The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop probably dates from 1884, and certainly before its first exhibition in 1886.

Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

It was probably painted during Whistler's sojourn in St Ives between January and March 1884. ¹

Images

Subject

Titles

Variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'Blue and orange: Sweet Shop' (1886, Dowdeswell). ²
• 'The note in orange and blue (sweet shop)' (1886, Whistler). ³
• 'Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop' (1980, YMSM). ⁴

This may be the same painting as The Blue Band y262.

'Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop' is the preferred title.

Anna Robins comments that this title 'combines orange and blue colours taken from Chevreul's six-part scheme of complementary colour, and invites the viewer to see the colour before the sweetshop'. ⁵ Robins is referring here to M. E. Chevreul's The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours (1839: 1854 in English), and suggests that Whistler could have been informed about Chevreul's theories through friends such as Ignace-Henri-Jean-Théodore Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) and Albert Joseph Moore (1841-1893).

Description

Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

A small shop front in horizontal format. The facade is dominated by a pale blue painted beam above the window and door. The shop window is full of bottles of sweets and a pile of orange bags. A child in a cream hat and white pinafore stands on the pavement staring in the window. The shop-door to her right is open. At far right is a group of three girls, who stand in the road, chatting. The bottom of the windows on the first storey of the building are visible.

Site

This was probably painted in St Ives, on the Cornish coast, in south west England, UK. In the 1881 census Martha Sandow (b. 1831) had a sweet shop at No. 59, St Andrews Street, and in 1891 she was at No. 62. ⁶ St Andrews Street is a steep, narrow street in St Ives.

Technique

Technique

Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The pale turquoise-blue band across the top of the shop contrasts strongly with the predominantly dark brown tones of the painting, which is on a grey primed panel. It is difficult to make out the technique because of the condition of the panel. However, it is clear that for all its small size, it was painted with quite bold strokes of thin paint. The square brushstrokes on the wall have an almost abstract quality, complementing the geometrical grid of the shop front. On the other hand, the detail of the child in white bonnet and apron, looking in the window, was expressively painted with smaller brushes.

Conservation History

Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop, photograph

There is fine crazing (craquelure) over the entire surface.

Frame

Small Dowdeswell, frame possibly made by Charles Mitchell May, 1886 [11.1 cm]. ⁷

History

Provenance

• 1886: sold by Whistler to Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), Boston;
• 1924: bequeathed by her to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

In 1886 the price was estimated by Messrs Dowdeswell at £50 but it was raised to £100 by Whistler. ⁸

It was sold by Whistler to Mrs J. L. Gardner on 30 October 1886. ⁹

Exhibitions

• 1886: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 (cat. no. 49) as 'Blue and orange: Sweet Shop'.

The Saturday Review, 22 May 1886, compared this painting with Arrangement in Red and Black y346 and stated that they 'are painted in lower, richer, and fuller colours than most, and are pushed further, for which they are none the worse.' ¹⁰ The Globe on 14 May 1886 grouped it with White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe y325 as showing '[Whistler's] skill in rapidly recording the aspect of a scene, and his fine sense of colour'.

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. 263), plate 161, as 'Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 (cat. no. 49) as 'Blue and orange: Sweet Shop'.
• Catalogue, Fenway Court, Boston, 1903, p. 18, as 'The Chelsea Sweet-Shop'.

Journals 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Mr. Whistler's Sketches', Globe, London, 14 May 1886, p. 6.
• Anon., 'The Whistler Exhibition', Illustrated London News, London, 15 May 1886, p. 14.
• Anon., The Saturday Review, London, 22 May 1886, p. 708.
• Menpes, Mortimer, 'Whistler, the Purist', The Cornhill Magazine, new series, vol. 15, no. 90, December 1903, pp. 760-68, at p. 762, on 'The Blue Band'.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Menpes, Mortimer, Whistler as I Knew Him, London, 1904, pp. 118-19, 140.
• Robins, Anna Gruetzner, A Fragile Modernism. Whistler and his Impressionist Followers, London and New Haven, 2007, pp. 27-28.
• Way, Thomas Robert, and G. R. Dennis, The Art of James McNeill Whistler: An Appreciation, 1st edition, London, 1903, p. 65, as 'The Little Sweet-Stuff Shop'.

Books, General

• Carter, Morris, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court, Boston and New York, 1925 (reprinted, Boston, 1972), p. 103, as 'The Note in Orange and Blue - Sweet Shop'.
• Robins, Anna Gruetzner (ed.), Walter Sickert: the Complete Writings on Art, Oxford, 2000, p. 5.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Hendy, Philip, Catalogue of the Exhibited Paintings and Drawings, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 1931, p. 418, as 'The Sweet Shop, Chelsea'.
• Longstreet, George Wendell, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, general catalogue, Boston, 1935, p. 201, as 'The Sweet Shop, Chelsea'.
• Hendy, Philip, European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 1974, pp. 291-92, repr. p. 292, as 'The Sweet Shop, Chelsea' and 'The Note in orange and blue. (Sweetshop)'.

EXHIBITION:

• 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. 239 (cat. no. 158) (not exhibited).

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum website at https://www.gardnermuseum.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 368).

Other

• Parkerson, Sarah Lawrence, Variations in Gold: The Stylistic Development of the Picture Frames used by James McNeill Whistlers, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007.