The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church probably dates from 1884. ¹

Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church, Freer Gallery of Art

It was first exhibited in 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 44).

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

Only one title has been suggested:

• 'Harmony in brown and gold – Old Chelsea Church'. ²
• 'Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church' (1980, YMSM). ³

Description

Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church. Freer Gallery of Art

A river scene, painted in horizontal format. A row of houses is seen on the far shore, with a church tower to right of centre.

Site

It shows the Chelsea bank of the river Thames in London, with old Chelsea church and Lindsey Row, viewed from the Battersea shore. Whistler's etching Little Chelsea (Memorial) [315], dating from 1887, shows a view very like the oil.

Technique

Technique

Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church. Freer Gallery of Art

It was painted extremely thinly on a thinly primed panel (the wood glows through the subtle greens and browns and the grey/blue sky, and the wavy grain creates a mysterious misty element to the scene). It was painted with smooth washes and the details are conveyed with liquid spots of paint, applied with a small brush, and have the luminous quality of Vermeer's paintings.

The Freer Gallery of Art website comments:

'Unlike any of the other works in this exhibition, this was painted on an unprepared panel, so it more clearly reveals the thinness of Whistler's oil washes. The long vees of the wood grain meet in the middle ground, uniting river and sky, and adding a purely decorative, non-representational, element to Whistler's wonderful arrangement.' ⁴

Conservation History

According to Freer Gallery files, it was cleaned and varnished in 1937, and resurfaced both in 1938 and 1952-53.

Frame

Small Dowdeswell, frame, made for Whistler's exhibition in 1884 [11.1 cm]. ⁵

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. 44). After the show, Wickham Flower (1835-1904), London, offered £160 for An Orange Note: Sweet Shop y264, Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud y271 and this painting, which alone was priced 80 guineas in the Dowdeswell catalogue. Whistler therefore suggested £160 for Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud y271 and An Orange Note: Sweet Shop y264 alone. ⁶

Sketch of 'Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church', Library of Congress

Whistler told Walter Dowdeswell (1858-1929) that Wickham Flower was thinking of buying it and enclosed a pen drawing because he could not remember the title! ⁷

In fact Flower did not take it, and it was acquired by H. S. Theobald, who was almost certainly the collector described by Whistler as having bought a number of paintings after the exhibition. He wrote to Walter Dowdeswell, '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 However, it did not go to America until it was bought by C. L. Freer in August 1902, for $750.

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 44) as 'Harmony in brown and gold – Old Chelsea Church'.
• 1884: Annual Exhibition of Sketches, Pictures & Photography: A Loan Collection of Pictures by Mr Whistler ..., Dublin Sketching Club, Dublin, 1884 (cat. no. 247).

The Graphic on 24 May 1884 praised, among other works, Whistler's 'views of "Old Chelsea Church" … Painted with obvious ease and little labour, they leave no sense of incompleteness, and they are remarkable besides for their perfect harmony of low-toned colour.' Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) commended it among works distinguished by their 'Beauty of handling and high finish.' ⁹

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. 305), plate 217, as 'Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 44) as 'Harmony in brown and gold – Old Chelsea Church';
• Annual Exhibition of Sketches, Pictures & Photography: A Loan Collection of Pictures by Mr Whistler ..., Dublin Sketching Club, Dublin, 1884 (cat. no. 247).

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Mr Whistler's Exhibition', Globe, London, 20 May 1884, p. 6.
• Anon., 'Mr Whistler's Exhibition', Graphic, London, 24 May 1884, p. 3.
• Anon., 'Art Notes', Liverpool Mercury, Liverpool, 3 July 1884, p. 6.

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

• Merrill, Linda, With Kindest Regards. The Correspondence of Charles Lang Freer and James McNeill Whistler, 1890-1903, Washington, DC, and London, 1995, p. 31, fig. 11.

Books, General

• Robins, Anna Gruetzner (ed.), Walter Sickert: the Complete Writings on Art, Oxford, 2000, p. 5.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 130, 194, pl. 34.
• 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 (02.152).

EXHIBITION:

• Selection of Art Objects from The Freer Collection, National Museum, Washington, DC, 1912 (cat. no. 2).
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, pp. 14, 19, 40, 89, 92.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1902.152a-b.
• Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2012, website at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 373).

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.