?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER The Beggars.
Etching and drypoint printed in black on antique, cream laid paper, 1879-80. 307x211 mm; 12 1/8x8 1/4 inches. MacDonald's seventeenth state (of 17). Signed with the butterfy and inscribed "imp" in pencil on the tab, lower left. From Twelve Etchings. A brilliant, richly-inked impression of this extremely scarce etching.
This is one of the larger etchings in the first "Venice Set,' made on a plate obtained directly from a Venetian craftsman (not one brought by Whistler from London). The view is through a relatively dark passageway from the Corte de la Carozze to the Campo Santa Margarita. Whistler reworked the figures several times after returning to London. In the earliest, most successful impressions, like here, the dark figure of the man midway through the passageway is sharply-highlighted by the area of light around him. Kennedy 194; Glasgow 190.
