The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Master Smith of Lyme Regis dates from between September 1895 and 1896. ¹

The Master Smith of Lyme Regis, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

It was started in Lyme Regis, Dorset, between September and October 1895. On 2 November 1895 the art dealer David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), who had just visited Whistler in Lyme Regis, thanked him for having shown him 'The Master Smith':

'The artistic treat of seeing the Royalties of Lyme Regis was one never to be forgotten. The Master Smith, The Rose, The Infanta & the other princess are indelibly impressed on my memory & I cannot too warmly speak of their gorgeous colour, their exquisite style & harmony.' ²

On 6 November 1895 Whistler wrote asking Thomson not to mention the 'Master Smith' to his wife, 'as I want to keep that as a surprise!' ³ According to Thomson, it was 'Painted, in all its preliminary stages,' at Lyme Regis in 1895, but completed back in London at 8 Fitzroy Street. ⁴

On 6 March 1896 Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932) of H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, wrote asking Whistler to send him 'a fine "black-smith"' which his brother David A. Kennedy (fl. 1895-1915) had seen in London. ⁵ Whistler replied, 'Smith - well I think you would like that - but ... it has not been seen here at all!' and later, he wrote, 'Keeping Smith a bit to see if further precious touches - probably between 600 & 800 gs.' ⁶

Images

Subject

Titles

Minor variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'The Master Smith' (1896, D. C. Thomson). ⁷
• 'Master Smith' (1895, Whistler). ⁸
• 'The Blacksmith' (1901, Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo). ⁹
• 'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis' (1904, Copley Society, Boston). ¹⁰
• 'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis' (1980, YMSM). ¹¹

'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis' is the preferred title.

Description

The Master Smith of Lyme Regis, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

A half-length portrait, in vertical format, of a man in three-quarter view to right. He has dark brown hair, a moustache and small beard. His arms are folded. He wears a black jacket over a white shirt with no collar. The background is dark brown.

Sitter

Samuel Edward Govier (1857-1934), a blacksmith, died in December 1934. Whistler also painted his daughter (Devonshire Daisy y446), and his smithy was the subject of The Little Forge, Lyme Regis y442. His father George Govier (1825-1903) was master smith before him.

The Master Smith of Lyme Regis, lithograph, The Hunterian

Father and Son, lithograph, The Hunterian

Whistler made several lithographs featuring the smiths and smithy including The Master Smith c120, Father and Son c123, The Blacksmith c127, and The Brothers c128.

The Master Smith of Lyme Regis, photograph, ca 1920

Robert Thurston Hopkins described and photographed Govier at work in his smithy off Broad Street, Lyme Regis, in a delightful travelogue, Thomas Hardy's Dorset, published in 1922:

'Broad Street, leading downwards from the station to the sea, is the main thoroughfare, and the principal business part of the town. Half-way up the street on the eastern side is a small passage leading to an ancient forge. It is scarcely to be noticed unless one is expressly seeking for it, but once up the narrow court there it is, with its open doorway all red inside like a wizard's cave, with the hammers ringing on the anvil, and the sparks showering out of the big flue. Here Vulcan has toiled ... for five hundred years without a break, and here, in spite of cheap machinery, Mr Govier, the master smith of Lyme Regis, still seems to enjoy a regular and ready custom. The forge has been in Mr Govier's family for three hundred years, and it has a great weather-beaten wooden-and-tile roof, which is all but on the verge of collapse. A long sweep of old oak wood controls the bellows, and as you look in you will see the hand of Govier himself is on the bellows handle. He draws it down and lets it up again with the peculiar rhythmic motion of long experience, heaping up his fire with a cunning little iron rake, singing a most doleful song to himself all about "shooting his true love at the setting of the sun." But you must not think the master smith is a gloomy man, for this song... is just a tune of acquiescence to his labours—a song in sympathy with the roar of the bellows and the ascending sparks of his fire.

"Come in, come in," he said, when I told him I had come to pay my respects to him.

He turned from his forge, set his hands on his hips and looked at me a moment. Then I realised why McNeill Whistler spent so much of his time in this forge making sketches of the smith. He looked like Vulcan's very brother, his face sunburnt and forge-burnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as cornflowers, and his hair black and crisp, and everywhere about him the atmosphere of the blacksmith. There are all kinds of interesting things in the old forge, from Roman horseshoes to plates for race-horses, and a pair of old beam-scales dated 1560. These scales have been hanging up as far back as Govier and his father before him could remember. Besides having the knowledge of a craftsman, Govier is a singer of old songs.

"That song you were singing when I came in?" I asked. "I know it as well as anyone, but somehow it has escaped me."

"Ah!" said the master smith. "Well, well! It is years ago now that I first heard it, when the ships came inside our walls with coal and took away stone. We rarely see a ship in our walls now, but when I was a boy my father and I frequently went down to the quay to repair ironwork aboard the old sailing boats. Those old Devon sailors were the fellows for songs. ... The man who sings loudly and clearly is in good health, prompt, and swift to the point, and his heart is as big as parson's barn.' ¹²

Technique

Technique

The Master Smith of Lyme Regis, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The portrait is thinly painted over a red ground. It is painted carefully, to a high finish unusual in Whistler's work. Some areas have been rubbed down, including areas of the face, as part of the painting process.

Pennell reported Whistler as saying that in this portrait and The Master Smith of Lyme Regis y450 'he had really solved the problem of carrying on his work as he wished to until it was finished.' ¹³

Frame

1896: the frame was probably made at the time the picture was sold to Wunderlich's.

The Master Smith of Lyme Regis, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The frame is in the style of Frederick Henry Grau (1859-1892). ¹⁴

History

Provenance

• 1896: sold by the artist to H. Wunderlich & Co., New York art dealers;
• 1896: sold by Wunderlich's to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In November 1895 the art dealer David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), having visited Whistler in Lyme Regis, thanked him for showing him 'The Master Smith', and afterwards Whistler reported to his wife Beatrice Philip (Mrs E. W. Godwin, Mrs J. McN. Whistler) (1857-1896), 'little Thomson then did sit and chorkle over the pounds that the pictures might bring! would bring, he said.' ¹⁵

On 6 March 1896 E. G. Kennedy, Wunderlich's representative, asked if Whistler would send over to America 'a fine "black-smith" ' seen by his brother. ¹⁶ Whistler replied: 'The Smith - Well I think you would like that - but my dear OK! it has not been seen here at all! I mean also Paris! and I fancy you would like me to show it! Also the price I know you would think alarming!' ¹⁷ According to the Pennells, Whistler brought it round to show them before it was sent to America, and he was loath to part with it. ¹⁸

However, by the end of June 1896, Kennedy apparently had possession of the portrait. ¹⁹ According to Wunderlich's, Whistler had agreed with Kennedy to sell them this painting and The Little Rose of Lyme Regis y449 as well as Rose et or: La Tulipe y418 or Harmony in Black: Portrait of Miss Ethel Philip y419 for £1500. ²⁰ It was sold by H. Wunderlich & Co. to the Museum of Fine Arts together with The Little Rose of Lyme Regis y449 for $7,200, the accession date being 11 January 1896.

Exhibitions

• 1901: Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901 (cat. no. 99) as 'The Blacksmith'.
• 1904: Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 36) as 'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis'.
• 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. 24) as 'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis'.
• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 27) as 'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis'.

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. 450), plate 293, as 'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901 (cat. no. 99) as 'The Blacksmith'.
• Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 36) as 'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis'.
• 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. 24) as 'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis'.
• Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 27) as 'The Master Smith of Lyme Regis'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'The Whistler Exhibition', Morning Post, London, 16 January 1905, p. 8.
• Anon., Evening Mail, London, 22 February 1905, p. 6.
• Anon., London Evening Standard, London, 23 February 1905, p. 2.

Journals 1855-1905

• Thomson, David Croal, ‘New Pictures by Mr. Whistler’,Art Journal, January 1897, pp. 10-11, at p. 10, repr. p. 12.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907, pp. 141-42 (cat. no. 36).
• Merrill, Linda, After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, Yale University Press, 2003, pp. 25, 93.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, p. 166-67, 176.
• Petri, Grischka, Arrangement in Business: The Art Markets and the Career of James McNeill Whistler, Hildesheim, 2011, pp. 523, 564-65, repr.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908 (no. 108).
• Sutherland, Daniel E., Whistler: A Life for Art's Sake, New Haven and London, 2014, pp. 288, 295.
• Sutton, Denys, Nocturne: The Art of James McNeill Whistler, London, 1963, p. 130.
• Way, Thomas Robert, Memories of James McNeill Whistler, the Artist, London and New York, 1912, pp. 114-15.

Books, General

• Bickley, Francis Lawrence, Where Dorset meets Devon, London, 1912, p. 46.
• Hopkins, Robert Thurston, Thomas Hardy's Dorset , New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1922, pp. 218-21, photograph of smithy repr.
• Walker, John, James McNeill Whistler, New York, 1987, p. 128.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Paintings in oil and pastel by James McNeill Whistler, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1910 (cat. no. 37).
• Oils, Water-colors, Drawings and Prints by James McNeill Whistler, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1934 (cat. no. 24).
• Whistler Loan Exhibition, Macbeth Gallery, New York, 1947 (cat. no. 10).
• James McNeill Whistler Seventeenth Anniversary Exhibition, Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT, 1949 (cat. no. 5).
• Sweet, Frederick A., James McNeill Whistler, Art Institute of Chicago and Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, 1968 (cat. no. 46).
• Taynton, Carol (intro.), Whistler in New England Collections, [checklist], Boston, 1977 (no cat. number).
• 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. 191).
• Merrill, Linda, et al., After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2003, pp. 25, 93 (not exhibited).

Journals 1906-Present

• Comstock, Helen, 'Whistler Centenary at Lowell, Massachusetts', Connoisseur, vol. 93, May 1934, pp. 334-36 , at p. 334.

Websites

• Boston Museum of Fine Arts website at http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/the-master-smith-of-lyme-regis-31086.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 197).

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.