving my autograph away you might as well tare that half sheet off and give it to the unhappy collector who bought the scrap at the Dowdeswells!! - Upon reflection I think I will copy it and stick it on the back of the forgotten thing myself. - Meanwhile you can read it to him - Now I will charge him nothing for this "opinion" - and more than that - I will undertake that if one of these days your client ever wishes to buy anything of mine from me, I will allow the original fifty five pounds he paid for this Selsie [sic] Beach, or Sands - in order that I may have it back to destroy before him - I am sure nothing can be nicer or more complete than that -

Well I can't copy it - so let him tare [sic] off the half sheet and stick it on the back of his canvas!' ²

Images

Subject

Titles

Two titles have been recorded:

• 'The Selsey Shore' (Before 1890, C. A. Howell). ³
• 'Selsie Beach, or Sands' (1894, Whistler). ⁴
• 'Beach at Selsie Bill' (1894, Whistler). ⁵
• 'Selsey Shore' (1890, Christie's). ⁶
• 'The Selsey Shore' (1980, YMSM) ⁷

'The Selsey Shore' is the preferred title.

Description

The Selsey Shore, Hill-Stead Museum of American Art

A beach scene, painted in horizontal format. The dark beach in the foreground runs from lower right at a diagonal up to left. The sea is fairly calm, blue under a cloudy sky.

Site

C. A. Howell lived at Selsey Bill in Sussex (between Chichester and Portsmouth) on the south coast of England. Whistler made one etching there and a watercolour, both of which date from about 1880. Whistler visited Howell several times when he took the house Old Denner at Selsey Bill in the late 1870s.

Technique

Technique

The Selsey Shore , Hill-Stead Museum of American Art

It is painted very thinly and possibly rubbed down as well. Whistler called it a 'rag of a canvas' and refused to sign it. ⁸

Conservation History

The Selsey Shore, photograph, 1980

The Selsey Shore, Hill-Stead Museum of American Art

Unknown. An early photograph shows it as slightly battered and sunken in.

Frame

Unknown.

History

Provenance

• 1876/1878: Charles Augustus Howell (1840?-1890);
• 1890: on his death, auctioned at his sale, Christie, London, 13 November 1890 (lot 435) as 'Selsey Shore'.
• 1894: sold by Messrs Dowdeswell, London, for £55 to Alfred Atmore Pope (1842-1913) of Cleveland, through Goupil, London dealers;
• 1913: bequeathed to A. A. Pope's daughter Theodate Pope (1867-1946) (Mrs J. W. Riddle), Farmington, Connecticut;
• 1946: bequeathed to the Hill-Stead Museum of American Art.

It was painted at Selsey Bill and left in C. A. Howell's house there. ⁹ At the Howell sale at Christie's on 13 November 1890 (lot 435) 'Selsey Shore', was bought for 7 guineas, possibly by Messrs Dowdeswell. It was Dowdeswell's who later sold what Whistler termed the 'wreckage' for £55 to A. A. Pope through Goupil's. In 1894 Goupil's sent this painting to Whistler for his signature, which he refused to give. ¹⁰

A note of about 1892 in Whistler's hand, was found pasted on the back of another picture, The Beach at Selsey Bill (now in the New Britain Museum of American Art). ¹¹ The Beach at Selsey Bill, like The Selsey Shore y200, was originally in the collection of A. A. Pope's daughter, Mrs Riddle. Andrew McLaren Young (1913-1975) rejected the NBMAA picture as an autograph painting by Whistler, and suggested that the note in Whistler's hand once belonged to The Selsey Shore y200. The note reads:

This rag of canvas bought of Messrs. Dowdeswell "Beach at Selsie Bill" was never ment [sic] to be signed. It is no more fit for signature than would be the odd scrap of paper that had fallen between waste bucket and fire when thrown aside by the author, too careless to see the destruction he intended completed before him.

Nothing in the house of Howell was ever lost! and so this sweeping of an afternoon's visit was gathered and stowed away for future transaction. There would seem to be a fatality that brings wreckage of this kind to Messrs. Dowdeswell in Bond Street.' ¹²

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

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. 200) as 'The Selsey Shore'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia, 1921, p. 65.

Books, General

• MacDonald, Margaret F., 'James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)', in Pamela T. Barr, Henry Adams (eds.), New Britain Museum of American Art: Highlights of the Collection, vol. 1, New Britain, 1999, pp. 170-71, 188.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Sweet, Frederick A., James McNeill Whistler, Art Institute of Chicago and Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, 1968 (cat. no. 10), painting The Beach at Selsey Bill, formerly attributed to Whistler, repr.

Journals 1906-Present

• MacDonald, Margaret F., 'What is a Whistler?', in: Glazer, Lee, Margaret F. MacDonald, Linda Merrill, and Nigel Thorp (eds), James McNeill Whistler in Context. Essays from the Whistler Centenary Symposium, University of Glasgow, 2003, Washington, DC, 2008, pp. 1-18, at p. 10, ref. to The Beach at Selsey Bill.

Websites

• 'MFM' [MacDonald, Margaret F.], 'James Abbott McNeill Whistler … The Beach at Selsey Bill', New Britain Museum of American Art website at http://ink.nbmaa.org:8080/emuseum/people/1691 (acc. 2019).

Unpublished

• None.

Other

• None.