The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Grey and Green: A River dates from between 1884 and 1886. ¹

Grey and Green: A River, Colby College Museum of Art

It is dated from the technique and butterfly signature.

Images

Subject

Titles

Several variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'Gray and Green: a River' (1914, Knoedler). ²
• 'Grey and Green: A River' (1980, YMSM). ³
• 'View of the Harbor at Dordrecht: Grey and Green' (2015, Colby College Museum of Art). ⁴

Although the scene may be Dordrecht, the earliest title, 'Grey and Green: A River' is preferred.

Description

Grey and Green: A River, Colby College Museum of Art

A view across a wide river, in horizontal format. Several small sailing boats and barges are out in mid-stream. On the far bank there are trees. The water is greenish grey and the sky grey.

Site

This may have been painted near Dordrecht, where Whistler painted a number of pictures, both in oil and watercolour (see Note en gris: Dordrecht y293 and Bleu et argent: Dordrecht y294), and etchings such as Barges, Dordrecht [262].

Technique

Technique

Grey and Green: A River, Colby College Museum of Art

The colours are predominately shades of grey on a grey prepared panel. The panel may have been held in a frame or paint-box to be painted, for there is an narrow unpainted margin at left and right.

The brush strokes zig-zag softly across the sky, and are painted irregularly from one side of the panel to the other to convey the pale waves reflecting the sky. The warm purplish greys and greens of the distant banks, with red roofed buildings, and the moored boats (some half painted out on the right) are brushed in with nervous precision with the point of the brush.

It was probably done in one session for the details appear to have been worked in while the background was still wet.

Betsy G. Fryberger commented:

'This oil clearly shows Whistler's method of laying down three horizontal zones of colour, progressively from the warm yellow-brown of the sand to the pale yellow-green of the ocean to the cool greys, touched with blue and white, of the sky. Against this division he then painted, in black and brown, with small animated strokes, the figures and boats at anchor.' ⁵

Conservation History

Grey and Green: A River, photograph, 1980

Grey and Green: A River, Colby College Museum of Art

Unknown. It is slightly abraded at the edges, probably from the frame. It is in good condition.

Frame

Not original: a Whistler-style frame with reverse profile. ⁶

History

Provenance

• 1885/1891: sold by the artist to Otto Goldschmidt (1829-1907);
• 1907: passed to his estate, possibly a member of the Goldschmidt family;
• 1913: sold by Mrs B. M. Goldschmidt (fl. 1913), to Knoedler, New York dealers, 9 November 1913;
• 1926: sold by Knoedler's to Miss H. E. Gwell (dates unknown), San Francisco, 29 October 1926.
• 1972: bought from Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco, by Ira Spanierman (n/a), New York art dealer, March 1972;
• 1974: sold at auction, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, 23 May 1974 (lot 41A), bought in;
• 1978: sold to Davis & Long, New York dealers, December 1978;
• 1979: sold in June to Dr John Larkin (n/a), White Bear Lake, Minnesota;
• 1984: bought by the Hon. Ronald Steven Lauder (b. 1944) and Mrs Lauder, née Jo Carole Knopf'.
• 1994: Private Collection.
• 1997: The Fine Art Society, London.
• Date unknown: with David Findlay Jr Inc. New York.
• 2008: Peter H. Lunder (b. 1933) and Paula Crane Lunder (b. 1935);
• 2013: The Lunder Collection was given to Colby College Museum of Art.

It was probably one of two 'Marines' (with Grey and Silver: Mist - Life Boat y287) sold by Whistler to Otto Goldschmidt for £200, between about 1885 and 1891. ⁷ It was seen by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) in Goldschmidt's house in Paris in 1904 or 1905. ⁸

The identity of Mrs Goldschmidt is not clear (see Nocturne y153. After the painting was sold by Mme B. M. Goldschmidt to Knoedler's it was immediately submitted to Freer, in December 1913, but returned by him to New York. ⁹ Knoedler's exhibited it in 1914 (cat. no. 6) with a price of $4000. ¹⁰ It is not certain if it then remained with Knoedler's in New York until 1926, when it was sold by Knoedler's to Miss H. E. Gwell, San Francisco. At this point there is a big gap in the known provenance, partly because Miss Gwell has not been identified, although it seems the picture remained in San Francisco until it was sold by the Maxwell Galleries to Ira Spanierman in 1972.

Exhibitions

• 1885/1887: Possibly exhibited in The sixty-second Annual Exhibition, Society of British Artists, London, 1885 or 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 or Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887.

It is not known when or if this painting was exhibited, though it seems extremely likely that it was. Linda Merrill suggests that it would have been seen in 1885 by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), who, on his return, painted similar scenes near New York, such as Seascape (1888, private collection). ¹¹

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. 295), plate 214, as 'Grey and Green: A River'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Heijbroek, J. F., 'Holland van het water: de bezoeken van James Abbott McNeill Whistler aan Nederland', Bulletin Rijksmuseum, 1988, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 225-56.
• Heijbroek, J. F., and Margaret F. MacDonald, Whistler and Holland, Zwolle and Amsterdam, 1997, pp. 48, 56, fig. XIII.

Books, General

• McCann, Justin (ed.), Whistler and the World: The Lunder Collection of James McNeill Whistler at the Colby College of Art, New York, 2015.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., 'Collecting Whistler', in Paula Lunder et al., The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College, Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, ME, 2013, pp. 109-143, at pp. 111, 118, repr.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Oils, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings by J. McN. Whistler, Knoedler & Co., New York, 1914 (cat. no. 6) as 'Gray and Green: a River'.
• Eitner, Lorenz (intro.) and Betsy G. Fryberger, Whistler: Themes and Variations, Stanford University Museum of Art, Stanford, 1978 (cat. no. 58) as 'Green and Grey'.
• Spink, Nesta, Whistler: The Later Years, University of Michigan Art Gallery, Ann Arbor, 1978 (cat. no. 52).
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Notes, Harmonies, and Nocturnes: Small Works by James McNeill Whistler, M. Knoedler and Co., New York, 1984 (cat. no. 114).
• 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 (cat. no. 142) as 'Grey and Green: A River'.
• Spring '97, The Fine Art Society, London, 1997, p. 31, Grey and Green: A River'.
• Merrill, Linda, et al., After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2003, pp. 126-27 (cat. no. 11), repr. p. 127, and painting by Chase, pp. 158-59 (cat. no. 25), repr. p. 159.

SALE:

• Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 23 May 1974 (lot 41A) repr.

Journals 1906-Present

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

Websites

• Colby College Museum of Art Website at http://www.colby.edu/museum/collection/the-lunder-collection-of-james-mcneill-whistler.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 443).

Other

• None.