The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville, Freer Gallery of Art

Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville was probably painted on Whistler's visits to Pourville-sur-mer between July and September 1899, but could date from the following summer. ¹

Images

Subject

Titles

Suggested titles are as follows:

• Probably ' "Grey & Gold - The high sea", Pourville' (1900, Whistler). ²
• 'Grey and Gold – High Tide at Pourville' (1901, Goupil). ³
• 'Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville' (1980, YMSM). ⁴

The preferred title, 'Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville', is based on that in the Goupil show, with punctuation regularised to conform with other titles.

Description

Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville, Freer Gallery of Art

A view of the sea from a beach, in horizontal format. A narrow strip of beach runs at a slight diagonal from lower left up to right, where a man and a dog stand near the water's edge. The green sea is rough, with white breakers, under a cloudy sky with patches of blue. There are several small sailing ships on the horizon at right.

Site

Pourville-sur-mer, on the Normandy coast of France, near Dieppe. Whistler was convalescing with his in-laws, the Birnie Philips, at the Pavillon Madeleine, Pourville-sur-Mer, in August 1899. He wrote in the autumn to the artist Albert Ludovici, Jr (1852-1932), praising his own work in contrast to that of Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919):

'September & October are clearly the months for the sea -

I am just beginning to understanding the principle of these things - You know how I always reduce things to principles!

… I could not help thinking of your two French painters who thought they had something new in Renoir! - and who looked with contempt upon le "vieux tableau"! -

"Plein air" indeed! - I should like to show you one or two little panels!' ⁵

Technique

Technique

Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville, Freer Gallery of Art

The panel was prepared with a grey ground. It is painted very freely, the breaking waves in particular being of the consistency of thick cream, applied with a loaded brush. It is possible a ruled line was drawn along the horizon. Some brushstrokes near the horizon stretch right across the panel from left to right. The beach is painted much more thinly and smoothly.

Blue and Silver: Boat Entering Pourville, Freer Gallery of Art

It is similar in style to other Pourville seascapes, such as Blue and Silver: Boat Entering Pourville y524 and The Sea, Pourville, No. 1 y516.

Curry, comparing it with the much earlier (and larger) Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville y064, commented: 'While the surface of the earlier painting is a series of thinly applied paint films, High Tide is made up of ribbons of buttery soft green, gray, and blue pigments, a palette typical of the Pourville works.' ⁶

Conservation History

The panel is chamfered at each end, and cradled.

Frame

Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville, Freer Gallery of Art

Grau-style frame, dating from the early 20th century. ⁷

History

Provenance

• 1900: sold by the artist to David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), of the Goupil Gallery, London;
• 1901/1904: James Staats Forbes (1823-1904), London;
• 1904: Obach & Co., London art dealers;
• 1904: bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

In 1900 Whistler sold ' "Grey & Gold - The high sea", Pourville' to D. C. Thomson for 150 guineas. This was probably Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville although the term 'high sea' could mean a stormy sea rather than high tide. ⁸ It is not known when exactly J. S. Forbes bought or sold his two seascapes, Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville y523 or Blue and Silver: Boat Entering Pourville y524.

In 1904 Freer noted that a 'Marine - grey, late, one man on beach, boat in distance' from the collection of J. S. Forbes was with Obach's in London, and he left an offer for it. ⁹ In July 1904 he bought it for £220 (200 plus 10 per cent commission).

Exhibitions

• 1901: Spring Exhibition, Goupil Gallery, London, 1901 (cat. no. 32) as 'Grey and Gold – High Tide at Pourville'.

Arthur Philips praised the painting in 1901, but was unable to resist a little dig at Whistler's 'eccentricities':

'The Whistlers too are exquisite, "Grey and Gold, High Tide at Pourville" is as fine a bit of landscape as we remember to have seen by him. It is in such pictures as this that he shows what a consummate master he is in spite of his eccentricities.' ¹⁰

By the terms of C. L. Freer's bequest to the Freer Gallery of Art, the painting cannot be lent to another venue.

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. 523), plate 334, as 'Grey and Gold: High Tide at Pourville'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Spring Exhibition, Goupil Gallery, London, 1901 (cat. no. 32) as 'Grey and Gold – High Tide at Pourville'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'At the Goupil Gallery', Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, Manchester, 4 March 1901, p. 4.

Journals 1855-1905

• Phillips, Arthur F., The Art Record: A Monthly Illustrated Review of the Arts and Crafts, vol. 1, 1901, p. 103.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Merrill, Linda, With Kindest Regards. The Correspondence of Charles Lang Freer and James McNeill Whistler, 1890-1903, Washington, DC, and London, 1995, p. 121, fig. 33.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Stubbs, Burns A., Paintings, Pastels, Drawings, Prints and Copper Plates by and attributed to American and European Artists, together with a List of Original Whistleriana in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1948, p. 16 (04.163).
• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 155, 296, pl. 64.

Journals 1906-Present

• Sutton, Denys, 'Proust and his World', Apollo, vol. 82, August 1965, repr. p. 126.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1904.163a-b.

Unpublished

• None.

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.