?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER The Village Sweet Shop.
Etching printed in dark brownish black on antique cream laid paper, 1886. 82x124 mm; 3 1/4x4 7/8 inches. Edition of approximately only 14. 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 5 other impressions at auction in the past 30 years.
It is speculated that Whistler etched this scene in the small town of Sandwich, Kent, in the south of England. Whistler made several etchings there including Salvation Army, Sandwich, Double Doorway, Sandwich and Doorway, Sandwich (Glasgow 319, 322-23). Whistler etched many street scenes of local businesses and storefronts. He painted a similar subject, An Orange Note: Sweet Shop a few years prior to this etching. Lochnan comments, "Whistler's developing interest in transparency and translucency was explored in the etching of sweets barely visible through the glass of the shop windows" (Lochnan 250). Kennedy 251; Glasgow 266.
