The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Perros-Guirec was painted in the autumn of 1893.

It was originally thought to date from the autumn of 1888, when Whistler and his bride were in Brittany on their honeymoon. ¹

Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Perros-Guirec, Fogg Art Museum

However, the butterfly signature indicates a much later date, in the early 1890s. The date of 1893 is confirmed by a letter from Whistler to D. C. Thomson in 1895: 'The little panel was painted in Brittany when we were there - at the same time as those last sea pieces exhibited the other day at the Champ de Mars.' ² The Whistlers were in Brittany in September 1893, when Whistler painted Violet and Silver: A Deep Sea y411, Dark Blue and Silver y412, and Violet and Blue: Among the Rollers y413 – which were the pictures shown at the Salon of the Champ de Mars in 1894.

Images

Subject

Titles

Several variations on the title have been suggested:

• ' "Bathers" – Blue & Silver' (1895, Whistler). ³
• 'Violet et bleu. Les petits baigneurs; Perosquerie' [sic] (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). ⁴
• 'Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Pérosquérié' [sic] (1980, YMSM). ⁵
• 'Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Perros-Guirec' (2020, WPP).

The name of the town has now been corrected, from Pérosquérié to Perros-Guirec, and 'Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Perros-Guirec' is the preferred title.

Description

Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Perros-Guirec, Fogg Art Museum

A beach scene in horizontal format. In the foreground are rocks, with a figure in a white shirt standing on them, and several bathers in the surf at the edge of the sea beyond. The horizon line is high, the sea pale turquoise blue by the shore, shading to deeper blue at the horizon.

Site

Perros-Guirec is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor (formerly Côtes-du-Nord) department in Brittany in northwestern France. It is a small fishing port and a popular seaside resort.

Technique

Technique

Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Perros-Guirec, Fogg Art Museum

The panel is primed in grey. It is thinly painted. Sky, beach and butterfly are predominantly grey, setting off the soft, fluid brush-work on the rich greenish-blue coloured sea. The dainty pink figures are painted with minute brushstrokes.

Conservation History

Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Perros-Guirec, photograph, 1980

It was varnished by Stephen Richards (1844-1900) in 1895. ⁶

Frame

Grau-style frame, made in America by M. Grieve, dating from the 1930s or 1940s. ⁷

History

Provenance

• By 1902: Alexander Arnold Hannay (1858-1927), London.
• 1921: with W. Marchant, London dealers;
• 1922: sold by Scott & Fowles, New York dealers, to Miss Ellen Henderson (1869-1935), New Orleans;
• 1935: possibly bequeathed to Hunt Henderson (1869-1939), New Orleans;
• 1939: bequeathed by Hunt Henderson to Tulane University, New Orleans;
• 1941: bought from Tulane University by Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943), New York;
• 1943: bequeathed by him to Harvard University.

It may have been sold by Whistler through D. C. Thomson, of Goupil, London art dealers, to whom he wrote on 11 October 1895:

'I have a little picture for Bailie Cochrane - of Glasgow - but I dont remember his address - nor his proper name and title ...

He was one of the Committee of the Glasgow Galleries who purchased the Carlyle -

... I promised long ago to paint him something - and I am just thinking that perhaps this might please him -

However I am sending it on to Richards first to varnish - and I might let you have a peep at it - It is a little panel - a pretty little sea piece -

If you like to make an offer for it - since you do make offers - you might perhaps have it and I could do something else for the Bailie.' ⁸

Clearly the picture did not go to Scotland, and instead Whistler pressed Thomson to buy it, writing on 14 October, 'I want you to see the little panel when it is varnished and properly in its frame - I may let you have it for [a] small price - say 80. gns.' ⁹ And to Stephen Richards (1844-1900) he wrote, ' I am glad you like the little sea piece - Let me know directly it is done.' ¹⁰ Unfortunately Richards could not make the proper frame without an example to follow, and Whistler's former frame-maker, Frederick Henry Grau (1859-1892) had died. ¹¹

On 22 October Thomson wrote:

I have now seen it & I find the best reply is to send you the enclosed cheque for £60, which I trust you will find correct as from a dealer who finds it troublesome to deal in guineas which cannot translate into dollars or francs!

I buy the picture for my firm because I like it & because I want at this time to meet you in every way I can. ... All the same if guineas you must have I will send the 5% more.

I think of sending this little picture to Paris as our people there ask such. If therefore you have any more ready or when they are ready let me see them direct from yourself or from friend Richards & not through any ——— Englishman!' ¹²

Whistler replied on 23 October 1895, insisting on payment in guineas and adding: 'The little "Bathers" - Blue & Silver" - I think will be very much liked - and a good thing. ' ¹³ The artist then added further information:

'I forgot to tell you as you asked that the little marine is of course recent work - not painted here - for the sea is impossible here being on the wrong side of the sun! - That is the sun is all day long in your eye on the sea - and the sky effects are behind you -

The little panel was painted in Brittany when we were there - at the same time as those last sea pieces exhibited the other day at the Champ de Mars -' ¹⁴

It was seen by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) of Detroit in the collection of A. Arnold Hannay, London in 1902. ¹⁵

There is a gap in the provenance, but according to Museum records, it was with William Stephen Marchant (1868-1925) in 192l and was sold by Scott & Fowles to Miss Ellen Henderson in the following year. It was bequeathed by Hunt Henderson to Tulane University and bought from the University by G. L. Winthrop in April 1941.

Exhibitions

• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 77) as 'Violet et bleu. Les petits baigneurs; Perosquerie'.

It may have been shown on the premises of Messrs Goupil in London or Paris, but otherwise was not, as far as is known, exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

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. 382), plate 227, as 'Violet and Blue: The Little Bathers, Pérosquérié' [sic].

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 77) as 'Violet et bleu. Les petits baigneurs; Perosquerie' [sic].

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. 192 (cat. no. 219).
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908, p. 171 (cat. no. 151).
• Spencer, Robin (ed.), Whistler: A Retrospective, New York, 1989, p. 228, repr. pl. 93.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr., Virginia Anderson, and Kimberly Orcutt, ed., American Paintings at Harvard, Vol. 2, Paintings, Drawings, Pastels and Stained Glass by Artists Born 1826-1856, Cambridge, MA and New Haven, CT, 2008, pP. 428-29 (cat. no. 456), repr. p. 429.

EXHIBITION:

• For Students of Art and Lovers of Beauty: Highlights from the Collection of Grenville L. Winthrop, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 2004.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Fogg Art Museum website at www.harvardartmuseums.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 429).

Other

• None.