?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER Count Robert de Montesquiou, No. 2.
Lithograph printed in black on China paper, 1894. 227x96 mm; 9x3 3/4 inches, full margins. Printed by Lemercier, Paris. A superb impression of this extremely scarce lithograph.
Based on a painting from 1891-92 by Whistler of his friend, Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1855-1921), which was exhibited at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in May 1894, and is now in The Frick Collection, New York.
Whistler was displeased with the proofs for this lithograph and abadoned work on it with the Parisian printer Lemercier only to return to the subject in the same year with a second version (Spink 85) working with his London printer, Thomas Way. Neither Lemercier nor Way destroyed all their impressions, as Whistler had instructed, as a handful of proofs for both versions of the Montesquiou lithograph exist.
Spink, et al, note 6 proofs (plus two from the cancelled stone) of this current version as well as 5 proofs of the other version in public collections.
We have not found another impression of this version at auction in the past 25 years (and only one other impression of the other version). Way 138; Levy 133; Spink 84.
