?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER Black Lion Wharf.
Etching on antique cream laid paper, 1859. 150x223 mm; 6x8 3/4 inches, wide margins. MacDonald's second state (of 4), with the black triangular shape at the lower left edge of the plate. A brilliant, early and richly-inked impression with very strong contrasts and with crisp, inky plate edges.
MacDonald notes that Whistler printed only approximately 24 impressions of the second state, as opposed to some 40 impressions of the fourth and final state; there is a unique impression of the first state, now in The New York Public Library (formerly Samuel Putnam Avery collection). She writes that, "It is clear that Whistler counted this [unique first state] as a working proof and that the second state was what he considered the first state." Kennedy 42; Glasgow 54.
