The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, Étretat probably dates from August or September 1897. ¹

Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, Étretat, Fogg Museum of Art

However, it was probably touched up and completed in the following year, for on 5 June 1898 Whistler wrote to Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932), 'I went and signed, and put the finishing touches upon, the little marine of Etretat for you ... It is now a little beauty!' ²

Images

Subject

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Beaching the boat Etretat (Blue & Silver)' (1901, R. Birnie Philip). ³
• 'A Harmony in Blue and Silver' (1905, ISSPG). ⁴
• 'Beaching the Boat (Harmony in Blue and Silver)' (1908, Pennell). ⁵
• 'Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, Etretat' (1910, Studio). ⁶
• 'Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, Étretat' (1980, YMSM). ⁷

An inscription on an old photograph in Glasgow University Library confirms the title given in Whistler's ledger in 1901 (cited above), although neither is written in the artist's hand.

'Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, Étretat' is the generally accepted title.

Description

Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, Étretat, Fogg Museum

A sea view in horizontal format. Fishermen are beaching a small fishing boat at left. The green sea is stormy, with white breakers, particularly behind the boat. Land is faintly visible in the distance at left and right. The sky is cloudy, wind-swept.

Site

Étretat, a fishing port and popular holiday resort in Normandy on the French coast between Le Havre and Dieppe. Whistler was recuperating there with his in-laws, the Birnie Philips. It was a popular subject for artists including Whistler's former mentor Jean-Désiré-Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) and his friend Claude Oscar Monet (1840-1926).

Technique

Technique

Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, Étretat, Fogg Museum

It is painted on a grey-primed reddish-brown wood panel. The soft brush strokes on the sky and beach contrast with the more fluid strokes on the sea, and the neatly painted vivid strokes of colour on the left, where the shapes of the figures hauling up their boat echo the curves of the breakers.

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, framed

Grau-style, made by M. Grieve, dating from ca 1930. ⁸ Size: 29.5 x 40 x 4.5 cm (11 5/8 x 15 3/4 x 1 3/4").

History

Provenance

• 1901: bought from the artist by Hon. Judge William Thomas Evans (1843-1918), New Jersey.
• 1916: with Scott & Fowles, New York art dealers;
• 1917: sold by Scott & Fowles to Hunt Henderson (1869-1939) and his wife, New Orleans;
• 1939: his bequest to Tulane University, New Orleans;
• 1941: sold in April through the Macdonald Gallery to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943);
• 1943: his bequest to the Fogg Art Museum.

It was probably this painting that Whistler offered on 5 June 1898 Whistler to the New York dealer, Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932):

'And here I went and signed, and put the finishing touches upon, the little marine of Etretat for you - And you say no more about it - It is now a little beauty! -

Do you not want it? ... Tomorrow morning you can come to the studio at 11.30 ... You can then see the little sea piece - and settle things.' ⁹

However, Kennedy did not buy it. On 19 February 1901, while Whistler was away in Corsica, 'Beaching the boat Etretat (Blue & Silver)' was listed by his sister-in-law, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), among pictures received from Hinde Street on the closure of the 'Company of the Butterfly' and sent to William Heinemann (1863-1920), the London publisher. ¹⁰ It may possibly have been one of the pictures referred to by Whistler in a cryptic letter to Heinemann at that time, 'It was very nice of you to see to all that about the little marines with Fox for me.' ¹¹ It does not seem to have belonged to Heinemann but he may have been an intermediary in the sale. According to the Studio, the painting was bought from Whistler in that same year, 1901, by Judge William Evans. ¹²

Exhibitions

• 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. 55) as 'A Harmony in Blue and Silver'.

It would have been on view in Whistler's sale outlet, 'The Company of the Butterfly', in 1901, but was not, as far as is known, exhibited otherwise in Whistler's lifetime.

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. 483), plate 311, as 'Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, Étretat'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 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 (de luxe edition) (cat. no. 55) repr. f.p. 70, as 'A Harmony in Blue and Silver' (described incorrectly as having blue sea and sky).

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Adams, Aron, James Whistler: His Palette, 2016.
• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907 (cat. no. 407), p. 217.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908 (cat. no. 173), p. 173.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, repr. f.p. 184 as 'Beaching the Boat (Harmony in 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, Cambridge, MA and New Haven, CT, 2008, pp. 435-36 (cat. no. 462), repr.

EXHIBITION:

• Henderson, Hunt, Etchings, Lithographs, Paintings and Drawings by James McNeill Whistler, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, 1917 (cat. no. 112).
• A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, Art Institute, Chicago, 1934 (cat. no. 424) as 'Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat'.
• Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Prints by James McNeill Whistler, courtesy of the Henderson Family of New Orleans, Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, 1937.
• Master Paintings from the Fogg Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1977.
• 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

• Anon., 'Studio Talk', Studio, vol. 49, February 1910, pp. 43-44, repr. p. 2 as 'Harmony in Blue and Silver: Beaching the Boat, Etretat'.

Websites

• Harvard Art Museums website at http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/230342.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 424).

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.