The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Courtyard on Canal; grey and red dates from 1880.

Courtyard on Canal; grey and red, St Louis Art Museum

This pastel is fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 790).

Images

Subject

Site

Courtyard on Canal; grey and red, St Louis Art Museum

Venice, Italy. The exact site has not been identified.

Technique

Composition

Door, whereabouts unknown

Courtyard on Canal; grey and red, St Louis Art Museum

There is another drawing of the same view, Door m0789, which may be a study for the pastel.

History

Provenance

• 1903: sold by Walter Greaves (1846-1930), London, to William Stephen Marchant (1868-1925), London art dealer;
• 1904/1905: bought by Richard Albert Canfield (1855-1914), Providence, RI;
• 1914: bought by Knoedler's, New York dealers, on 12 March, and sold on 30 April to Harris Whittemore (1864-1927), Naugatuck, CT;
• 1927: on his death, passed to the J. H. Whittemore Company;
• 1948: sold at auction, estate of the late Harris Whittemore, Parke-Bernet, New York, 19 May 1948 (lot 10, repr.) and bought by two New York dealers, Knoedler and C. Carstairs;
• 1948: sold in October to John Lionberger Davis (1878-1973), St Louis;
• 1957: given to the St Louis Art Museum.

For further details see MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 790).

Exhibitions

• 1881: Venice Pastels, Fine Art Society, London, 1881 (cat. no. 11) as 'Courtyard on Canal; grey and red'.
• 1903-1904: Watercolours, Pastels, Drawings in Black and White, Sculptures and Bronzes By British and Foreign Artists Including A Selection of Works by H. B. Brabazon, and A Group of Works by the late James McNeill Whistler, W. Marchant & Co., Goupil Gallery, London, 1903 (cat. no. 191) and 1904 (cat. no. 21).
• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 166).

It was at some date unknown with a frame-maker, B. Pénaud, frame-maker, 4 rue Favart (label) in Paris, France: this may mean that it was exhibited in France in Whistler's lifetime.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 790).

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Venice Pastels, Fine Art Society, London, 1881 (cat. no. 11).
• Watercolours, Pastels, Drawings in Black and White, Sculptures and Bronzes By British and Foreign Artists Including A Selection of Works by H. B. Brabazon, and A Group of Works by the late James McNeill Whistler, W. Marchant & Co., Goupil Gallery, London, 1903 (cat. no. 191) and 1904 (cat. no. 21).
• Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 166).

Books on Whistler

• Grieve, Alastair, Whistler's Venice, New Haven and London, 2000, pp. 150-51, repr. pl. 190.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice, Aldershot and California, 2001, p. 54, repr. pl. 61.
• Way, Thomas Robert, Memories of James McNeill Whistler, the Artist, London and New York, 1912, repr. f.p. 52.