The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Cliffs and Breakers dates from between January and March 1884.

Cliffs and Breakers, The Hunterian

It was painted during a three-month visit by Whistler to Cornwall, in south-west England, with his pupils Mortimer Luddington Menpes (1860-1938) and Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942).

Images

Subject

Titles

Whistler's own title is not known for certain. Various titles are given below:

• Possibly 'The Green Headland' (1884, Dowdeswell). ¹
• 'Falaise et ecueils' (1961, Centre culturel américain, Paris). ²
• 'Klippe und Brecher mit offenem Meer' (1969, Nationalgalerie, Berlin). ³
• 'Open Sea with Cliffs and Breakers' (1970, Nottingham University). ⁴
• 'Cliffs and Breakers' (1980, YMSM). ⁵

Not being sure of the original title, 'Cliffs and Breakers' is the generally accepted title.

Description

Cliffs and Breakers, The Hunterian

A seascape in horizontal format. The sky is pale grey-blue, and there are two small sailing boats on the horizon, above centre. The calm sea, blue at the horizon, fades to silvery grey near the beach, and merges into the ochre beach curving round towards the headland at left. The small headland is dark brown. Bright white waves break on the headland at left.

Site

Almost certainly the view is near the fishing port of St Ives, Cornwall, in the south west of England. Whistler's view is not sufficiently specific to be able to identify it exactly.

Menpes wrote of Whistler during this trip:

'The boats, the sea, the fishermen all fascinated him. He rose at cock crow, and seemed to be always full of the most untiring energy. By the time the first glimpse of dawn had shown itself in the sky he would be up and dressed and pacing very impatiently along the corridor.' ⁶

W.R. Sickert, Clodgy Point, The Hunterian

Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) painted a similar view, showing the beach beneath the headland, Clodgy Point. ⁷ The firm of Francis Frith published several photographs of Clodgy Point, showing a similar view to Sickert's, as well as views of the numerous headlands along the coast. ⁸ Other artists who exhibited paintings of Clodgy Point included a St Ives resident, Percy B. Northcote (born in Devon in 1858), who exhibited at Dowdeswell's in 1890, and Edmund Fisher at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1904. ⁹

Technique

Composition

Cliffs and Breakers, The Hunterian

W.R. Sickert, Clodgy Point, The Hunterian

It was compared by Dennis Farr with one of the few paintings by Walter Sickert to have survived from the time he was with Whistler at St Ives - Clodgy Point. It shows close similarities of colour and technique to Whistler's painting. ¹⁰

Technique

It was painted on a single section of timber, edged with a narrow band of bevelled, mitred beading. The ground appears to be a dark grey paint, on top of the original priming.

The paint layer was, according to a conservator, 'deliberately thinned and abraded by the artist.' ¹¹ The horizontal panel is rather dark, with a matt silver sky and ochre coloured beach, a sombre green headland, and the well-worked sea lightened by a wrinkled ribbon of white surf, painted with a very small brush. Many of the brushstrokes sweep right across the panel from left to right, the colours blending smooth, silky, harmony in the shallows and on the beach itself.

Conservation History

The painting was treated by Harry Woolford in about 1980, possibly touching up an area at upper left. The condition of the panel was checked by Claire Meredith in 2001, and found to be 'stable and generally sound', with rather thick and slightly discoloured varnish. ¹²

Frame

Dowdeswell frame, made for exhibition in 1884; 36.4 x 44.9 x 2.5 cm. ¹³

History

Provenance

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

Exhibitions

• 1884: Possibly 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 37) as 'The Green Headland'.

Cliffs and Breakers could possibly have been the oil exhibited by Messrs Dowdeswell in 1884 (cat. no. 37) as 'The Green Headland'. ¹⁴ However, there is really very little headland showing in Cliffs and Breakers, so The Green Headland y279 has been catalogued separately.

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. 278), plate 188, as 'Cliffs and Breakers'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Possibly 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 37) as 'The Green Headland'.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Taylor, Hilary, James McNeill Whistler, London, 1978, pp. 156-57, pl. 108.

Books, General

• Cross, Tom, Painting the Warmth of the Sun, Penzance and Guildford, 1984, p. 17, pl. 11.
• Cross, Tom, The Shining Sands. Artists in Newlyn and St. Ives 1880-1930, Westcountry Books and the Lutterworth Press, 1994, p. 89.
• Davies, Peter, The St Ives Years, Essays on the growth of an artistic phenomenon, Wimborne, 1984, p. 7.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Prélude à Whistler, Centre culturel américain, Paris, 1961 (cat. no. 8) as 'Falaise et ecueils'.
• Spencer, Robin, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1969 (cat. no. 39) as 'Klippe und Brecher mit offenem Meer'.
• Pickvance, Ronald, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903): An Exhibition of Works from the University of Glasgow Collection, Nottingham University Art Gallery, Nottingham, 1970 (cat. no. 7) as 'Open Sea with Cliffs and Breakers', repr. fig. 61, painting by Sickert repr. fig. 62.
• Young, A. McLaren, Glasgow University's Pictures, Colnaghi, London, 1973 (cat. no. 87).
• Sutton, Denys, and Martin Hopkinson, ホイスラー展. Whistler Exhibition in Japan, Tokyo, 1987 (cat. no. 16).
• Taylor, Hilary, British Impressionism, Nottingham Castle Museum, 1989 (cat. no. 2), pp. 36, 42, 63.
• Baron, Wendy, Andrew Dempsey et al., James McNeill Whistler, Walter Richard Sickert, 'Fundación 'La Caixa', Madrid, and Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao, 1998.
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, pp. 29, 91, repr. p. 29 (not in exhibition).
• Ayako Ono, ホイッスラー展. James McNeill Whistler Retrospective, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyōto, 2014, and Yokohama Museum of Art, 2014–2015 (cat. no. 82).

Journals 1906-Present

• Farr, Dennis, 'Recent Museum Acquisitions, University of Glasgow Art Collections', The Burlington Magazine, vol. 112, January 1970, pp. 48, 50-51, at pp. 48, 50, Sickert painting repr. fig. 62.

Websites

• The Hunterian website at http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/41297.
• Art UK website at www.art.co.uk.

Unpublished

• None.

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.