The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe, has been redated to 1896: it was formerly thought to date from the autumn of 1885. ¹

Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

This dating is based on the technique and butterfly signature, and on Whistler's known trip to Dieppe in that year.

In December 1896 The Academy and Literature described it with several other paintings, including Brown and Gold: The Curé's Little Class y455, as 'charming.' ²

It was probably the painting exhibited with the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts as 'Vert et violet' in 1897, and was certainly published by David Croal Thomson (1855-1930) among 'New Pictures by Mr. Whistler' in the same year. ³

Images

Subject

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe' (1896, The Academy). ⁴
• 'Green and Violet, The Evening Walk, Dieppe' (1897, D. C. Thomson). ⁵
• Probably 'Vert et violet' (1897, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts). ⁶
• 'Dieppe' (1905, ISSPG). ⁷
• 'Dieppe' (1908, Pennell). ⁸
• 'Shore near Dublin' [sic] (1921, Pennell). ⁹
• 'Dieppe Beach' (1934, Christie's). ¹⁰
• 'Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe' (1980, YMSM). ¹¹

The Pennells reproduced it correctly in 1908 as 'Dieppe', but in 1921 called it 'Shore near Dublin' and stated that it was in the Freer Gallery of Art (being mistaken on both counts). ¹²

The preferred title is 'Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe'.

Description

Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

A beach scene in horizontal format. In the middle distance groups of figures are walking on the beach, and along the distant shoreline. A few sailing boats are on the blue sea. The beach is a dull yellow ochre, with patches of grass in the foreground.

Site

Dieppe, a busy port and ferry terminal on the coast of France.

Comments

Crystal Bridges website comments;

'Whistler created numerous small panel paintings, such as this one, using extremely diluted oil paint to create thin, delicate washes of color. He called these works "Notes," and placed them in large gilded frames of his own design to assert their importance despite their diminutive size. At first glance, this scene of people promenading at the fashionable French beach resort of Dieppe resembles work by the Impressionists, who often portrayed the middle class at play. However, Whistler foregrounded "green and violet" in his title for the work, suggesting that the harmonious blending of color was his focus, rather than the narrative component of the evening walk. Green and Violet: The Evening Walk is one of a small number of works resulting from a trip Whistler took to Dieppe in 1896, hoping to recuperate from the depression he experienced following his wife’s death.' ¹³

Technique

Technique

Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

It is painted thinly and fluidly on a grey primed panel. The horizontal wood of the fence has been scraped out with a knife or the end of the brush. The figures are painted with a small brush and thicker, more creamy paint, each stroke being clearly differentiated.

Whistler occasionally used a palette knife for painting (or mixing paint) at this time, as noted in the diary of George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909) on 18 September, after Whistler had spent a day with him: 'At Pottiers and left Whistler palette knife to mail to Dieppe.' ¹⁴

Conservation History

Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe, photograph, ca 1930

An early photograph shows some abrasion along the lower edge, but otherwise the painting was, and is, in good condition.

Frame

Size of painting framed, 10 × 13 3/4 × 1 ½".

History

Provenance

• By 1905: Douglas William Freshfield (1845-1934), London;
• 1934: after his death, sold at auction, Christie's, London, 2 November 1934 (lot 87) 'Dieppe Beach', bought by the art dealer David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), Barbizon House, London;
• 1934/1935: sold by Thomson to Levy Galleries, art dealers, New York;
• 1935: sold by Levy to Leo M. Flesh (1863-1944) of Piqua, Ohio.
• Date unknown: Newhouse Gallery, art dealers, New York.
• Date unknown: Adele Lewisohn (Mrs Arthur Lehman) (1882-1965), New York;
• 1865?: passed to her daughter Dorothy Lehman (Mrs Richard Bernhardt (1903-1969), New York;
• By 1976: The Bernhard Foundation, New York;
• 1976: sold at auction, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, 29 April 1976 (lot 108) and bought by Agnew's, London art dealers;
• 1976: sold by Agnew's to a private collector;
• 2010/2012: sold through Thomas Colville Fine Art, New York;
• 2012: sold at auction, Sotheby's, New York, 23 April 2012 (lot 108);
• 2013/2015: Promised Gift to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas.

Whistler owned 'Beach dieppe The Evening Walk, Dieppe' when D. C. Thomson reproduced it in 1897. ¹⁵ By 1905 it was owned by the explorer, Douglas Freshfield, who lent it to the Whistler Memorial exhibition in London in 1905 (cat. no. 72). It was auctioned by him at Christie's in 1934 and bought by D. C. Thomson, for £168. He sold it to the Levy Galleries, who sold it to Leo. M. Flesh. ¹⁶

The sequence and dates of later ownership are unclear: it was owned by the Newhouse Gallery, and Mrs Arthur Lehman; by Mrs Richard I. Bernhard, New York, and the Bernhard Foundation; they sent it to auction at Sotheby Parke-Bernet in 1976. It was bought by Agnew's, London dealers, who sold it to a private collector in the UK. It was sold through Thomas Colville Fine Arts, New York and New Haven, to the present owners.

Exhibitions

• 1897: probably intended to be shown in Exposition Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 7th exhibition, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Champs de Mars, Paris, 1897 (cat. no. 1257) as 'Vert et violet' but ultimately not shown. ¹⁷
• 1905: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 72) as 'Dieppe'.

It had been suggested that this was possibly exhibited in Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 186) as 'Vert et violet: Dieppe' (see Vert et violet: Dieppe y329) because it was assumed it had been painted in 1885. ¹⁸ However, the signature suggests a later date.

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. 328), plate 209, as 'Green and Violet: The Evening Walk, Dieppe'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Catalogued but not exhibited in Exposition nationale des Beaux-Arts: Catalogue Illustré de peinture, sculpture et gravure exposés au Champ-de-Mars, Paris, 1897 (cat. no. 1257) as 'Vert et violet'.
• Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 72) as 'Dieppe'.

Journals 1855-1905

• The Academy and Literature, 26 December 1896, vol. 50, no. 1256, p. 600.
• Thomson, David Croal, ‘New Pictures by Mr. Whistler’,Art Journal, January 1897, pp. 10-11, repr. p. 11.
• Baudin, Pierre, 'Les Salons de 1904: Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, II', Gazette des beaux-arts, vol. 31, 1904, pp. 468-82, at p. 476.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908, repr. p. 37 as 'Dieppe Beach'.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, repr. f.p. 104.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia, 1921, repr. f.p. 167.
• Robins, Anna Gruetzner, A Fragile Modernism. Whistler and his Impressionist Followers, London and New Haven, 2007, pp. 28, 39, 43, repr. fig. 36.

Books, General

• Randall, Lillian (ed.), George A. Lucas: An American Art Agent in Paris, 1857-1909, Princeton, 1979, p. 615.

Catalogues 1906-Present

EXHIBITION:

• Thomson, Lockett, Barbizon House: An Illustrated Record, London, 1935 (cat. no. 18).
• Spink, Nesta, Whistler: The Later Years, University of Michigan Art Gallery, Ann Arbor, 1978 (cat. no. 55).

SALES:

• Christie's, London, 2 November 1934 (lot 87) as 'Dieppe Beach'.
• Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 29 April 1976 (lot 108).
• Sotheby, New York, 23 April 2012 (lot 108).

Journals 1906-Present

• Sutherland, Daniel E., C magazine, Crystal Bridges, July 2013, online 2014 at https://crystalbridges.org/blog/whistlers-evening-walk.

Websites

• Crystal Bridges website at http://collection.crystalbridges.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 433).

Other

• None.