The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Ajaccio, Corsica is presumed to date from between January and April 1901 when Whistler was convalescing in Corsica, although since the scene has not been identified, it is not absolutely certain that it does show Corsica. Judging by the technique and signature, it must date from at least the mid 1890s. For instance, it could possibly have been an untraced painting, Landscape, Lyme Regis y447, dating from 1895.

In January 1901 Whistler complained about the constraints imposed by his health:

'I sit here on a bench and stew - which is literally a fact, as if it were in July - and fret ... to think of all the work undone, and the comparative stagnation in which I seem to be floundering! ... immediately I have rushed off to do desperate work in some fiendish draught - and come home to bark in the night and begin all over again! - It is most discouraging ... I suppose I must just hang on here and shut my eyes - for there are beautiful things in uncanny corners!' ¹

The weather took a turn for the better in April: 'today', he wrote 'it is simply amazing! 40 - degrees - out of doors in shade. But what's the use! all this time lost as far as work goes!' ² This painting is likely to date from towards the end of his stay, when the weather became warm enough to paint out of doors.

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title has been suggested:

• 'Ajaccio, Corsica' (1966, D. Sutton). ³
• 'Ajaccio, Corsica' (1980, YMSM). ⁴

Description

Ajaccio, Corsica, Fogg Art Museum

A landscape in horizontal format. In the foreground at left are a woman and child. A low escarpment runs across the centre, leading at right to a ramshackle building that appears to be a hen house. A green hill rises behind, and behind the rocky summit, to right, the grey roof of a small house is visible. The sky is pale blue-grey.

Site

The site is identified by a note on the verso of the frame, but this is not in Whistler's hand, and so is not completely reliable.

Ajaccio, the capital city of Corsica, is situated on the west coast of the French island, in the Mediterranean. Whistler went there to convalesce in 1901. This painting could have been done in the hills behind the town.

An alternative site may be the hills above the cliffs of Lyme Regis, Dorset, where there are outcrops of rock. Whistler is known to have worked there in 1895 and tried to sell a painting, Landscape, Lyme Regis y447, in that year. ⁵

Technique

Technique

Ajaccio, Corsica, Fogg Art Museum

It is thinly painted with a very free and liquid technique, and the brushmarks clearly visible. There is some fussy reworking around the figures in the foreground.

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

Size: 28.6 x 37.8 x 4.5 cm (11 1/4 x 14 7/8 x 1 3/4"). A partial inscription on the verso reads 'VE / HAND CARVED / NEW YORK & LONDON'.

History

Provenance

• Date unknown: acquired by Hunt Henderson (1869-1939), New Orleans;
• 1939: bequeathed to Tulane University, New Orleans;
• 1941: sold through the Macdonald Gallery, New York, to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943), New York, in April I941;
• 1943: bequeathed by him to Harvard University.

The early provenance of this panel is not known.

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime, as far as is known.

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. 546), plate 360, as 'Ajaccio, Corsica'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Lechien, Isabelle Enaud, Whistler et la France, Paris, 1994, pp. 62-63, repr.
• Enaud-Lechien, Isabelle, James Whistler, le peintre et le polémiste (1834-1903), Courbevoie, 1995, pp. 184-85, repr.
• Sutton, Denys, James McNeill Whistler: Paintings, Etchings, Pastels and Watercolours, London, 1966, repr. pl. 120.

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, Cambridge, MA and New Haven, CT, 2008, pp. 438-39 (cat. no. 465), repr. p. 439.

EXHIBITION:

• 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

• MacInnes, Margaret F., [M. F. MacDonald], 'Whistler's Last Years: Spring 1901 - Algiers and Corsica', Gazette des beaux-arts, vol. 73, 1969, pp. 323-42, at pp. 334-35.

Websites

• Fogg Art Museum website at http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/230027.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 333).

Other

• None.