The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe, framed

White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe dates from Whistler's sojourn in Dieppe in the autumn of 1885. ¹

It is not entirely clear how long Whistler was in Dieppe in 1885 nor how many pictures he painted there (examples include White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe y325, Coast Scene: Bathers y326, Harmony in Blue and Pearl: The Sands, Dieppe y327, and Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe y328).

Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) was married on 10 June 1885 and after a honeymoon on the continent took the Maison Goude at 21 rue de Sygogne, Dieppe. Whistler joined them there in the summer, probably after a trip to Holland in August. A reference in the diary of George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909) shows that Whistler was certainly in Dieppe in the middle of September, visited Lucas for one day on 16 September, and was back in Dieppe by 18 September.

The painting was first exhibited at 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 (cat. no. 46).

Théodore Duret (1838-1927) told Knoedler's that he thought this was painted in Brittany in 1893, but this was incorrect. ²

Images

Subject

Titles

Various possible titles have been suggested:

• 'White and grey – La cour de l'Hotel, Dieppe' (1886, Dowdeswell). ³
• 'Gris & argent, Hotel Dieppe' (1887, Whistler). ⁴
• 'Gris et argent – Dieppe (Hotel)' (1888, Whistler). ⁵
• 'Grau und Silber: Hotel Dieppe' (1888, III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Munich). ⁶
• 'Grey and Silver – Hotel Yard – Dieppe' (1889, Wunderlich). ⁷
• 'The Laundry' (1900, A. J. McN. Reid). ⁸
• 'Courtyard House in Dieppe' (1902, Whistler). ⁹
• 'Trouville – Blue and Silver' [sic] (1903, Way & Dennis). ¹⁰
• 'Trouville: Blue and Silver' (1904, Menpes). ¹¹
• 'White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe' (1980, YMSM). ¹²
• 'White and Grey: Courtyard, House in Dieppe' (2015, Fogg) ¹³

The original title is more appropriate than the 'Trouville - Blue and Silver' initiated by Way & Dennis, for the only blue in the picture is the dress of one woman and the picture was certainly not painted at Trouville. 'White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe' is the preferred title.

Description

White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe, Fogg Art Museum

J. J. Cowan described it to Whistler as 'House front ... quiet greys & greens - woman apparently washing clothes to left outside', and Whistler identified it as 'Courtyard House in Dieppe.' ¹⁴

It shows a house front in vertical format, painted parallel to the frame. In the foreground at left are women in white aprons sorting or washing clothes. The ground floor and part of the first floor windows (which have railings) are shown, the one on the left cut off by the edge of the panel. The ground floor has broad arched windows with small panes, the one at right with a central door opening into a dark narrow passage. Some foliage is climbing up the wall between these two windows.

Site

The town of Dieppe, a port and tourist destination on the French coast. Whistler identified the painting as 'Courtyard House in Dieppe' ¹⁵ The site was recorded as Trouville for some years from 1903 but this was incorrect.

Technique

Technique

White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe, Fogg Art Museum

Paint was applied thinly on a dark grey primed panel. The dark tonality of the colours is barely lightened by a little scattered foliage and the pastel shades of the figures, which are painted with distinctly separate strokes of a rounded brush, in paint of a thick creamy-consistency, each stroke being pressed down, squeezing the paint out, and leaving a slight ridge of paint along the edge of each stroke. The brushwork around the door appears rather uncertain.

Conservation History

White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe, photograph, 1980

The paint has darkened so that the painting now appears predominantly dark grey.

Frame

White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe, framed

Grau-style, made in America by M. Grieve, 1930/1940s [8.3 cm]. ¹⁶

White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe, framed

37.8 x 28.6 x 4.5 cm (14 7/8 x 11 1/4 x 1 ¾").

There are inscriptions on the back of the panel (not the frame): 'Whistler.', 'No. 10' crossed out in pencil, 'No. 30 Y', upside down: 'HR/2767'. The form of the inscription 'No. 30 Y' confirms the identification of the painting as having been exhibited at Wunderlich's in 1889 (cat. no. 30).

History

Provenance

• 1900: sold by Alexander Reid (1854-1928), Glasgow art dealer, to John James Cowan (1846-1936), Edinburgh, in November 1900.
• By 1914: Knoedler & Co., New York art dealers.
• By 1928: sold by the Macbeth Galleries, New York, to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943);
• 1943: bequeathed by G. L. Winthrop to the Fogg Art Museum.

In 1886 the price was estimated by Messrs Dowdeswell at £30.0.0 but it was finally priced at £35.0.0 by Whistler. ¹⁷ For Munich in 1888 the value was given as £40, and by 1889, in New York, 50 guineas, at which price it did not sell. ¹⁸ It may be the 'Hotel Diepe' (sic) priced by Whistler at 120 guineas, in 1891, although this seems rather a steep rise in price. ¹⁹ And it is also possible that it is the 'Hotel Garden Dieppe' sent by Whistler to Arthur Melville (1855-1905), priced at 100gns, possibly for an exhibition that has not so far been identified. ²⁰

According to Reid's son, Alexander James McNeill Reid (1893-1972), his father sold this painting, which he described as 'The Laundry', to Cowan for £90.0.0 in November 1900. ²¹ In the following year, Cowan described it to Whistler as 'House front ... woman apparently washing clothes to left outside', and sent a photograph, which Whistler identified as 'Courtyard House in Dieppe'. ²² According to Mortimer Luddington Menpes (1860-1938), who called it mistakenly 'Trouville: Blue and Silver', this was still in Cowan's collection in 1904. ²³ It is not known when he sold it, but 10 years later it was exhibited by Knoedler's, New York (cat. no. 9) again as 'Trouville: Blue and Silver' and priced at $4000. ²⁴ G. L. Winthrop bought it, under the same title, 'Trouville: Blue and Silver', through the Macbeth Galleries, at some date, probably before 1928.

Exhibitions

• 1886: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 (cat. no. 46) as 'White and grey – La cour de l'Hotel, Dieppe'.
• 1888: III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Königlicher Glaspalast, Munich, 1888 (cat. no. 61) as 'Grau und Silber: Hotel Dieppe'.
• 1889: “Notes” – “Harmonies” – “Nocturnes”, H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, 1889 (cat. no. 30) as 'Grey and Silver – Hotel Yard – Dieppe'.

Although this exhibition and this particular work were rarely mentioned in the press, they received a welcome review in the Globe on 14 May 1886:

'Mr. Whistler has tastefully redecorated Messrs. Dowdeswells' little gallery in New Bond-street in what he calls "an Arrangement in Brown and Gold,” and furnished it with a series of 70 "Notes, Harmonies, and Nocturnes," in oil, water-colour, and pastel. Like those that he exhibited here on a former occasion, they are all very small and very slight. Many of them are mere memoranda of beautiful combinations of colour, with little or no definition of form, but they nearly all show true artistic instinct and rare mastery of tone. In some cases Mr. Whistler has succeeded, with very little apparent labour, in giving a vivid impression of natural effect ... His skill in rapidly recording the aspect of a scene, and his fine sense of colour, are still better shown in the small oil studies, “La Cour de l'Hôtel, Dieppe,” and “Blue and Orange—Sweet Shop," with many slightly indicated figures.'

Similarly, the Illustrated London News on 15 May commented:

'At Messrs. Dowdeswell’s Gallery (133, New Bond-street) there is a somewhat remarkable exhibition of Notes—Harmonies and Nocturnes,” by Mr. J. McN. Whistler, which display all that versatile artist’s merits and faults. The difficulty in estimating such works is to know for certain when Mr. Whistler is in earnest, and when he is simply imposing on the public. For instance, there are here at least half score of works which belong to the former category; among such are the "Sands at Dieppe" (1)," ... "Dieppe" (28), "The Sad Seashore" (43), "La Cour de L'Hôtel" (46), "The Sweet-Shop" (49) ... For such as these we can only express an unfeigned admiration.'

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. 325), plate 207, as 'White and Grey: La Cour de l'hôtel, Dieppe'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 (cat. no. 46) as 'White and grey – La cour de l'Hôtel, Dieppe'.
• III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Königlicher Glaspalast, Munich, 1888 (cat. no. 61) as 'Grau und Silber: Hotel Dieppe'.
• “Notes” – “Harmonies” – “Nocturnes”, H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, 1889 (cat. no. 30) as 'Grey and Silver – Hotel Yard – Dieppe'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Mr. Whistler's Sketches', Globe, London, 14 May 1886, p. 6.
• Anon., 'The Whistler Exhibition', Illustrated London News, London, 15 May 1886, p. 14.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Enaud-Lechien, Isabelle, 'Whistler et la France', Le musée miniature, Paris, 1995, p. 44-45, repr.
• Enaud-Lechien, Isabelle, James Whistler, le peintre et le polémiste (1834-1903), Courbevoie, 1995, p. 138-39, repr.
• Menpes, Mortimer, Whistler as I Knew Him, London, 1904, repr. f.p. 94.
• Spencer, Robin, Whistler, New York, 1990, pp. 116-17.
• Way, Thomas Robert, and G. R. Dennis, The Art of James McNeill Whistler: An Appreciation, 1st edition, London, 1903, repr. f.p. 64 as 'Trouville – Blue and Silver'.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr., Virginia Anderson, and Kimberly Orcutt, ed., American Paintings at Harvard, Volume Two, Paintings, Drawings, Pastels and Stained Glass by Artists Born 1826-1856, Harvard University Art Museums/Yale University Press, Cambridge, MA and New Haven, CT, 2008, p. 425 (cat. no. 451), repr.

EXHIBITION:

• Pastels, Etchings and Lithographs by Whistler, Kennedy & Co., New York, 1914 (cat. no. 9).
• Wolohojian, Stephan, Ingres, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Renoir... La Collection Grenville L. Winthrop, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 2003, p. 489, fig. 1.
• For Students of Art and Lovers of Beauty: Highlights from the Collection of Grenville L. Winthrop, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 2004.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Harvard Art Museums website at http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/230330.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 358/9).

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.