The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice was painted during Whistler's sojourn in Venice from September 1879 to October 1880. ¹

By April 1880 Whistler was planning to return and told Matthew Robinson Elden (1839-1885): 'I have worked very well - notwithstanding this awful weather - and shall bring, I hope, ... a large painting - but this last you must keep quite for yourself and the doctor.' ² However, Whistler did not return at this time and it is not certain to which, if any, of the extant Venetian oils he is referring: Nocturne: Blue and Gold - St Mark's, Venice y213, Nocturne in Blue and Silver: The Lagoon,Venice y212 (neither of which is particularly large), or the well-documented but unlocated portrait, A Gondolier y216.

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice, National Museum of Wales

Nocturne: Blue and Gold - St Mark's, Venice y213 was first exhibited in the Winter Exhibition, Society of British Artists, London, 1886 (cat. no. 331) as 'Nocturne in Brown and Gold: St. Mark's, Venice'.

Whistler retained possession of it for some years and may have worked on it. It was seen in Whistler's Fulham Road studio in 1887 by William Booth Pearsall (1845-1913). ³ It was cleaned and restored a few years later, and, on 23 September 1891, David Croal Thomson (1855-1930) of Goupil's wrote to Whistler that the 'Venice-scene' would be sent by the restorer Stephen Richards (1844-1900) to Paris. ⁴ Whistler told Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1855-1921) that having been cleaned it was 'superbe.' ⁵ When it was shown, shortly afterwards, in Nocturnes, Marines & Chevalet Pieces, Goupil Gallery, London, 1892 (cat. no. 38) it had a new title, 'Nocturne Blue and Gold – St. Mark's, Venice.' The change in title could reflect changes made by Whistler, or changes in perception, or the fact that it had been cleaned.

Images

Subject

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Nocturne in Brown and Gold: St. Mark's, Venice' (1886, Society of British Artists). ⁶
• 'St Marks in the moonlight' (1891, Whistler). ⁷
• 'Nocturne, Blue and Gold – St. Mark's, Venice' (1892, Goupil).
• 'Nocturne bleu et or; – Saint-Marc, Venise' (1892, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts). ⁸
• 'Nocturne, St. Mark's' and 'Nocturne, Blue and Gold, St. Mark's' (1905, ISSPG). ⁹
• 'Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice' (1980, YMSM). ¹⁰

'Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice' is the preferred title. The alteration of title between 1886 and 1892 probably reflects the fact that it had been cleaned.

Description

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice, National Museum of Wales

The façade of a church, at night, in horizontal format. There is scaffolding on the building.

Site

The best known of Venetian subjects, this is the view from in front of the famous café, Florian's, looking diagonally across the Piazza, north-east towards San Marco (partially covered in scaffolding) and the Piazzetta dei Leoni. Grieve points out that the recently installed gas lighting illuminates the gold on the façade. ¹¹

John Ruskin (1819-1900) and William Morris (1834-1896) had established a Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and there was considerable press coverage of the controversy about the extent and efficiency of the long-running restorations to St Marks. ¹²

While Whistler was in Venice, the north corner of the façade of San Marco was covered with the scaffolding from the controversial conservation programme. This is seen both in the oil and in an etching, The Piazzetta [218], which was included in the first Venice set of etchings published by The Fine Art Society. Ernest George Brown (1851-1915) commented 'I think the time is just ripe for the Venice etchings as there has been a devil of a row here about St Marks and any drawings of Venice we have had have sold immediately.' ¹³

On showing him the painting in Whistler's studio in 1887, Whistler asked Booth Pearsall 'if Ruskin would admit he could draw architecture.' ¹⁴

The American artist Otto Henry Bacher (1856-1909) stated that Whistler's 'very few paintings' made in Venice were done 'mostly from memory.' ¹⁵ However, the underlying structure of the cathedral and scaffolding is complex and may well have required making studies on site, even though none have survived.

Technique

Technique

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice, National Museum of Wales

Painted very thinly, the technique probably involving rubbing down to blur the image. However, a few highlights and architectural details are picked out clearly with a small brush and liquid, creamy paint.

Conservation History

On 23 September 1891, David Croal Thomson (1855-1930) of Goupil, London dealers, wrote to Whistler that the 'Venice-scene' would be sent by Stephen Richards (1844-1900), Whistler's picture restorer, to Paris. ¹⁶

It had been filthy, Whistler told Robert de Montesquiou, describing it as 'une Nocturne, St Marc que vous ne connaissez pas - quoique vous l'avez souvent regardé dans l'atelier - mais elle était dans un fort mauvais état - c'est à dire sale et négligée - et j'avais cessé de la connaître moi-même. Maintenant elle est superbe!' ¹⁷

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice, photograph, Goupil Album, 1892, GUL MS Whistler PH5/2

A photograph taken in 1892 shows it in its 'superb' cleaned condition.

Frame

Whistler wanted a new frame made by Frederick Henry Grau (1859-1892) for his retrospective exhibition at Goupil's in 1892. ¹⁸

History

Provenance

• 1892: bought by Sebastien-Paul Gallimard (1850-1929), Paris, through Boussod, Valadon & Cie.
• 1903: with Agnew's, London art dealers.
• By 1905: John James Cowan (1846-1936), Edinburgh.
• 1912: bought from Wallis, London art dealers, by Gwendoline Elizabeth Davies (1882-1951), and entered the collection of Gwendoline and Margaret Sidney Davies (1884-1963), Llandinam;
• 1952: bequeathed by Gwendoline Elizabeth Davies to the National Museum of Wales.

It may have been among Nocturnes exhibited in Paris in August 1891, when Whistler suggested to David Croal Thomson (1855-1930) of Goupil's in London that two Nocturnes should be shown to Levi Ziegler Leiter (1834-1904). ¹⁹ However, on 23 September 1891, Thomson mentioned 'Having to send for the ... Venice scene as arranged with Mr Richards', which suggests it was among additional canvases sent to Goupil's Paris branch, Boussod, Valadon & Cie, at that time. ²⁰ Certainly it was at Boussod, Valadon's in November, when the manager Maurice Joyant (1864-1930) wrote to Whistler:

'mon amateur aime beaucoup St. Marc, je crois qu'il finira par se décider; mais sa femme est très malade en ce moment et alors, il n'a plus la tête à lui. Oh.! les amateurs!'

Translation: 'my amateur [meaning a collector] likes St Marc's very much, I think he will decide to take it in the end; but his wife is very ill at the moment, he is beside himself. Oh.! Collectors!' ²¹

Whistler also urged John Chandler Bancroft (1835-1901) to go to Boussod, Valadon's to see 'a very fine and most characteristic Whistler ... The Venice Nocturne - The light in their little room upstairs is execrable - but no matter - you look at the Nocturne - it is a beauty - St Marks in the moonlight'. ²² Bancroft did not really appreciate it, and wrote to the artist, 'the light was abominable & I dont believe I got half as good an impression of the moonlight as it deserves - But frankly I am sure I like sunlight best.' ²³ However, the next day D. C. Thomson of Goupil's, sent Whistler a cheque for £250 for 'St Marks Venice', which was bought by Gallimard. ²⁴

It is not clear what happened next. Walford Graham Robertson (1867-1948) stated that Whistler left it in his house in Chelsea when he moved to Paris in 1892, and that he rescued it from the estate agents and asked Whistler's frame-maker to put it in his store room. ²⁵ However, Robertson may have been wrong about the picture or the date.

According to D. C. Thomson, it was with Agnew's in London in 1903. ²⁶ Two years later, in 1905, J. J. Cowan lent it to the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in London. It is not known when Cowan sold it. It was bought from Wallis, London art dealers, by Miss Gwendoline E. Davies, Llandinam in 1912, and bequeathed with her very important collection to the National Museum of Wales in 1952.

Exhibitions

• 1886: Winter Exhibition, Society of British Artists, London, 1886 (cat. no. 331) as 'Nocturne in Brown and Gold: St. Mark's, Venice'.
• 1892: Nocturnes, Marines & Chevalet Pieces, Goupil Gallery, London, 1892 (cat. no. 38) as 'Nocturne Blue and Gold – St. Mark's, Venice.'
• 1892: Exposition Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Champ-de-Mars, Paris, 1892 (cat. no. 1071) as 'Nocturne bleu et or; – Saint-Marc, Venise'.
• 1905: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 2) as 'Nocturne, St. Mark's', and, in deluxe edition, 'Nocturne, Blue and Gold, St. Mark's'.

According to Walter Delaplaine Scull (1863-1915), when this was exhibited at the SBA in 1886-1887, Whistler said, 'I think it is the best of my noctur-n-nes.' ²⁷ This view was not shared wholeheartedly by the press. The Era on 11 December 1886 described it as a 'dissolving view of St. Marks', while the Hampshire Independent on the same day added that it was a 'sketch of St. Mark's, at Venice, done in lamp black, with a few formless touches of grey, even though an imaginative artist calls it a Nocturne in brown and gold! are at once a libel on the objects represented, and insults to the public.'

It was on show privately at Boussod, Valadon & Cie in Paris in 1891. ²⁸ Whistler wrote to Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1855-1921):

'allez voir de belles choses que Goupil propose de rendre même commerciales! Il paraît qu'à Paris on veut enfin m'acheter! Ce qui me plairait beaucoup - car nous aimons la porcelaine bleue et les cuillières en argent - et surtout celà ennuyerait tout le monde içi - où il est convenu que l'on ne m'achetera jamais!

Vous y trouverez ... une Nocturne, St Marc que vous ne connaissez pas - quoique vous l'avez souvent regardé dans l'atelier - mais elle était dans un fort mauvais état - c'est à dire sale et négligée - et j'avais cessé de la connaître moi-même. Maintenant elle est superbe! - Voila -'

*Tout ça doit être chez les Goupil là haut sur les Boulevards où était autrefois une Exposition de Monet - Vous direz que vous venez de ma part, car j'avais exgigé qu'on n'en fasse pas Exhibition, comme je ne voulais pas écrémer l'affaire pour plus tard - mais qu'on les montre seulement en cachette pour ainsi dire, à leurs clients choisis.' ²⁹

]Free translation:] 'go and see the beautiful things which Goupil is proposing even to make commercial! It seems that at last people want to buy me in Paris! Which would please me very much - because we like blue porcelain and silver spoons - and above all that would annoy everyone here - where it is agreed that nobody will ever buy me!

There you will find ... a painting ... a Nocturne, St Mark that you do not know, although you have often looked at it in the studio - but it was in a very bad condition - that is to say dirty and neglected - and I had stopped recognizing it myself. Now it is superb! - There -

*All that should be at Goupil's up there on the Boulevards where there was once a Monet Exhibition - You will say that you have come on my behalf, because I did not want my work to be Exhibited, as I did not wish to spoil the business for later - but that they should be shown only in private so to speak, to selected clients.'

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice, National Museum of Wales

Harmony in Pink and Grey: Portrait of Lady Meux, The Frick Collection

Nocturne in Black and Gold: Entrance to Southampton Water, Freer Gallery of Art

In 1892, at Goupil's, as D. C. Thomson told Beatrice Philip (Mrs E. W. Godwin, Mrs J. McN. Whistler) (1857-1896): 'The portrait of 'Carlyle' is in the centre of the large room with marines at each side. The Lady Meux is on the other end wall, with the Venice & Madame Coronios Nocturne on each side.' ³⁰ Thus Nocturne in Black and Gold: Entrance to Southampton Water y179 and Nocturne: Blue and Gold - St Mark's, Venice y213 flanked Harmony in Pink and Grey: Portrait of Lady Meux y229.

In his Goupil catalogue entry for Nocturne: Blue and Gold - St Mark's, Venice y213 in 1892 Whistler pointedly quoted John Ruskin (1819-1900), who had criticised the ability of Giovanni Antonio Canaletto (1604-1682) to depict architectural ornament, compared to the incomparable 'stone drawing' of Samuel Prout (1783-1852); in the second edition of the Gentle Art of Making Enemies, Whistler added, in the margin, a jubilant butterfly with a barbed tail. He followed the quotation with one from The Athenaeum that he had kept in a press-cutting book for twenty years: 'In Mr. Whistler's productions one might safely say there is no culture.' ³¹

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice, photograph, Goupil Album, 1892, GUL MS Whistler PH5/2

Whistler queried the variable quality of photographs intended for the Goupil Album, where this painting was reproduced, and wrote to D. C. Thomson:

'A propos of the Album, you ought to have the proofs reinspected when they are sent to you - for I find that there really are magnificent proofs of each photograph. So that by eliminating the poor proofs, each time, we might have had absolutely perfect sets - It is too bad - In these last batches there were two proofs - one of the "Snow Nocturne" - & the other of "St Marc's - Venice" - that were so shockingly bad that I had to replace them with the copies out of my own set! I could not let the bad go.' ³²

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 (cat. no. 213), plate 135, as 'Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice'.

Authored by Whistler

• Nocturnes, Marines & Chevalet Pieces, Goupil Gallery, London, 1892 (cat. no. 38).
• Goupil Gallery and James McNeill Whistler, Nocturnes, Marines & Chevalet Pieces [portfolio of photographs published after the Goupil Gallery Exhibition, March-April 1892], London, 1892, repr. pl. 2.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Winter Exhibition, Society of British Artists, London, 1886 (cat. no. 331) as 'Nocturne in Brown and Gold: St. Mark's, Venice.'
• Nocturnes, Marines & Chevalet Pieces, Goupil Gallery, London, 1892 London, Goupil, 1892 (cat. no. 38) as 'Nocturne Blue and Gold – St. Mark's, Venice.'
• Exposition Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Champ-de-Mars, Paris, 1892 (cat. no. 1071) as 'Nocturne bleu et or; – Saint-Marc, Venise'.
• Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 2) as 'Nocturne, St. Mark's', and, in deluxe edition, 'Nocturne, Blue and Gold, St. Mark's'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Society of British Artists', The Era, London, 11 December 1886, p. 13.
• Anon., Hampshire Independent, Hampshire, 11 December 1886, p. 6.
• Anon., 'Art and Artists', Globe, London, 2 March 1892, p. 6.

Journals 1855-1905

• Thomson, David Croal, 'James Abbott McNeill Whistler: Some Personal Recollections', The Art Journal, vol. 65, September 1903, pp. 265-68, repr. p. 268.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Bacher, Otto Henry, With Whistler in Venice, 1st edition, New York, 1908 (suppressed for publishing facsimiles of Whistler's letters), p. 55.
• Grieve, Alastair, Whistler's Venice, New Haven and London, 2000, pp. 119, 171-73, pl. 221.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice, Aldershot and California, 2001, pp. 32-33.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, pp. 28, 63.
• Petri, Grischka, Arrangement in Business: The Art Markets and the Career of James McNeill Whistler, Hildesheim, 2011, pp. 391, 500, 501, 677, 684, 689.
• Rutter, Frank Francis Vane Phipson, James McNeill Whistler: an Estimate and a Biography, London, 1911, repr. f.p. 74.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908 (no. 90).

Books, General

• Mathews, Nancy Mowll, and Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Elizabeth Kennedy, Prendergast in Italy, Williams College. Museum of Art, Terra Foundation for American Art, 2009, p. 32.
• Ormond, Richard, and Warren Adelson, Sargent's Venice, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2006, p. 167.
• Robertson, W. Graham, Time Was: the Reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson, London and New York, 1931, p. 200.
• Upstone, Robert, and Oliver Craske, Sickert in Venice, London, 2009, p. 19.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• MacDonald, Margaret F., Whistler. The Graphic Work: Amsterdam, Liverpool, London, Venice, Agnew and Sons, London; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; City Art Gallery, Glasgow, 1976 (cat. no. 92).
• Lovell, Margaretta M., Venice: the American view, 1860-1920, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1984, p. 138 (cat. no. 89).
• Evans, Mark, Impressions of Venice from Turner to Monet, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 1992 (cat. no. 4).
• Dorment, Richard, and Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler, Tate Gallery, London, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1994-1995 (cat. no. 59).
• Merrill, Linda, et al., After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2003, p. 45, note 10 (not exhibited).
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, p. 88 (not exhibited).
• Lochnan, Katharine, Turner, Whistler, Monet, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Tate Britain, London, 2004-2005.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• 'Art Collections Online', National Museum of Wales website at https://museum.wales/art/online.
• ArtUK website at https://artuk.org.
• Upstone, Robert, 'Walter Richard SickertSt Mark's, Venice (Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus) 1896', The Camden Town Group in Context, 2009, Tate website at https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 93).

Other

• Siewert, John, 'Whistler’s Nocturnes and the Aesthetic Subject', PhD thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1994.