Sep 22, 2016 - Sale 2422

Sale 2422 - Lot 31

Price Realized: $ 2,500
?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 printed in black on antique, cream laid paper, 1882. 134x82 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. Partial Strasburg Lily watermark. A very good impression.

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.