The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Grey and Silver: Mist – Life Boat was probably painted at St Ives, where Whistler worked between January and March 1884. ¹

Grey and Silver: Mist – Life Boat, Freer Gallery of Art

It was first exhibited shortly on Whistler's return, in his one-man show of 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 54).

Images

Subject

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Grey and silver Mist – Life Boat' (1884, Dowdeswell). ²
• 'Gris et Argent – Le Bateau de Sauvetage' (1887/1890, Whistler). ³
• 'Gris et argent: Mer et Pluie. Bateau de sauvetage' (1887, Petit). ⁴
• 'Gris et argent – Le bateau de sauvetage' (1888, Whistler). ⁵
• Probably 'Grau und Silber' (1888, III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Munich). ⁶
• 'A Grey Note – The Life Boat' (1889, Wunderlich). ⁷
• 'Le Bateau de sauvetage' (1890, Exposition Générale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels). ⁸
• 'Grey and Silver: Mist – Life Boat' (1980, YMSM). ⁹

The title 'Grey and Silver: Mist – Life Boat' is based on the original 1884 title, with punctuation added to conform with other titles.

Description

Grey and Silver: Mist - Life Boat, Freer Gallery of Art

A seascape in horizontal format. In the foreground, at left, two shawled women with white aprons over their skirts stand talking on the beach, while out at sea, to left of centre, a small life boat is being rowed out into a calm sea. At far left is the end of a pier, with a small sailing boat (probably a fishing boat) beside it.

Site

This was painted at St Ives, Cornwall, between January and March 1884, and probably, given the weather, towards the end of this period. The same view is seen in The Pier: A Grey Note y286: both were painted by the harbour. ¹⁰

The lifeboat station was based in Fore Street (it was used until 1911). A local guide states: 'On the shore, near the church, is the boat house of the St. Ives lifeboat, which goes to sea for practice once a month. Its exercise is well worth seeing.' ¹¹ So Whistler's painting probably represents the practice rather than a rescue mission.

Technique

Technique

Grey and Silver: Mist - Life Boat, Freer Gallery of Art

One of the most elegant and painterly of Whistler's panels, painted in a subtle and restricted range of grey greens. The silvery white at the prow of the life boat is echoed at the water's edge, and in the women's aprons. The touch of rust-red on the life boat is picked up in one woman's shawl and in the butterfly ̶ an example of Whistler's use of his signature to co-ordinate the colour scheme. ¹²

Anna Greutzner Robins suggests that Whistler was frustrated by the subject 'where the descriptive elements and the painted effect fight for attention':

'Washes of liquid grey applied in flowing horizontal strokes across the wooden panel establish the sky, harbour and the curving form of the front. A low horizontal wedge of a fishing [sic] boat floats across the surface and two women anchor the shoreline. The horizontal strokes of grey mark out the sky, sea and shore but the physical tangibility of the brushwork overrides any other function. A boat returns in the mist from the sea, the two women stand with their backs to the sea, unable to participate in a narrative moment that the Newlyn painters exploited a few years later.' ¹³

Conservation History

Freer Gallery conservation files record that the varnish was removed in 1921 and it was cleaned and resurfaced in the following year; it was cleaned and varnished again in 1937 and resurfaced in 1938, and again cleaned and surfaced in 1951.

Frame

Grey and Silver: Mist - Life Boat, Freer Gallery of Art

It is in a replica Dowdeswell frame made by W. Lewin, America, 2004. ¹⁴

History

Provenance

• 1890/1892: bought from Whistler by Otto Goldschmidt (1829-1907);
• 1907: passed to his estate;
• 1913: recorded as sold by 'Mrs Goldschmidt' – possibly Mrs B. M. Goldschmidt (fl. 1913) – to Knoedler, New York art dealers, November 1913 (a/c # 13360);
• 1914: bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

It was probably one of' two 'Marines' (see also Grey and Green: A River y295) bought from Whistler by the pianist and impresario Otto Goldschmidt for £200. ¹⁵ 'The Life boat' was listed by Beatrice Philip (Mrs E. W. Godwin, Mrs J. McN. Whistler) (1857-1896) as in the collection of Otto Goldschmidt in November 1892. ¹⁶ C. L. Freer saw it in Goldschmidt's house in Paris in 1904/1905. ¹⁷

Grey and Silver: Mist - Life Boat, photograph, 1913

'Mrs Goldschmidt' was not the widow of Otto Goldschmidt: his wife, Jenny Lind, pre-deceased him. Their children were Walter Otto (b. 1853), Jenny Maria Catherine (Mrs Maude, 1857-1935) and Ernst Svend David (1861-1947). Walter Otto Goldschmidt married Mary Julia Daniels in 1884 (divorced in 1893), and Agnes Gilchrist Dunn in 1918; he probably died in 1929. Ernst Svend David Goldschmidt (1861-1947) married Helen Wallace (Mrs E. S. D. Goldschmidt) (ca 1874-1947) in 1911: so she could have been the 'Mrs Goldschmidt' living in 1913.

However, Otto Goldschmidt senior also had a brother Enrique Goldschmidt (fl. 1891) who was working in Berlin in 1891, and occasionally handled Whistler's works for his brother. ¹⁸ There may well have been another Mrs, Madame or Frau Goldschmidt. Several other works by Whistler were sold by Mrs Goldschmidt including Nocturne y153 and Grey and Green: A River y295.

The painting was sold to Knoedler's, New York dealers, in November 1913, and bought from them in the following January by C. L. Freer for $2605 including expenses.

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 54) as 'Grey and silver Mist – Life Boat'.
• 1884: Annual Exhibition of Sketches, Pictures & Photography: A Loan Collection of Pictures by Mr Whistler ..., Dublin Sketching Club, Dublin, 1884 (cat. no. 246) as 'Grey and silver Mist – Life Boat'.
• 1887: Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 199) as 'Gris et argent: Mer et Pluie. Bateau de sauvetage'.
• 1888: Probably III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Königlicher Glaspalast, Munich, 1888 (cat. no. 60) as 'Grau und Silber'.
• 1889: “Notes” – “Harmonies” – “Nocturnes”, H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, 1889 (cat. no. 29) as 'A Grey Note – The Life Boat'.
• 1890: Exposition Générale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1890 (cat. no. 843) as 'Le Bateau de sauvetage'.

It attracted few comments in the press in 1884, but Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) admired its 'Beauty of handling and high finish'. ¹⁹

It was listed by Whistler in 1888 as 'Gris et argent – Le bateau de sauvetage' to be sent first to the exhibition in Munich and then to Wunderlich's in America. ²⁰ It was priced at 60 guineas by Wunderlich's but not sold; it was returned by Wunderlich's on the SS Servia. ²¹ Whistler obviously thought highly of this painting and exhibited it frequently, six times between 1884 and 1890.

By the terms of C. L. Freer's bequest to the Freer Gallery of Art, the painting cannot be lent.

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. 287), plate 164, as 'Grey and Silver: Mist – Life Boat'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 54) as 'Grey and silver Mist – Life Boat'.
• Annual Exhibition of Sketches, Pictures & Photography: A Loan Collection of Pictures by Mr Whistler ..., Dublin Sketching Club, Dublin, 1884 (cat. no. 246) as 'Grey and silver Mist – Life Boat'.
• Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 199) as 'Gris et argent: Mer et Pluie. Bateau de sauvetage'.
• Probably III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Königlicher Glaspalast, Munich, 1888 (cat. no. 60) as 'Grau und Silber'.
• “Notes” – “Harmonies” – “Nocturnes”, H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, 1889 (cat. no. 29) as 'A Grey Note – The Life Boat'.
• Exposition Générale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1890 (cat. no. 843) as 'Le Bateau de sauvetage'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon, ['Cigarette'], 'Whistles', The Topical Times, 24 May 1884.

Journals 1855-1905

• ‘An Enthusiast’, [Sickert, W. R.], 'Mr Whistler and His Art', The Artist and Journal of Home Culture, vol. 5, 1 June 1884, pp. 199-201.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Holden, Donald, Whistler Landscapes and Seascapes, New York, 1969, p, 61, repr. pl. 20.
• Spencer, Robin, Whistler, New York, 1990, pp. 114-15.
• Robins, Anna Gruetzner, A Fragile Modernism. Whistler and his Impressionist Followers, London and New Haven, 2007, pp. 13, 14, 182 n.15.

Books, General

• Gilbert, Henry, Roy Ray, and Colin Orchard, All About St. Ives: A Guide to the Town, its Galleries and Art History, [St Ives], 2006, p. 9.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Stubbs, Burns A., Paintings, Pastels, Drawings, Prints and Copper Plates by and attributed to American and European Artists, together with a List of Original Whistleriana in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1948, p 14 (14.1).
• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 139, 294, pl. 43.

EXHIBITION:

• Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915 (cat. no. 257).
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, pp. 93-94, repr. p. 37.
• Tovey, David, St Ives Art pre-1890: The Dawn of the Colony,Tate St Ives, St Ives, 2008, p. 54 (not exhibited).

Journals 1906-Present

• Brumbaugh, Thomas Brendle, 'A Whistler Footnote', The Art Journal, vol. 31, no. 3, Spring 1972, p. 261.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1914.1a-c.

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.