The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Black and Emerald: Coal Mine probably dates from 1884. ¹

Black and Emerald: Coal Mine, Freer Gallery of Art

It is dated by the technique and butterfly signature, and from the date of its first exhibition in 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 54).

Three panels very close in size, Blue and Grey: Unloading y296, Black and Emerald: Coal Mine y302 and Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church y305, probably date from shortly before they were exhibited in Dowdeswell's.

Images

Subject

Titles

Several conflicting titles have been suggested, as follows:

• 'Black and Emerald – Coal Mine' (1884, Dowdeswell). ²
• 'Vert et noir: La Mine abandonnée' (1887, Petit). ³
• 'Blue and Green; The Coal Shaft' (1948, Stubbs). ⁴
• 'Black and Emerald: Coal Mine' (1980, YMSM). ⁵
• 'Blue and Emerald – Coal Mine' (2014, Freer Gallery of Art). ⁶

The title given on the Freer Gallery website in 2014 appears to have been a mistake, because it was called Black and Emerald - Coal Mine in the brief accompanying text.

Our title is based on the first published title, the assumption being that Dowdeswell's titles were provided by Whistler. The punctuation was regularised for the 1980 catalogue, and thus 'Black and Emerald: Coal Mine' is the generally accepted title.

Curry, after commenting on Whistler's take on post-industrial landscape, suggests that the title 'Vert et noir: La Mine abandonnée', given at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1887, 'may also constitute Whistler's comment upon academic tradition, that is "finished" painting as a played-out ideological vein for artists.' ⁷

Description

Black and Emerald: Coal Mine, Freer Gallery of Art

A landscape, in horizontal format, with grass in the foreground, and then rough terrain with grey and black ruined mine buildings on the hill at left, and a few bushes at right, under a blue sky streaked with clouds. A cloud has been painted over a bush on the skyline towards the right. It is signed with a pale grey butterfly at lower left.

Site

The site is unknown, but this could have been painted in Yorkshire. There were many active, abandoned, and recently closed mines in the area around Wortley Hall, Yorkshire, which may have been where this was painted. Another oil painted there, Note in Green: Wortley y303, is similar in technique.

Alternatively, as the Freer Gallery of Art website commented, 'Black and Emerald – Coal Mine was probably painted in St. Ives.' ⁸ And there were indeed old mines in the St Ives area, mostly tin and copper – but they had to import coal to process the metals.

Technique

Technique

Black and Emerald: Coal Mine, Freer Gallery of Art

The paint is thin and the pale grey undercoat is visible, particularly at the bottom of the panel.

This fine, almost miniature, work was painted with fluid strokes of a tiny sable brush. It was probably completed in one session, with the colours painted into each other while still wet – so that some of the struts of the abandoned mine-workings are conveyed by washing away the details behind, rather in the manner of watercolour painting.

Conservation History

Frame

Black and Emerald: Coal Mine, Freer Gallery of Art

Small Dowdeswell frame, made for Whistler's one-man exhibition in 1884 [11.1 cm]. ⁹

History

Provenance

• 1885: bought from Messrs Dowdeswell by Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934);
• 1902: bought from Theobald by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) , August 1902, for $500;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

It was exhibited in Whistler's one-man exhibition 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884, but not sold during the show. Whistler described the purchaser as 'the man who bought the lot that remained over after the exhibition of the "Flesh color & grey". ' ¹⁰ Messrs Dowdeswell's accounts record the purchase of twenty-nine drawings by H. S. Theobald of 3 Westbourne Square, London; Theobald's receipt is dated 1 July 1885. ¹¹

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, and Freer bought this one the following month, August 1902, for $500. ¹²

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 59) as 'Black and Emerald - Coal Mine'.
• 1884: Annual Exhibition of Sketches, Pictures & Photography: A Loan Collection of Pictures by Mr Whistler ..., Dublin Sketching Club, Dublin, 1884 (cat. no. 248).
• 1887: Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 174) as 'Vert et noir: La Mine abandonnée'.

It was exhibited in London by Messrs Dowdeswell in 1884 and in Dublin in the same year.

Whistler wanted to keep track of his works, including those owned by Theobald, 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 -

… you must arrange with the man who bought the lot that remained over after the exhibition ... to let his collection go with me to America.' ¹³

It seems that Whistler planned to visit America about October 1885, intending to reach New York, and hoped to exhibit the works owned by H. S. Theobald in an exhibition at that time, but neither the trip nor the loan were arranged. ¹⁴ Instead, in 1887, Whistler requested loans for an exhibition in Paris:

' I am sending some pictures and drawings of mine to a very swell exhibition in Paris - and I am most anxious to borrow from you some 14 or 15 of the little things of mine you have on the staircase and in your dining room, that I may exhibit them at the same time -' ¹⁵

Theobald was a generous lender and, as 'Vert et noir: La Mine abandonnée', this oil was among works shown at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1887.

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. 302), plate 216, as 'Black and Emerald: Coal Mine'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 59) as 'Black and Emerald – Coal Mine'.
• Annual Exhibition of Sketches, Pictures & Photography: A Loan Collection of Pictures by Mr Whistler ..., Dublin Sketching Club, Dublin, 1884 (cat. no. 248).
• Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 174) as 'Vert et noir: La Mine abandonnée'.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• None.

Books, General

• None.

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. 16 (02.153).
• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 132, 294, pl. 36.

EXHIBITION:

• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, pp. 14, 94, repr. p. 32.

Journals 1906-Present

• Newton, Joy, and Margaret F. MacDonald, 'Whistler: Search for a European Reputation', Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 41, 1978, pp. 148-59, at p. 156, repr. p. 155.
• Fairbrother, Trevor, 'James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art', Archives of American Art Journal, vol. 24, no. 2, 1984, pp. 28-30.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1902.153a-b.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 332).

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.