The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Nocturne: Black and Gold – Rag Shop, Chelsea probably dates from between 1881 and 1884. ¹

Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913) recalls a night about 1881 when Whistler made a drawing which is similar in subject to Nocturne: Black and Gold - Rag Shop, Chelsea y204 (see Nocturne: Chelsea y235). ²

Nocturne: Black and Gold – Rag Shop, Chelsea, Fogg Art Museum

It was first exhibited in Whistler's one-man exhibition, 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 58) as 'Nocturne, black and gold – No. 6, Rag Shop, Chelsea'.

Images

Subject

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Nocturne, black and gold – No. 6, Rag Shop, Chelsea' (1884, Dowdeswell). ³
• 'the Shop Nocturne' (1899, J. Lavery). ⁴
• 'Brown & Gold - Chelsea Rags - Nocturne' (1899, Whistler). ⁵
• 'Nocturne in Brown and Gold – Chelsea Rags' (1899, ISSPG). ⁶
• 'Nocturne, Chelsea Rags' (1905, ISSPG). ⁷
• 'Nocturne: Black and Gold – Rag Shop, Chelsea' (1980,YMSM). ⁸

'Nocturne: Black and Gold – Rag Shop, Chelsea' is the preferred title.

Description

Nocturne: Black and Gold - Rag Shop, Chelsea, Fogg Art Museum

A night scene painted in horizontal format, showing a shop in the middle distance. At left there are two very dimly lit windows, one above the other. In the middle is a large multi-paned shop-window, with vague forms, presumably of clothes, just visible, and to right, an open door, leading into a room with pictures on the wall and a small child standing in the middle.

Site

A rag shop in Chelsea, London. The precise shop has not been identified.

Old clothes and rag shops were frequently etched, drawn and painted by Whistler. He etched several old clothes shops in Chelsea including The Little Rag Shop, Milman's Row [265] and The Rag Shop, Milman's Row [290] in 1887. Elsewhere in London he etched Rag Shop, St Martin's Lane [328], and Clothes-Exchange, Houndsditch. No. 2 [359].

He also drew two lithographs called Chelsea Rags c026 and Drury Lane Rags c025, but they are only remotely connected, through the subject, to the oil. There is also a drawing of a similar subject, Chelsea Rags m1586, and a later oil, Old Clothes Shop, Houndsditch y371.

Technique

Composition

Nocturne: Black and Gold – Rag Shop, Chelsea, Fogg Art Museum

Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913) recalls a night about 1881 when Whistler made a drawing which is similar in subject to Nocturne: Black and Gold - Rag Shop, Chelsea y204 (see Nocturne: Chelsea y235). ⁹

Nocturne: Chelsea, The Hunterian

A pen drawing, Nocturne: Chelsea m0860 also appears to be a memory sketch of a similar subject.

Technique

Nocturne: Black and Gold – Rag Shop, Chelsea, Fogg Art Museum

It is painted on a fine canvas of irregular weave. The golden details of the lit interior of the shop are painted in creamy strokes with a small 2 mm (1/16") round brush.

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

1884: the style and whereabouts of the original frame is unknown.

1899: it is possible that it was reframed for exhibition and sale, but if so, the style and whereabouts of this second frame are unknown.

Nocturne: Black and Gold – Rag Shop, Chelsea, Fogg Art Museum

1930: Flat Whistler-style frame, 63.8 x 78.1 x 6.4 cm (25 1/8 x 30 3/4 x 2 1/2"), made by M. Grieve. This was probably added when it was with Scott & Fowles, New York.

History

Provenance

• 1899: sold by Whistler to John James Cowan (1846-1936), Edinburgh;
• 1926: sold at auction, Cowan sale, Christie's, London, 2 July 1926 (lot 161), and bought by 'Mason', 540 guineas.
• 1930: sold by Scott & Fowles, New York dealers, to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943), New York, 20 January 1930, for $9000;
• 1943: bequeathed by him to the Fogg Art Museum.

In 1885 or 1886 it was recorded that 'Nocturne – black & gold', either Catalogue no. 49 or 58 in the exhibition of 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884, had been sold to Edward John Poole (b. ca 1848). ¹⁰ Cat. no. 58 was 'Nocturne, black and gold – No. 6, Rag Shop, Chelsea'.

J. J. Cowan lent the painting to the ISSPG exhibition in April 1899 (cat. no. 134).

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 58) as 'Nocturne, black and gold – No. 6, Rag Shop, Chelsea'.
• 1899: 2nd Exhibition, Pictures, Drawings, Prints and Sculptures, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, London, 1899 (cat. no. 134) as 'Nocturne in Brown and Gold – Chelsea Rags'.
• 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. 90) as 'Nocturne, Chelsea Rags'.

It received little mention at the time of the Dowdeswell exhibition. The Sunday Times art critic had mixed feelings about Whistler's figure paintings Scherzo in Blue: The Blue Girl y226 and Note in Red: The Siesta y254, and added a brief reference to the 'Nocturne in black and gold':

'There is poetry really in some of them, as in the "Note in Red," or the "Scherzo in Blue," both of which are striking in colour, although they are marred with great ugliness of form. ... Their costumes seem to have been purchased ... at that Rag shop in Chelsea, a picture of which, taken seemingly in the middle of the night, Mr. Whistler obligingly christens a "Nocturne in black and gold.” ' ¹¹

Plan of a panel of pictures for the ISSPG, Tate Archive, London

Paintings at the ISSPG, Glasgow University Library

Whistler played with the possible arrangements of his exhibits for the 1899 show in two extant drawings, Plan of a panel of pictures for the ISSPG m1582, where it was labelled as ‘Cowan’s shop Nocturne’, and Paintings at the ISSPG m1583.

In May 1899 the Glasgow Herald described it as 'a beautiful sombre night effect, in which looms the interior and window of a shop, exquisite in tone,' and the Pall Mall Gazette, as 'the dim, delicious Nocturne in Brown and Gold – Chelsea Rags'. 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. 204), plate 134, as 'Nocturne: Black and Gold – Rag Shop, Chelsea'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 58) as 'Nocturne, black and gold – No. 6, Rag Shop, Chelsea'.
• 2nd Exhibition, Pictures, Drawings, Prints and Sculptures, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, London, 1899 (cat. no. 134) as 'Nocturne in Brown and Gold – Chelsea Rags'.
• 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. 90) as 'Nocturne, Chelsea Rags'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., ' "Notes" – "Harmonies" – "Nocturnes" ', Sunday Times, London, 18 May 1884.
• Anon., 'International Art Exhibition', The Globe, London, 9 May 1899, p. 5.
• Anon., 'International Art at Knightsbridge', Glasgow Herald, Glasgow, 9 May 1899, p. 8.
• Anon., 'International Society', Pall Mall Gazette, London, 10 May 1899, pp. 1-2.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

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. 436), p. 221.
• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler: Uneasy Pieces, New York, 2004, p. 282, repr. p. 284.
• Glazer, Lee, Emily Jacobsen, Blyth McCarthy, and Katherine Roeder, Whistler in Watercolor. Lovely Little Games, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2019, p. 68, repr. p. 69.
• Holden, Donald, Whistler Landscapes and Seascapes, New York, 1969, p. 48, repr. p. 14.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, p. 224.
• Petri, Grischka, Arrangement in Business: The Art Markets and the Career of James McNeill Whistler, Hildesheim, 2011, pp. 377, 416-17.
• Robins, Anna Gruetzner, A Fragile Modernism. Whistler and his Impressionist Followers, London and New Haven, 2007, p. 29.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908 (cat. no. 82), p. 162.
• Spencer, Robin (ed.), Whistler: A Retrospective, New York, 1989), repr. pl. 59, p. 188.
• Sutton, Denys, James McNeill Whistler: Paintings, Etchings, Pastels and Watercolours, London, 1966, p. 192, repr. p. 78.
• Way, Thomas Robert, and G. R. Dennis, The Art of James McNeill Whistler: An Appreciation, 1st edition, London, 1903, p. 64, repr. f.p. 64.
• Way, Thomas Robert, Memories of James McNeill Whistler, the Artist, London and New York, 1912, pp. 67-68, repr. drawing f.p. 68.

Books, General

• Cowan, John J., From 1846-1932, Edinburgh, 1933, p. 172.

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. 414 (cat. no. 442), repr.

EXHIBITION:

• Inaugural Loan Exhibition, Kirkcaldy Art Gallery, Kirkcaldy, 1925.
• Young, A. McLaren, James McNeill Whistler, Arts Council Gallery, London, and Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1960 (cat. no. 119).
• Shades of Significance, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA 1993-1996.
• Chikashi Kitazaki, ed., Between Reality and Dreams: Nineteenth Century British and French Art from the Winthrop Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, National Museum of Western Art, Ueno, Japan, 2002, pp. 220-21 (cat. no. 69), repr.
• Wolohojian, Stephan, Ingres, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Renoir... La Collection Grenville L. Winthrop, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 2003, pp. 488-89 (cat. no. 216), repr.
• Wolohojian, Stephan, ed., A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon; National Gallery, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2003-2004, pp. 472-73 (cat. no. 216).
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, pp. 16, 60-61, 94 (not in exhibition).
• For Students of Art and Lovers of Beauty: Highlights from the Collection of Grenville L. Winthrop, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, 2004.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Fogg Art Museum website at http://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. 363).

Other

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