Sep 20, 2018 - Sale 2485

Sale 2485 - Lot 45

Price Realized: $ 6,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER
T. A. Nash's Greengrocer's Shop.

Etching and drypoint printed in dark brownish black, 1887. 178x126 mm; 7 1/8x5 inches. MacDonald's fifth state (of 5). Signed with the butterfly and inscribed "imp" in pencil on the tab, lower left. A superb impression of this extremely scarce etching.

We have found only 3 other impressions at auction in the past 30 years. MacDonald cites only 10 known impressions.

T. A. Nash's greengrocer's shop was at 6 College Street in Chelsea, London; it is one of a group of London shop-fronts etched by Whistler at the time.

These etchings were made on plates small enough to be carried in his pocket. As he wandered the city around his Chelsea home and found scenes that interested him, he would draw on the plates directly from life. Like Whistler's earlier Venice etchings, many of these London etchings of the 1880s have an informal sketch-like, vignette feel to them. The compositions are also mostly frontal and the subjects are usually modest, ordinary building façades, shops and park scenes. Kennedy 263; Glasgow 298.