Detail from The Canal, Amsterdam, 1889, James McNeill Whistler, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

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The Selsey Shore

Titles

Two titles have been recorded:

  • 'The Selsey Shore' (Before 1890, C. A. Howell). 1
  • 'Selsie Beach, or Sands' (1894, Whistler). 2
  • 'Beach at Selsie Bill' (1894, Whistler). 3
  • 'Selsey Shore' (1890, Christie's). 4
  • 'The Selsey Shore' (1980, YMSM) 5

'The Selsey Shore' is the preferred title.

Description

The Selsey Shore, Hill-Stead Museum of American Art
The Selsey Shore, Hill-Stead Museum of American Art

A beach scene, painted in horizontal format. The dark beach in the foreground runs from lower right at a diagonal up to left. The sea is fairly calm, blue under a cloudy sky.

Site

C. A. Howell lived at Selsey Bill in Sussex (between Chichester and Portsmouth) on the south coast of England. Whistler made one etching there and a watercolour, both of which date from about 1880. Whistler visited Howell several times when he took the house Old Denner at Selsey Bill in the late 1870s.

Notes:

1: Label pasted on the verso.

2: Whistler to D. C. Thomson, 30 August 1894, GUW #08311.

3: Whistler to A. A. Pope, [30 August 1894], GUW #09599.

4: Christie's, London, 13 November 1890 (lot 435).

5: YMSM 1980 [more] (cat. no. 200).

Last updated: 25th November 2020 by Margaret