The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Old Clothes Shop, Houndsditch is unfinished and therefore difficult to date. However, it could well date from 1887, when it is known Whistler was working in Houndsditch, or later in the 1890s, up to 1901. ¹

Old Clothes Shop, Houndsditch, The Hunterian

In 1887 Whistler worked in Petticoat Lane and other sites in the East End of London including St James's Place, at the heart of the Jewish enclave, the site of the great Synagogue and a number of small family-run shops, where he etched, for instance, St James's Place, Houndsditch [255] and Cutler Street, Houndsditch [361].

Images

Subject

Titles

There are several variations on the title, as follows:

• 'Jews clothes shop' (1901, Rosalind Birnie Philip). ²
• 'The Jews Shop Chelsea' (1901, Whistler). ³
• 'The Jews Shop, Chelsea' (1901/1935, anon.). ⁴
• 'Old Clothes Shop Houndsditch' (1936, Glasgow University). ⁵
• 'Old Clothes Shop, Houndsditch' (1980, YMSM). ⁶

Description

Old Clothes Shop, Houndsditch, The Hunterian

The shop front is drawn parallel to the edges of a horizontal panel. Two people – a man in a brown coat or cloak wearing a top hat, and, to right, a woman in black with a white apron – stand talking in front of an open door. A semi-circular brick arch above the door is filled in and painted white. Shapeless old clothes, black, brown and white, hang either side of the door. A window to left, and larger one to right of the door are pencilled in and tinted lightly with pale ochre and brown. At far left framed pictures (including a portrait) or posters are roughly indicated but not coloured. Across the entire frontage of the shop are tables with a mixture of goods, possibly including books.

Site

Houndsditch in East London was the centre of the second-hand clothing trade. Henry Mayhew described this area as it appeared in 1851:

'The trade in second-hand apparel is one of the most ancient of callings, and is known in almost every country, but anything like the Old Clothes exchange of the Jewish quarter of London, in the extent and order of its business, is unequalled in the world. ... until the last few years, the trade in old clothes used to be carried on entirely in the open air, [in] the Petticoat-lane district. ... adjoining Cutler-street. The chief traffic elsewhere was originally in Cutler-street, White-street, Carter-street, and in Harrow-alley – the districts of the celebrated Rag-fair.' ⁷

Cutler Street, Houndsditch, Freer Gallery of Art (G.361)

Whistler made many etchings of shops, including a series of etchings of Houndsditch in 1887. One etching, Cutler Street, Houndsditch [361], shows a second-hand clothes shop belonging to a Jewish shop-owner, Benjamin Abrahams, a dealer in government stores, one of a large community of 12,000 Jews who lived in the City, out of some 18,000 in the greater London area. They lived mostly within the area bounded by Spitalfields, Petticoat Lane, Leadenhall-Street, Aldgate, Whitechapel and Bishops-gate Street.

Subjects involving the second hand clothing trade, and based in the east End, include Petticoat Lane [299], Clothes-Exchange, Houndsditch. No. 1 [358], Clothes-Exchange, Houndsditch. No. 2 [359], Fleur-de-lys Passage [360], and After the Sale, Clothes Exchange, Houndsditch [357]. In St James's Place, at the heart of the Jewish enclave, the site of the Synagogue and small family-run shops, Whistler etched St James's Place, Houndsditch [255] and Nut Shop, St James's Place, Houndsditch [356].

He depicted other second-hand shops in both London and in Paris, including the painting Chelsea, Little Furniture Shop y373, and the etchings Rag Shop, Milman's Row, Chelsea [329], Rag Shop, St Martin's Lane [328], Quai de Montebello [385], and Marchand de Meubles, Rue du Four [482].

Comments

Old Clothes Shop, Houndsditch,photograph by William Gray, inscr. 'The Jews Shop, Chelsea', GUL Whistler PH4/42

Whistler may have had several reasons for his interest in second hand and old clothes' shops, as a source for old silver, for instance, or for their picturesque and historical associations. His seeking out of subjects in the East-End of London, and in a predominantly Jewish area, may have arisen from his admiration for Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn (1617-1681). In the "Ten o'clock" Lecture of 1885 Whistler had extolled 'Rembrandt, when he saw picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam – and lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks.' ⁸

Technique

Technique

Old Clothes Shop, Houndsditch, Hunterian

It was painted on a panel made from a single piece of timber about 1 cm deep. It was primed with a pale grey underpaint, visible as left to right brushmarks, and left bare over much of the surface, particularly at left. ⁹ The outlines of the composition were sketched, possibly in charcoal, and then with a brush in short strokes of grey paint to emphasise the drawing, but the picture was left unfinished. Only some areas – like the doorway, the two figures and goods near them – have been coloured. However, there is a wide range of subtly varied colours: yellow ochre, light and dark brown and grey, Indian red, a pink that may be Indian red mixed with white for the hanging clothes, and green and yellow for other clothes. ¹⁰ The white cloth hanging in the doorway at right looks as if it has been scraped with the end of the brush or a palette knife.

There is a thin and very yellowed varnish with linear craquelure (crazing) suggestive of dried egg white, which is most obvious over the figures and the shadows and doorway behind them. This may have been applied by Whistler to fix the charcoal-like material used for drawing, or so that he could see the effect of varnish on the only completed area of the picture.

This is typical of Whistler's method of working, outlining the overall design on a prepared panel before working up individual areas in greater detail.

Conservation History

The panel has some damage on the short sides from sliding it into a paintbox before the paint dried.

There is some fine craquelure and drying cracks. The panel has a small split at the top edge. There appears to have been some retouching but it is not certain whether that was done by the artist or a restorer. ¹¹

The wood panel has an auxiliary backing and framing device, both made from mahogany-type hardwood, with adhered thin battens that have mitred corners. The overall varnish, which extends over the battens, is slightly yellowed. ¹² This form of auxiliary backing was almost certainly done after Whistler's death.

Frame

32.5 x 41.5 x 3.2 cm.

History

Provenance

• 1903: in Whistler's studio at his death and bequeathed to his ward and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958);
• 1935: given by Miss R. Birnie Philip to the University of Glasgow.

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime. In fact it was not shown in public at all before it reached Glasgow in 1935.

Due to the terms of Miss Birnie Philip's gift to the University of Glasgow, it is not lendable.

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. 371), plate 236, as 'Old Clothes Shop, Houndsditch'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler: Uneasy Pieces, New York, 2004, p. 288, repr. p. 289.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

EXHIBITION:

• James McNeill Whistler, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, 1936 (cat. no. 1) as 'Old Clothes Shop Houndsditch'.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Whistler Pastels and Related Works in the Hunterian Art Gallery, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, 1984, p. 7 (not exhibited).

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• The Hunterian website at http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/41191
• Art UK website at https://artuk.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 365).

Other

• None.