Mar 06, 2014 - Sale 2341

Sale 2341 - Lot 43

Price Realized: $ 2,125
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER
Sketch after Cecil Lawson's "Swan and Iris."

Etching and drypoint, 1882. 135x83 mm; 5 1/4x3 1/4 inches, wide margins. MacDonald's sixth state (of 6), with the horizontal drypoint lines extending on the bevel at the plate edge upper left. Strasburg Lily watermark. A superb, richly-inked impression of this scarce etching, with abundant drypoint and burr, notably on the sailboats upper center.

The subject was inspired by an unfinished painting by the artist Cecil Lawson (1851-1882), whose widow Constance Lawson was the elder sister of Whistler's wife-to-be, Beatrice. According to MacDonald, this was the only illustration etching Whistler made after the three he produced for the Junior Etching Club in 1861. It was used in Gosse's Cecil Lawson: A Memoir published by the Fine Art Society, London, in 1883. Kennedy 241; Glasgow 247.