?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 8,000
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER Little Smithfield.
Etching printed in dark brownish black on cream Japan paper, 1870. 134x98 mm; 5 1/4x4 inches. Signed with the butterfly and inscribed "imp" in pencil on the tab lower left. A superb impression of this extremely scarce print.
We have not found another impression at auction in the past 20 years.
Following the popularity of his paintings The White Girl and Wapping, printmaking took second position to his career as a painter during the 1860s and 1870s. This was his least productive time as a printmaker, ended only by his travel to Venice in 1879 to create a set of etchings for the Fine Art Society, London.
This exceedingly scarce etching, probably made from life using a small copper plate on the spot, is a precursor to Whistler's Venice etchings with its shadowy figures and flat composition. The mundane, ambiguous setting is also characteristic of the Venice etchings. Kennedy 160.
