The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Green and silver – Parc Monceau, Paris dates from 1885/1886.

Green and silver – Parc Monceau, Paris, Colby College Museum of Art

Fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 1013).

Images

Subject

Site

Green and silver – Parc Monceau, Paris, Colby College Museum of Art

The Parc Monceau, Paris, France: it is on the Boulevard de Courcelles (between the Arc de Triomphe and the Gare St. Lazare).

Technique

Technique

Green and silver – Parc Monceau, Paris, Colby College Museum of Art

This was a complex, mainly layered scene, and painted freely by Whistler with comparatively bold squiggly strokes of small brushes. The trees and water were painted with brush strokes overlapping and running into each other. Details such as the swans and figures were added in opaque body colour after the earlier washes had dried.

Conservation History

The paper, which has a flat untextured surface, is slightly darkened at the edges.

History

Provenance

• 1886: bought by the actor Henry Irving (1838-1905);
• 1905: bequeathed to Florence Irving (1843-1914);
• 1914: Estate of Mrs Florence Irving;
• 1916: bought by Colnaghi, London dealers, 1 August, and sold, jointly with Knoedler, New York dealers, to Stephen Carlton Clark (1882-1960), New York, but returned;
• 1953: sold to the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York;
• 1953: bought by the artist, John Marin (1870-1953);
• 1953: at his death on 1 October, bequeathed to Norma Marin and John Marin, Jr (d. 1988);
• 1984: on loan to Colby College, Waterville, Maine.
• 2013: given by Paula Crane Lunder (b. 1935) and Peter H. Lunder (b. 1933) to Colby College Museum of Art.

Further details are given in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 1013); this record has been revised and updated.

Exhibitions

• 1886: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 (cat. no. 68) as 'Green and Silver – Parc Monceau, Paris'.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 1013) as 'Green and silver – Parc Monceau, Paris'.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 (cat. no. 68) as 'Green and Silver–Parc Monceau, Paris'.

Websites

• Colby College Museum of Art, 2018, website.