The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Butcher's Shop probably dates from between 1888 and 1895. The confident brushwork and rich colour correspond to Whistler's work in the late 1880s, and the signature suggests a date in the early 1890s.

The Butcher's Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

An inscription on the back of the frame reads 'Butcher Shop - Dieppe'. Whistler was in Dieppe on several occasions in the 1880s and 1890s. ¹

Images

Subject

Titles

Few variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'Butcher Shop - Dieppe' (n.d., label). ²
• 'The Butchers Shop' (1904, Copley Society, Boston). ³
• 'The Butcher's Shop' (1980, YMSM). ⁴

'The Butcher's Shop' is the preferred title.

Description

The Butcher's Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

A shop-front, in horizontal format. The door is in the centre, with two skinned beef carcasses hanging in front, a larger carcass behind them at right, as well as several smaller joints hanging in the shop. Above the shop is a prominent dark red awning, and to left, a large window. A figure in black is emerging from the shop door, to left of the carcasses.

Site

An inscription on the back of the frame reads 'Butcher Shop - Dieppe'. Whistler frequently visited Dieppe, particularly in 1885, but also on several later occasions.

W. R. Sickert, Twilight, York Museums Trust

The Butcher's Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

Twilight (York Museums Trust) by Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) appears to show the same butcher's shop; Wendy Baron suggested they could have been painted side by side, but the details are different (Sickert includes six carcasses, Whistler, three). ⁵ Sickert's view was taken from further right, looking back at the shop from an angle, where Whistler's is straight on, with the rectangular shop-front parallel to the edges of the panel. Sickert extends the reddish-brown colour of the facade down the right side of the shop, and onto the adjacent building, while Whistler limits it to the awning and beam above the shop, but there is no way to tell which one was an accurate rendering of the facade.

Related subjects by Whistler include the much earlier Boutique de Boucher, Saverne m0236, the etching, Butcher's Shop, Sandwich, Kent [320], and lithograph, The Butcher's Dog c166.

Technique

Composition

Whistler may well have admired the iconic painting The Carcass of Beef (The Slaughtered Ox) (Musée du Louvre) by Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn (1617-1681).

Technique

The Butcher's Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

The rich warm colours, ranging from beige through flesh-pink to blood-red, are painted with vigorous, sketchy brushstrokes, but very thin paint, leaving much of the grey underpaint visible, particularly at left, and also to right of the carcasses. The details of the carcasses are painted with a small pointed brush in nervous squiggles of pinkish-brown and yellow ochre paint.

Conservation History

The Butcher's Shop, photograph, 1980

The Butcher's Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

It is slightly abraded at the edges, particularly at upper right, this being concealed by the frame.

According to Freer Gallery of Art records, it was cleaned and resurfaced in 1922 and 1951, resurfaced and cradled in 1938.

Frame

The Butcher's Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

Grau-style, American-made, dating from 1903. ⁶

History

Provenance

• 1903: sold by Whistler for £150 to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit, in July 1903;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

Exhibitions

• Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 6) as 'The Butchers Shop'.

It was not, as far as is known, exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

By the terms of C. L. Freer's bequest to the Freer Gallery of Art, the painting cannot be lent to other venues.

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. 383), plate 226, as 'The Butcher's Shop'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 6) as 'The Butchers Shop'.

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. 156 (cat. no. 6).
• Holden, Donald, Whistler Landscapes and Seascapes, New York, 1969, p. 71, repr. pl. 25.

Books, General

• Baron, Wendy, Sickert: Paintings and Drawings, New Haven and London, 2006, p. 10.

On Sickert:

• McConkey, Kenneth, with Anna Gruetzner Robins, Impressionism in Britain, New Haven, 1995, fig. 37, p. 96.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 146, 295, pl. 52.
• Stubbs, Burns A., Paintings, Pastels, Drawings, Prints and Copper Plates by and attributed to American and European Artists, together with a List of Original Whistleriana in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1948, p. 16 (03.181).

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1903.181a-b.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 348).

Other

• Parkerson, Sarah Lawrence, Variations in Gold: The Stylistic Development of the Picture Frames used by James McNeill Whistlers, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007.