The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Note in Red and Violet: Nets, according to Miss Constance Halford, was probably painted in St Ives in 1884. ¹

Note in Red and Violet: Nets, Private collection

Whistler worked in St Ives, Cornwall, between January and March 1884.

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title is known, with variations in grammar and punctuation:

• 'Note in red and violet – Nets' (1884, Dowdeswell). ²
• 'A Note in Red and Violet: Nets' (1904, RSA). ³
• 'Note in Red and Violet' (1905, ISSPG). ⁴
• 'A Note in Red and Violet' (1914, Knoedler). ⁵
• 'Note in Red and Violet: Nets' (1980, YMSM). ⁶

'Note in Red and Violet: Nets' is the preferred title, conforming to other titles.

Description

Note in Red and Violet: Nets, Private collection

A beach scene, with many figures, in horizontal format. Two figures are mending fishing nets on the shore. A small child in a red cloak stands in the lower right foreground. In the distance, the sea is blue, with waves breaking on the shore. A small fishing boat is very close to the shore, just to left of centre.

Site

St Ives, Cornwall. E. L. Cary stated that 'Miss Constance Halford writes that she thinks this picture was painted at St. Ives, in Cornwall.' ⁷

A photograph in the Library of Congress (PC) is inscribed 'Pourville' in the hand of Joseph Pennell (1860-1926), but stylistically it is much more likely to have been painted at St Ives in 1884 than at Pourville in 1899 (see The Sea, Pourville, No. 1 y516).

Technique

Technique

Note in Red and Violet: Nets, private collection

It is freely painted in thin paint of a creamy consistency, with bold brushwork, though on a small scale. There are signs of alterations to the figures and boats.

Conservation History

Note in Red and Violet: Nets, photograph, 1980

Unknown.

Frame

Note in Red and Violet: Nets, frame, photograph 1973

Grau-style frame.

History

Provenance

• 1884/1885: bought by Cyril Flower (1843-1907), London;
• 1899: sold by Agnew's, London art dealers, to Edmund Davis (1861-1939), 1-2 March 1899 (a/c #8801);
• By 1904-1905: probably given to his sister-in-law, Constance Halford (dates unknown).
• 1914: Knoedler, New York art dealers.
• Before 1965: sold by Mrs Perle Reid Mesta (1889-1975), Washington, DC, to a private collector.
• 1972: sold by Arpad Antiques, Washington DC, to a private collector, by September 1972.

Cyril Flower (later Lord Battersea) is recorded as buying 'Note in red & violet' after the Dowdeswell exhibition in 1884. ⁸

Edmund Davis married Mary Halford (ca 1866-1941), whose sister Constance Hannah Halford was a sculptor. It is likely that he passed the painting to his sister-in-law. It was lent by Constance Halford to exhibitions in 1904 and 1905. She married the artist William Cecil Rea (1860-1935) in 1907. There is then a gap in the known provenance until 1914, when it was with Knoedler's in New York and exhibited in that year (cat. no. 8) for sale at $4000. ⁹

According to Michael Arpad in Washington, DC, writing in 1972, it had recently been sold to a private collector. ¹⁰

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 24) as 'Note in red and violet – Nets'.
• 1904: 78th Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1904 (cat. no. 307) as 'A Note in Red and Violet: Nets'.
• 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. 77) as 'Note in Red and Violet'.

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. 269), plate 183, as 'Note in Red and Violet: Nets'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 24) as 'Note in red and violet – Nets'.
• 78th Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1904 (cat. no. 307) as 'A Note in Red and Violet: Nets'.
• 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. 77) as 'Note in Red and Violet'.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907, p. 220 (cat. no. 427).

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Oils, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings by J. McN. Whistler, Knoedler & Co., New York, 1914 (cat. no. 8) as 'A Note in Red and Violet' .
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, p. 89.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• None.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 426).

Other

• None.