The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend may have been painted at Ostend in Belgium in the summer of 1887, during events related to Queen Victoria's Jubilee. ¹

Jubilee celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria (1819-1901) included a service at Westminster Abbey on Tuesday, 21 June 1887, which Whistler attended, as President of the Society of British Artists. His etching The Abbey Jubilee [296] shows the event. ²

A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend, Terra Foundation for American Art

Whistler also attended Queen Victoria's Naval Review, which was held at Spithead on 23 July. The Terra Foundation website suggests that the painting dates from shortly after the Naval Review:

'A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend shows a festive crowd gathered on the beach at the Belgian seaport to greet their monarchs, Leopold II and Queen Clementine, on their return from Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee celebration in England. The sketchy scene of a mass of people on the beach under an overcast sky is thinly painted in drab colors relieved by the shapes of large flags. On the far left, the black, yellow, and red banner of Belgium is partly obscured by a blue flag bearing the fleur-de-lis, probably a reference to Queen Clementine’s French descent; on the right, the “red note” of James McNeill Whistler’s title is provided by the Red Ensign, the British naval flag, which was flown at that time from merchant ships.' ³

However, Whistler returned to London after the Review, and in August 1887 he was occupied with printing his Naval Review etchings. Over sixty impressions had been printed by 19 August, and most of the edition was completed by 1 September. ⁴ It was only after this that Whistler is recorded as going over to Ostend and Brussels, where he was staying at the Hotel Continental on 11 September. ⁵

The evidence is not conclusive, but it is possible that this painting actually dates from September rather than July or early August 1887. The painting was exhibited shortly afterwards at the Royal Society of British Artists in their 1887-1888 winter show.

Images

Subject

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend' (1887, Royal Society of British Artists). ⁶
• 'Note rouge – La Plage d'Ostende' (1888, Durand-Ruel). ⁷
• 'Ostende' (1890, Exposition Générale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels). ⁸
• 'The Fete on the Sands – Ostend' (1904, Copley Society, Boston). ⁹
• 'A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend' (1980, YMSM). ¹⁰

For the sake of consistency with other titles, 'A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend' is the preferred title.

Description

A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend, Terra Foundation for American Art

A beach scene in horizontal format. A crowd of figures are gathered all along the shore on a grey day, carrying several huge flags. The flags include the Belgian flag at left, a blue flag bearing a golden flower, and a British naval flag, the 'Red Ensign'. On the horizon, at right is a large ship, possibly a warship.

The Terra website suggests that the blue flag bears a fleur-de-lis but if so it is very misshapen. It also suggests links between Whistler and the nationalities represented by the flags:

'The painting thus commemorates the expatriate American artist’s relationship to his two adoptive countries, England and France, between which he divided his long career. Moreover, the work’s title, one of many by which the artist drew an analogy between painting and music, announces the primacy of simple color over narrative or imposed meaning as the painting’s subject. A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend was included in one of a series of solo exhibitions Whistler pointedly titled "Notes" – "Harmonies" – "Nocturnes", in which the Terra Foundation’s A Note in Red: The Siesta ... was also shown.' ¹¹

Site

The beach at Ostend, one of the main fishing and ferry ports in Belgium, and a popular tourist destination.

Technique

Technique

A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend, Terra Foundation for American Art

The figures are not individualised at all and, for its scale, the panel is painted very broadly. The orange wood has been primed in grey and the paint applied thinly with soft brushes.

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

37.5 x 47.0 x 5.1 cm (14 3/4 x 18 1/2 x 2").

History

Provenance

• 1890: sold by the artist to Edward William Hooper (1839-1901), Boston;
• 1901: bequeathed to Ellen Sturgis Hooper (Mrs John B. Potter) (1872-1974);
• 1974: bequeathed to her daughter, Mary Frances Potter (Mrs John Butler Swann) (1911-1989), Stockbridge, MA;
• After 1980: sold to a private collector.
• 1980/1983: Davis & Langdale Company, Inc., New York;
• 1983: Daniel J. Terra (1911-1996) (Daniel J. Terra Collection);
• 1992: Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Chicago.

According to Mrs John Briggs Potter (née Ellen S. Hooper) when Whistler was painting her portrait in 1890 (Portrait of Ellen Sturgis Hooper y391) he dug this painting out of a trunk and sold it to her father, E. W. Hooper. On 19 September 1890 Beatrice Whistler wrote to Hooper that Whistler wanted 100 guineas for 'Fête on the sands' which was 'a great pet of his' and was then in Brussels. ¹² Hooper agreed, sent the cheque on 7 October, and acknowledged receipt of the painting on 13 January 1891. ¹³ It was lent for some years to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and bequeathed by Hooper to his daughter Ellen, who lent it to the Whistler Memorial exhibition in Boston in 1904 (cat. no. 2) and to the Museum of Fine Arts in September of the same year.

Exhibitions

• 1887: 64th Annual Exhibition, Royal Society of British Artists, London, 1887 (cat. no. 277) as 'A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend', at £126.
• 1888: Exposition Brown, Boudin, Caillebotte, Lepine, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Whistler, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1888 (cat. no. 43) as 'Note rouge – La Plage d'Ostende'.
• 1889: “Notes” – “Harmonies” – “Nocturnes”, H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, 1889 (cat. no. 40).
• 1890: Exposition Générale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1890 (cat. no. 842) as 'Ostende'.
• 1904: Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 2) as 'The Fete on the Sands – Ostend'.

At the RBA in 1887 it was priced at £126.0.0, and at Wunderlich's in 1889, the same (120 gns). ¹⁴

It was described in 1887 by the Manchester Courier as 'A Fête on the Sands at Ostend by Night' and by the Leeds Mercury as 'a group of flâneurs on the sands at Ostend, some of whom are sheltered by red parasols', and, in 1889, more accurately, in the New York Sun as ‘a dark grey day on the sands at Ostend with a fete in progress, and strong-coloured flags set against the heavy sky.' ¹⁵ Any difficulty in identifying the details was clearly in the eyes of the critics. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) thought it 'the most exquisitely truthful achievement in Suffolk Street.' ¹⁶

The Building News had described the painting in 1887 as 'an impression merely, and those who can see the poetry of faint impressions of light and shadow will find something in it.' ¹⁷ It is indeed one of the most 'Impressionist' of Whistler's paintings. In this context it is worth noting that the RBA exhibition of 1887-1888, in which it was exhibited, was notable for the inclusion of a substantial number of works by Claude Oscar Monet (1840-1926).

The Terra website discusses the significance of the early exhibitions:

'On his frequent visits to Paris from his home in London, Whistler often passed through Ostend, a popular seaside resort with regular steamer service to Dover, England. In the autumn of 1887, the artist was making a sketching tour of Holland and Belgium with his brother and sister-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. William Whistler. Early the following year, Whistler showed A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend in the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists, of which he was then president. His leadership of this conservative organization was controversial not only because of the reforms he autocratically pursued, but because of his advocacy of avant-garde art in its exhibitions. The 1888 annual included a number of works by French painter Claude Monet (1840–1926), Whistler’s longtime friend and a leader of the radical movement known as impressionism, the capturing of the instantaneous effects of contemporary subjects in bright, undiluted color applied in broken brushstrokes. Whistler’s own ideal of painting as the orchestration of poetic effects achieved through the manipulation of such formal values as color, line, and composition differed from the dispassionately scientific approach of some impressionists. However, Whistler’s and Monet’s common challenge to artistic conventions, according to which painting is an illusionistic window onto imagined, idealized three-dimensional reality, laid the foundation for the development of modernism at the turn of the century. With rapid, on-site execution and expressive, reductive evocation of a transient moment, A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend has been cited as one of Whistler’s paintings that most clearly reveals his sympathy with Monet’s impressionism. Evidence indicates that it was also one of Whistler’s favorite works.' ¹⁸

Whistler had hoped it might be lent to the World's Columbian Exposition, Department of Fine Arts, Chicago, 1893, but this did not happen. ¹⁹

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. 366), plate 235, as 'A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 64th Annual Exhibition, Royal Society of British Artists, London, 1887 (cat. no. 277) as 'A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend'.
• Exposition Brown, Boudin, Caillebotte, Lepine, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Whistler, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1888 (cat. no. 43) as 'Note rouge – La Plage d'Ostende'.
• “Notes” – “Harmonies” – “Nocturnes”, H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, 1889 (cat. no. 40).
• Exposition Générale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1890 (cat. no. 842) as 'Ostende'.
• Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 2) as 'The Fete on the Sands – Ostend'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Royal Society of British Artists', The Globe, London, 29 November 1887, p. 3.
• Anon., 'London Art Galleries', Manchester Courier, Manchester, 30 November 1887, p. 5.
• Anon., 'Magazines for December', Iluustrated London News, London, 10 December 1887, pp. 27-29.
• Anon., 'Three Royal Societies of Art', Leeds Mercury, Leeds, 10 December 1887, p. 12.
• Anon., 'Mr. Whistler's Pictures at the Wunderlich Gallery', The Sun, New York, 10 March 1889, p. 14.

Journals 1855-1905

• Building News and Engineering Journal, vol. 53, 2 December 1887.
• Magazine of Art, vol. 11, 1888, p. 110.
• 'Art Corner', Our Corner, vol. 11, 1888, p. 57.
• Boston Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, September 1904, p. 20.

Monographs

• A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, October 1992, repr.

Books on Whistler

• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, p. 68.

Books, General

• Regard sur cinq années d'expositions (Five years of Exhibitions at a Glance), Terra Foundation for the Arts, Chicago, 1997, repr. p. 70.
• Tricot, Xavier, in Hommage Robert Hooze 1982-2014, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, 2014, pp. 130-33.
• Weintraub, Stanley, Bernard Shaw on the London art scene, 1885-1950, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989, p. 193.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Spink, Nesta, Whistler: The Later Years, University of Michigan Art Gallery, Ann Arbor, 1978 (cat. no. 58).
• Atkinson, D. Scott et al., A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, Terry A. Neff (ed.), Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1987, p. 148, pl. T-39.
• Selections from the Permanent Collection: Americans at Home and Abroad, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1987.
• An American Revelation: The Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1988.
• Whistler and His Circle, Minnesota Museum of Art, St Paul, 1989.
• Gerdts, William H. et al., Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865-1915 (Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865-1915), Musée d'Art Américain, Giverny, and Terra Foundation for the Arts, Chicago, 1992, p. 38; fig. 26.
• Regard sur James Abbott McNeill Whistler (James Abbott McNeill Whistler at a Glance), Musée d'Art Américain, Giverny, 1994.
• 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. 149), p. 231, repr.
• The Decorative Form: The Aesthetic Movement, Arts & Crafts and the Asian Influence in American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1999.
• Selections from the Permanent Collection: American Artists in France, 1860–1910, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2001.
• American Classics: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2002.
• A Place on the Avenue: Terra Museum of American Art Celebrates 15 Years in Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2002-2003.
• Modern Harmonies: Whistler Reflects on his Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2003.
• Merrill, Linda, et al., After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2003, p. 246, n. 32 (not exhibited).
• Studied Abroad: Painted Impressions from the Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2003-2004.
• A Narrative of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2004.
• Davidson, Susan, ed., Art in the USA: 300 años de innovació (Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation), Guggenheim Bilbao; Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York; Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago (organisers), 2007. Venues: National Museum of China, Beijing; Shanghai Museum and Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007 (Shanghai presentations ran concurrently); The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 2007; Guggenheim Bilbao, 2007-2008 (exhibited in Bilbao). Spanish version, repr. p. 117.
• Tricot, Xavier, in Hommage Robert Hooze 1982-2014, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent 2014, ref. pp. 130-33.
• Bourguignon, Katherine M., American Impressionism: A New Vision 1880-1900, (Une nouvelle lumière: les américains face à l’impressionnisme/ Impresionismo Americano), Musée des Impressionnismes, Giverny, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2014-2015. (English, French and Spanish versions) repr. p. 123.
• Gallery Installation, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 2015-2016.

Journals 1906-Present

• 'Portrait D'Artiste', Connaissance des Arts, Paris, 1995, pp. 26-27.

Websites

• Terra Foundation for American Art website at http://collection.terraamericanart.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 431).

Other

• None.