Mr. Whistler's gallery: the art of displaying art

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2003 by Kenneth John Myers

(20) Menpes, Whistler as I Knew Him, p. 116.

(21) When Whistler first showed his Venice etchings at the Fine Art Society in December 1880, a writer in the World (December 8, 1880) described the exhibition as consisting of twelve etchings, "of unimportant dimensions, and of the slightest workmanship." Whistler seized upon the negative review as an opportunity to emphasize his rejection of size as a meaningful criterion for the evaluation of either beauty or importance. In a magisterial letter to the editor of the paper, he announced, "an etching does not depend for its importance, upon its size. `I am not arguing with you--I am telling you.'" Both the review and Whistler's response are reprinted in James McNeill Whistler: The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (new ed., Heinemann, London, 1892), pp. 50-51.

(22) For the Fine Art Society's rebuff of Whistler's feeler, see Marcus B. Huish to Whistler, October 25, 1883, and March 15, 1884; and Whistler to Huish, about March 16, 1884. All three letters are in the Whistler archive in the Glasgow University Library. Whistler first mentions an upcoming exhibition in a January letter to the sculptor Thomas Waldo Story (1855-1915) (see Whistler to Story, late December 1883 or January 1884, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey).

(23) Whistler to Edmund Hodgson Yates, published in the World, vol. 20, no. 496 (January 2, 1884), p. 17, and reprinted in Whistler, Gentle Art, pp. 111-112. Menpes describes his weeks with Whistler in Saint Ives in Menpes, Whistler as I Knew Him, pp. 135-144. For the development of tourism in Saint Ives, see Bell, "Fact and Fiction," pp. 152-158.

(24) See Whistler to James Alfred Chapman, January 15, 1884 (Art Institute of Chicago); Whistler to Story, January 1884 (Montclair Art Museum); Whistler to Charles W. Deschamps, January 8, 1884 (box A, folder 23, Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell collection, manuscript division, Library of Congress). See also Whistler to Ernest G. Brown, January 20, 1884, and Whistler to E.W. Godwin, January 30, 1884 (both in the Whistler archive, Glasgow University Library).

(25) For Whistler's use of watercolor, see Ruth E. Fine, "Notes and Notices: Whistler's Watercolors," in In Honor of Paul Mellon, Collector and Benefactor: Essays, ed. John Wilmerding (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986), pp. 111-135. Most of Whistler's watercolors from the early 1880s are landscapes he produced in small numbers while sketching along the Thames or on short trips to Hastings, the Channel Islands, or Holland. He included a few of these in the 1884 exhibition, but most of the watercolors in the show were made after the close of Arrangement in White and Yellow.

(26) Whistler to Mortimer Menpes, early May 1884 (James McNeill Whistler collection. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin); and Whistler to Charles William Dowdeswell, early May 1884 (vol. 1, doc. 47, Rosenwald collection).

(27) Godwin, "To Art Students," p. 13. That the installation stayed up at least until the late fall of 1884 is suggested by a letter Whistler wrote to William Booth Pearsall in November or December 1884 (box C, folder 8, Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell collection).