?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER Rue des Bon Enfants, Tours.
Etching and drypoint printed in dark brown on antique cream laid paper, 1888. 150x80 mm; 6x3 1/4 inches. Signed with the butterfly and inscribed "imp" in pencil on the tab lower left, and titled and inscribed "No. 16" in pencil, verso. A superb impression of this extremely scarce etching.
We have not found another impression of this print at auction in the past 20 years.
After marrying Beatrice Godwin, the widow of the English architect E. W. Godwin (whose sumptuous design for Whistler's house at Tite Street, Chelsea, in 1877, helped precipate his late 1870s financial turmoil), the couple set off on a honeymoon tour to the chateaux of the Loire Valley. This is one of 30 some plates he etched along the way, all of them small, compact scenes like this, reminiscent of his Venice etchings.
Like the London etchings from the 1880s, these French subjects (which he referred to as the "Renaissance lot" owing to the style of architecture he was fond of depicting), were sometimes thought of as sets but never issued as such. Their exceeding scarcity today indicates that very few impressions of these etchings were actually ever printed. Kennedy 372.
