The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Sea and Sand was probably painted and exhibited in 1884. ¹

The Sea and Sand, Freer Gallery of Art

It is dated from the technique and signature. It was probably painted at St Ives, Cornwall between January and March 1884.

Images

Subject

Titles

Possible titles have been suggested:

• Possibly 'Sea and Storm; grey and green' or 'Sands; blue note' (1884, Dowdeswell). ²
• 'The Sea and Sand' (1980, YMSM). ³

Since Whistler's original title is not known for certain, 'The Sea and Sand' is the preferred title.

Description

The Sea and Sand, Freer Gallery of Art

A beach scene in horizontal format. A few figures, including small children, stand in the lower right foreground, and several further away, looking across the broad beach to a stormy sea with waves breaking on the shore, under a lowering grey sky.

Site

This was painted in St Ives, Cornwall, in south-west England, between January and March 1884. Anna Greutzner Robins suggests that it is a distant view of a small section of Porthmeor Beach, and that Whistler must have viewed it through a telescope with a camera obscura from the only available viewpoint, the gasworks. ⁴ She adds that it appears to have been painted from the top down, which might confirm that he was viewing an inverted image of the scene. This is an intriguing possibility, although there is no actual record of Whistler using such an ocular aid. Furthermore, given the extreme simplicity of the view, it is not possible to be completely sure which beach is represented, and what was the viewpoint.

Technique

Technique

The Sea and Sand, Freer Gallery of Art

The waves are long, luminous ribbons of thin white paint, painted with confident sweeps of the brush from left to right across the panel. They contrast with the angular black shapes of the figures, and Whistler's neat butterfly signature in the foreground. In the distance the horizon is blurred, smoothly transitioning into the sky.

Anna Gruetzner Robins describes it as an innovative work, a modernist painting in miniature:

'It is divided into three horizontal bands of colour that cling like a translucent skin to the dark blue ground. A sliver of grey breaks into lines of white dragged across this sombre blueness and a liquid greenish-brown brushed on with broad horizontal strokes covers the remaining two thirds of the panel. … The cryptic silhouettes of five assorted children at the bottom edge of the panel and the more diminutive group towards the top of the brown band provide legibility without the illusion of pictorial depth.' ⁵

Conservation History

The paint at the left and right edges has been abraded, possibly by the frame. The painting was cleaned and surfaced in 1922, cleaned and varnished in 1937, resurfaced in 1938, and cleaned and surfaced in 1951, according to Freer Gallery conservation files.

Frame

The Sea and Sand, Freer Gallery of Art

Dowdeswell frame, probably made for Whistler's one-man exhibition in 1884. ⁶

History

Provenance

• 1885: bought from Messrs Dowdeswell by Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934);
• 1902: bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

It was exhibited in Whistler's one-man show 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 6 or 45) and bought by H. S. Theobald in the following year. ⁷ He was almost certainly the collector described by Whistler as having bought several paintings after the exhibition, as he wrote to Walter Dowdeswell (1858-1929):

'I must know the whereabouts of every one of my little pictures -

You promised that you would give me the address of each one by referring to the catalogues -

Then again, you must arrange with the man who bought the lot that remained over after the exhibition of the "Flesh color & grey", to let his collection go with me to America.' ⁸

In June 1902, Whistler sent C. L. Freer a telegram ('Theobald paintings at Marchants') informing him that the paintings owned by Theobald were apparently for sale by William Marchant & Co. ⁹ As a result, it was bought by Freer in August 1902, for $750.

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 6) as 'Sea and Storm: Grey and Green' or (cat. no. 45) as 'Sands; blue note'.

The identity of the paintings exhibited at Dowdeswell's under these titles is uncertain: see Sea and Storm: Grey and Green y283.

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. 288), plate 191, as 'The Sea and Sand'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Probably 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 6) as 'Sea and Storm; grey and green' or (cat. no. 45) as 'Sands; blue note'.
• Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 82) as ‘The Sea and Sand'.
• The Inaugural Loan Collection of Paintings, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Buffalo, 1905 (cat. no. 168).

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Glazer, Lee, Emily Jacobsen, Blyth McCarthy, and Katherine Roeder, Whistler in Watercolor. Lovely Little Games, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2019, p. 54, detail repr. p. 55.
• Holden, Donald, Whistler Landscapes and Seascapes, New York, 1969, repr. pl.29.
• Robins, Anna Gruetzner, A Fragile Modernism. Whistler and his Impressionist Followers, London and New Haven, 2007, pp. 8-10, 13, 17, 36, repr. pp. 8 and 10.

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. 59.
• Helmreich, Anne, Nature's Truth: Photography, Painting, and Science in Victorian Britain, University Park, PA, 2016, p. 113, fig. 33.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 141, 294, pl. 45.
• 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. 16 (02.151).

EXHIBITION:

• The Inaugural Loan Collection of Paintings, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Buffalo, 1905 (cat. no. 168).
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, p. 91, repr. p. 31.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1902.151a-b.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 418).

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.