The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Variations in violet and grey – Market Place, Dieppe dates from 1885.

Variations in violet and grey – Market Place, Dieppe, Metropolitan Museum of Art

It is fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 1024). The record has been updated.

Images

Subject

Site

Variations in violet and grey – Market Place, Dieppe, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The market in the town of Dieppe, on the French coast.

Technique

Technique

Variations in violet and grey – Market Place, Dieppe, Metropolitan Museum of Art

See discussion in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 1024) .

History

Provenance

• 1891: 'Market Place Dieppe' was sold, according to Whistler, to Edmund F. Deprez (1851-1915), London dealer, on 26 June 1891.
• 1893: David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), London art dealer, received two watercolours, probably including this, from the art dealer Otto Gutekunst (ca 1865-after 1939).
• 1928: bought from Harlow, MacDonald & Co., New York, by Knoedler's, New York dealers, on 1 0ctober (# WCA72) and sold to Daniel Haddock Carstairs (b. 1862), Germantown, Pennsylvania, 20 November;
• 1929: returned on 8 October to Knoedler's (#WCA371, joint a/c with Reid and Lefevre);
• 1930: sold to Wadsworth R. Lewis (1889-1942), Ridgefield, Connecticut, and New York, 16 April;
• 1943: sold at auction, Wadsworth R. Lewis sale, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, 2 April 1943 (lot 397, repr.) as 'The Market Place, Dieppe' and bought by Carstairs, New York dealer.
• Date unknown: acquired by Mrs Polly Brooks Howe (d. 1973), who gave it to Mr and Mrs Douglass Campbell, New York;
• 2000: gift of Douglass Campbell, Richard Strachan, and Stephen M. Strachan, in memory of Mrs Douglass Campbell and Mrs William Lyman Campbell, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Further details are given in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 1024); this record has been updated.

Exhibitions

• 1886: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 (cat. no. 11) as 'Variations in violet and grey – Market Place, Dieppe'.
• 1887: possibly Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 179) as 'Argent et violet: Dieppe' although this might have been an oil.
• 1888: probably III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Königlicher Glaspalast, Munich, 1888 (cat. no. 26) as 'Rosa und Silber: Markt in Dieppe'.
• 1889: “Notes” – “Harmonies” – “Nocturnes”, H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, 1889 (cat. no. 19) as 'Blue and Violet – The Market – Dieppe'.

The New York Evening Sun on 16 March 1889 described it unfavourably:

'a confused mass of blotches, single strokes of the brush, spots but little more than microscopic, and these resolve into the busy industries of a market, huckstering groups, types distinguished by the outline, and which could by no means be confounded with another mass of blotches'.

It was priced at 50 guineas in 1889, but remained unsold, and was returned to Whistler after the exhibition by Wunderlich's on the SS Servia. ¹

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 1024) as 'Variations in violet and grey – Market Place, Dieppe'.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Second Series, Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1886 (cat. no. 11) as 'Variations in violet and grey – Market Place, Dieppe'.
• Possibly Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 179) as 'Argent et violet: Dieppe' although this might have been an oil.
• Probably III. Internationale Kunst-Ausstellung, Königlicher Glaspalast, Munich, 1888 (cat. no. 26) as 'Rosa und Silber: Markt in Dieppe'.
• “Notes” – “Harmonies” – “Nocturnes”, H. Wunderlich & Co., New York, 1889 (cat. no. 19) as 'Blue and Violet – The Market – Dieppe'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Fun, New York, 1 March 1889.
• The Epoch, New York, 8 March 1889.
• Anon., 'Mr. Whistler's Pictures at the Wunderlich Gallery', The Sun, New York, 10 March 1889, p. 14.
• Home Journal, New York, 15 March 1889.
• Anon., Evening Sun, New York, 16 March 1889

Books, General

• Avery, Kevin J., et al., American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 1, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born before 1835, New York, 2002, pp. 278-88 (cat. no. 106), repr. p. 287.

Websites

• Metropolitan Museum of Art website.