The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Giudecca; note in flesh colour dates from 1880.

The Giudecca; note in flesh colour, Mead Art Museum

This pastel is fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 817).

Images

Subject

Site

The Giudecca; note in flesh colour, Mead Art Museum

The Giudecca; note in flesh colour, Mead Art Museum, photograph 1980s

The Giudecca, photograph, M. F. MacDonald, 1990s, Whistler Paintings Project, Glasgow University Library

Venice, Italy. Whistler may have drawn this from a jetty or a boat off the Molo, looking south-west towards the broad Canale della Giudecca that runs between Venice and the Isola della Giudecca. The Giudecca itself is a string of eight islands. The major building on it is the late Renaissance masterpiece, the Redentore, erected to celebrate the ending of the plague of 1576. ¹

Technique

History

Provenance

• 1883: given by the artist to the sculptor Joseph Edgar Boehm (1834-1890), London.
• 1909: sold at auction, Christie's, London, 27 March 1909 (lot 85) as 'Venice pastel' and either bought by 'Bates' or bought in;
• 1909: bought from Colnaghi's, London dealers, by Burton Mansfield (1856-1932), New Haven, CT.
• Date unknown: with Macbeth, New York dealers'
• 1933: after his death, sold at auction, AAA, New York, 7 April 1933 (lot 14) and bought by J. A. Kalman, according to George Dupont Pratt (1869-1935), Glen Cove, Long Island;
• 1933: given by Amherst graduate George Dupont Pratt (1869-1935) to Amherst College.

It was originally given by Whistler to his friend the sculptor J. E. Boehm. A paper that was originally attached to the frame was inscribed by the artist 'To Boehm - whose Art is exquisite and whose sympathy is sufficient'.

See further details in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 817).

Exhibitions

• 1881: Venice Pastels, Fine Art Society, London, 1881 (cat. no. 13) as 'The Giudecca; note in flesh colour'.

It was described in the Daily Telegraph as 'a jewelled art-work … which holds the crowning place of honour, on the south wall of the gallery', but queried the title, since 'the aerial flsuh … in his finely luminous distance would only be a small accessory were he really paintig flesh.' ²

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 817) as 'The Giudecca; note in flesh colour'.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Venice Pastels, Fine Art Society, London, 1881 (cat. no. 13) as 'The Giudecca; note in flesh colour'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Venice Pastels, Daily Telegraph, London, 5 February 1881.
• 'Art: Venice Pastels', The Observer, London, 6 February 1881, supplement p. 1.
• Anon., [Quilter, H.], 'Mr Whistler's Venice Pastels', The Times, London, 9 February 1881, p. 4.

Journals 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Mr Whistler's Pastels', Athenaeum, no. 2780, 5 February 1881 , p. 206.
• The Country Gentleman, 5 February 1881.
• Anon., 'Mr Whistler's Venice, or, Pastels by Pastelthwaite', Punch, vol. 80, 12 February 1881, p. 69.

Books on Whistler

• Grieve, Alastair, Whistler's Venice, New Haven and London, 2000, pp. 160-61, repr. pl. 203, view repr. pl. 204.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice, Aldershot and California, 2001, p. 99, 107, repr. pl. 113.
• Way, Thomas Robert, Memories of James McNeill Whistler, the Artist, London and New York, 1912, repr. f.p. 52.

Websites

• Collections Database Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium online at http://museums.fivecolleges.edu.