The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

A Grey Note: Village Street dates from between January and March 1884. ¹ It was painted during a three-month visit to Cornwall, England, made by Whistler with his 'pupils', Mortimer Luddington Menpes (1860-1938) and Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942).

On 4 January Whistler told Ernest George Brown (1851-1915) that he was 'tremendously busy with lots of pictures of all kinds.' ² Whistler described his work to a collector, Alfred Chapman (1839-1917) as 'oil paintings - little beauties.' ³

A Grey Note: Village Street, The Hunterian

This painting was exhibited on his return, in his one-man show of 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 41).

Images

Subject

Titles

Several titles have been suggested:

• 'Little Shop; grey note' (1884, Dowdeswell). ⁴
• Probably 'Note grise: La petite Boutique' (1887, Petit). ⁵
• 'Une note grise – Coin de Rue' (1888, Whistler). ⁶
• 'Eine graue Stimmung: Strassen-Ecke' (1888, III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Munich). ⁷
• 'A Grey Note; Village Street' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). ⁸
• 'A Grey Note – Village Street' (1936, University of Glasgow). ⁹
• 'A Grey Note: Village Street' (1980, YMSM). ¹⁰

Although it is almost certain that the original title was 'Little Shop; grey note', this painting has become known as A Grey Note: Village Street'; the punctuation is in conformity with other titles.

Description

A Grey Note: Village Street, The Hunterian

A street corner, painted on a horizontal panel. A cobbled street slopes down to the right and round a corner. A white dog is in the lower right foreground. The painting centres on two storeys of a house, which is painted a dull yellow, with white or grey windows, a dark doorway, and dark grey paintwork below the ground floor windows. A greengrocer's shop is on the ground floor (the shop window is at left, then the closed door, and a smaller window to right), and there are two windows above, the small windows all being lace-curtained. Two children, very faintly indicated, peer at the fruit in the shop. On the far side of the street, at right, a man stands looking at pictures and posters in a large shop window. A very small butterfly is painted on the wall at left.

Site

The fishing port of St Ives, Cornwall, in south-west England. Whistler painted this view of Fore Street, St Ives, during a three-month visit to Cornwall. He would have passed this building each day on the route from his lodgings at Barnoon Terrace down to the harbour. It is believed that the front of this house was later altered.

Albert Moulton Foweraker (1873-1942) was staying at 25 Fore Street at the time of the 1891 Census; the building painted by Whistler appears in the background of Foweraker's painting The Entrance to Fore Street ¹¹

A 1906 photograph of Fore Street by the firm of Francis Frith shows a cobbled street, on a slight hill, lined with three-storey buildings. It was a busy street, with small shops on each side. ¹²

Technique

Technique

A Grey Note: Village Street, The Hunterian

There is no evidence of any priming on the wooden panel. ¹³ It is painted very thinly – one might say 'tinted' – with a small brush on a dark grey undercoat. There are tiny vivid touches of colour – green, brown and red, cobalt blue and naples yellow – streaked over the window on the right, and oranges in the greengrocer's shop on the left.

The original varnish has the fine-scale crazing and yellowed appearance that is typical of a temporary egg white varnish that was never removed. If Whistler applied an egg white varnish, it could have been for exhibition in the 1880s. Two later paintings, Old Clothes Shop, Houndsditch y371 and The Little Forge, Lyme Regis y442 appear to have the same fine-grained crazed appearance.

Conservation History

The panel has an auxiliary backing and a framing device both made from mahogany-type hardwood, the support panel having bevelled edges on the verso, plus adhered 4mm thin battens, which have mitred corners. Stuck on this support panel is a label giving the title and address of Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958). This suggests that this form of auxiliary backing was done after Whistler's death, for exhibition in the 1905 memorial exhibition.

There are minor paint losses at the edge. There is a fine network of cracks in the varnish, which has a hazy appearance, over the whole surface, following the grain of the wood. It also has a second varnish that was applied within a frame that covered some of the right edge. It could have been applied to disguise the crazing in the varnish beneath. Otherwise the panel is in sound condition. ¹⁴

Frame

37.3 x 46.3 x 7.2 cm.

History

Provenance

• 1903: in Whistler's studio at his death in 1903 and bequeathed to his ward and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958);
• 1935: given by Miss R. Birnie Philip to the University of Glasgow.

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 41) as 'Little Shop; grey note'.
• 1887: probably Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 167) as 'Note grise: La petite Boutique'.
• 1888: III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Königlicher Glaspalast, Munich, 1888 (cat. no. 64) as 'Eine graue Stimmung: Strassen-Ecke'.
• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 8) as 'A Grey Note; Village Street'.

The exhibition history is not known for sure but it is likely that despite its modest scale and restrained colour this was one of the small panels shown by Whistler in a series of exhibitions in the 1880s, in this case at Messrs Dowdeswell's in 1884, at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1887, and an international exhibition in Munich in 1888.

A London newspaper queried a detail: ' "Little Shop – Grey note" offers a puzzle in the foreground. Is the white object a cat, a hen in the first pride of maternity, or a newspaper blown by the winds?' ¹⁵

The identity of the picture exhibited in Munich in 1888 is corroborated by a list of works for exhibition in Munich. ¹⁶ 'Note grise - Coin de rue - Cornwall' was listed as '43 x 35' (centimetres) framed, giving an approximate size of 21.5 x 12.5 cm unframed. This is similar to the sizes given for Grey and Silver: Mist - Life Boat y287 ('43 x 34'), White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe y325 ('44 x 35') and Grey and Brown: The Sad Sea Shore y330 ('44 x 35'), which were also in the Munich exhibition.

By the terms of Miss Birnie Philip's gift, the painting cannot now be lent to another venue.

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. 265), plate 179, as 'A Grey Note: Village Street'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Probably 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 41) as 'Little Shop; grey note'.
• Probably Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 167) as 'Note grise: La petite Boutique'.
• III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Königlicher Glaspalast, Munich, 1888 (cat. no. 64) as 'Eine graue Stimmung: Strassen-Ecke'.
• Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 8) as 'A Grey Note; Village Street'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Mr Whistler's Exhibition', The Daily News, London, 21 May 1884, p. 7.

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, p. 193 (cat. no. 225).
• Robins, Anna Gruetzner, A Fragile Modernism. Whistler and his Impressionist Followers, London and New Haven, 2007, pp. 23-24, repr. p. 24.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908, p. 171 (cat. no. 157).

Books, General

• Cross, Tom, The Shining Sand. Artists and St Ives 1880-1930, Westcountry Books, Lutterworth Press, 1994, p. 89.
• Davies, Peter, The St Ives Years. Essays on the growth of the artistic phenomenon, Wimborne, 1984, p. 7, repr. fig. 2.
• Gilbert, Henry C., Roy Ray, and Colin Orchard, Art about St Ives, St Ives, 1987.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• James McNeill Whistler, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, 1936 (cat. no. 12).
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, p. 92, repr. p. 59 (not exhibited).

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• The Hunterian website at http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/41156.
• Art UK website at https://www.artuk.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 336, 346a).

Other

• None.