The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Pier: A Grey Note may date from early 1884, when Whistler worked in St Ives. ¹

The Pier: A Grey Note, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

It was first exhibited at 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 1).

Images

Subject

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'The Pier; a grey note' (1884, Dowdeswell). ²
• 'Pier at Margate' (1934, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). ³
• 'A Grey Note' (1886, Society of British Artists). ⁴
• 'The Pier: A Grey Note' (1980, YMSM). ⁵

A pen inscription on the hack of the panel, dating from the first exhibition in 1884, reads 'The Pier, a grey note/ No. 1, catalogue/ "Notes, Harmonies, Nocturnes".' The inscription has faded and the title given to the painting in Boston in 1934 was based on a misreading.

'The Pier: A Grey Note' is the preferred title.

Description

The Pier: A Grey Note, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

A view from a beach, looking across green seas to a pier at far left. There is someone standing on the beach and a rider on a horse in the surf at right.

Site

The Pier: A Grey Note, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Grey and Silver: Mist – Life Boat, Freer Gallery of Art

The view was identified conclusively by Anna Greutzner Robins: it shows Smeaton's Pier in the coastal town of St Ives, Cornwall, in south-west England: the pier also appears in the distance in Grey and Silver: Mist - Life Boat y287. ⁶

Technique

Technique

The Pier: A Grey Note, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

It is thinly painted on an unprimed dark orangey-red panel. The yellowish tone of the wood shines through the muted colours, the grey sky and darker grey beach, and the greenish sea. The long horizontal brushstrokes on the sea, and the shorter, wavy strokes of white paint on the breakers are painted with a round-ended brush, 3mm wide; the details of the figure and the pier were defined with a very fine pointed brush.

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

Unknown.

History

Provenance

• By 1934: owned by Ross Theodore Whistler (1894-1963), Cambridge, MA, the son of Ross Winans Whistler (1858-1927);
• 1963: passed to his first wife, Mary Vinton Murray Whistler (Mrs R. T. Whistler) (1901-1995);
• 1979: sold at auction, Robert C. Eldred Co. Inc., East Dennis, MA, 2 August 1979 (lot 318), and bought by Gilbert Waters (n/a) for the Gilbert Waters family collection, Sarasota, Florida;
• 1988: Museum purchase, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Alletta Morris McBean Bequest Fund and gifts in her honor.

It was said to have been owned by Ross Winans (1795-1877), whose sister Julia married Whistler's half-brother George William Whistler (1822-1869), but this is not possible since it was not painted until 1884. It could however have been owned by Ross Winans Whistler, the son of G. W. Whistler and Julia de Kay Winans, and inherited by his son, Ross Theodore Whistler. The latter lent it to an exhibition in Boston in 1934. It was inherited by his first wife Mary Vinton Murray (Mrs Mary Murray Whistler) probably before or at the time of his second marriage in 1935, and was sold at auction in 1979.

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 1) as 'The Pier; a grey note'.
• 1886: Winter Exhibition, Society of British Artists, London, 1886 (cat. no. 235) as 'A Grey Note'.

The Glasgow Herald, on 10 June 1884, commended it as 'excellent and delicate'.

In 1887 'A Grey Note' was described in the Globe as 'a sea-coast [study] of miniature size'. ⁷

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. 286), plate 163, as 'The Pier: A Grey Note'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 1) as 'The Pier; a grey note'.
• Winter Exhibition, Society of British Artists, London, 1886 (cat. no. 235) as 'A Grey Note'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Messrs Dowdeswell's Gallery', Morning Post, London, 24 May 1884, p. 5.
• Anon., 'THE WHISTLER'S ARRANGEMENT IN FLESH COLOUR AND GREY', Glasgow Herald, Glasgow, 10 June 1884, p. 3.
• Globe, London, 29 November 1887.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Robins, Anna Gruetzner, A Fragile Modernism. Whistler and his Impressionist Followers, London and New Haven, 2007, pp. 13-14.

Books, General

• Gilbert, Henry, Roy Ray, and Colin Orchard, All About St. Ives: A Guide to the Town, its Galleries and Art History, [St Ives], 2006.

Catalogues 1906-Present

EXHIBITION:

• Oils, Water-colors, Drawings and Prints by James McNeill Whistler, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1934 (cat. no. 14) as 'Pier at Margate'.
• Symphonies in Stone: Lithographs by James McNeill Whistler, de Young, San Francisco, 1992.
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, pp. 14, 85, repr. p. 33.

SALE:

• Robert C. Eldred Co. Inc., East Dennis, MA, 2 August 1979 (lot 318).

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco blog at https://www.famsf.org/blog/love-and-maiden-harmony-hues.
• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco website at https://art.famsf.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 438a).

Other

• None.