The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

The Beach at Marseille may date from January 1901 or later. ¹

The Beach at Marseille, Terra Foundation for American Art

If this painting is by Whistler, which is doubtful, it could have been painted when Whistler was convalescing from illness in Marseilles in January 1901. He was very ill for several weeks and the unevenness of style seen in this painting could conceivably be due to this. He went on to Corsica when sufficiently recovered but it was some time before he was able to paint oils to his satisfaction.

The extant Corsican oils are much more fluid and free in brushwork than The Beach at Marseille y543 (see A Distant Dome y545 and Ajaccio, Corsica y546).

Images

Subject

Titles

One title has been suggested:

• ‘Strand bei Marseille’ (1969, Berlin). ²
• 'The Beach at Marseilles' (1980, YMSM). ³
• 'The Beach at Marseille' (2020, Terra website). ⁴

'Marseilles' is the English version of the name of the French city Marseille: the painting has been called by both names. 'The Beach at Marseille' is the preferred title.

Description

The Beach at Marseille, Terra Foundation for American Art

A landscape in horizontal format. There is a beach in the lower half of the panel, trees in the middle distance and a blue mountain in the distance at right.

Site

Possibly Marseille, an important port on the south coast of France.

Comments

The technique and style are not consistent with Whistler's work. The provenance is interesting and it may be that either the work was painted by Whistler's 'apprentices', Clifford Isaac Addams (1876-1942) or Inez Eleanor Addams (1874-1958), who are said to have owned it, or they worked on an unfinished sketch by Whistler.

The Terra Foundation website comments:

'Among the last dozen paintings James McNeill Whistler made, The Beach at Marseille is the only one known to depict the French Mediterranean seaport. Unlike most of Whistler’s coastal scenes painted from the 1880s on, it focuses not on the sea but on the beach, seen obliquely with the town in the right distance and the soft blue silhouette of a mountain rising behind it. At the left, a glimpse of water shows a harbor dense with sailing vessels. The painting is dominated, however, by an expanse of tawny sand broken by the dark horizontal band of a low wall, terminating at the left in a shallow pool where a kneeling figure is bent over the sand; in the central distance, a darker figure stands by a line strung with drying clothes that lend vibrant notes of color.

The elderly painter came to Marseille from Northern Africa, to which his doctors in London had ordered him when his health declined seriously in late 1900. In Marseille Whistler was gravely ill, which may explain his limited artistic output there. Nonetheless, he found the French seaport inspiring, writing wistfully to his sister-in-law, Rosalind Birnie Philip, "what beautiful things one could do here!" The Beach at Marseille indicates Whistler’s interest in the variety of forms in the landscape of beach, town, sea, and boats. The result is a relatively complex composition, in contrast to the reductive simplicity of the artist’s typical late seascapes, of which the Terra Foundation’s The Sea, Pourville (TF 1992.158) is an example.' ⁵

Technique

Technique

The Beach at Marseille, Terra Foundation for American Art

It is thinly and unevenly painted on panel.

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

Frame size 38.6 x 51.4 cm (15 3/16 x 20 ¼").

History

Provenance

• 1901 or later: Inez Eleanor Addams (1874-1958).
• By 1969: acquired by the artist Edward Brian Seago (1910-1974), Norfolk, UK;
• 1974: bequeathed by him in January 1974 to Peter Seymour (fl. 1952), Norfolk, UK.
• 1983: bought from the Davis & Langdale Company, Inc., New York, by Daniel J. Terra (1911-1996);
• 1992: Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Chicago, Illinois;
• 2005: on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago.

The source of information on the early provenance and attribution to Whistler is not known. The painting could in theory have been acquired from the artist by Mrs Clifford Addams (Miss Inez Bate, the Massière at the Académie Carmen from 1899-1901, who became Whistler’s ‘apprentice’ on 21 May 1901. However, some drawings and paintings attributed to Whistler, with the provenance of Inez or her husband Clifford Isaac Addams (1876-1942), do not appear to be by Whistler.

Another work acquired by Seago, A Courtyard with an Open Workshop and a Standing Woman y308, is also not believed to be by Whistler.

Exhibitions

• It was not 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. 543), plate 359, as 'The Beach at Marseilles'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• None.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Spencer, Robin, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1969 (cat. no. 59) as ‘Strand bei Marseille’.
• Atkinson, D. Scott et al., A Proud Heritage: Two Centuries of American Art, edited by Terry A. Neff, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1987, repr. pl. T-45, p. 154.
• An American Revelation: The Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 1988.
• Whistler and His Circle, Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1989.
• Un regard américain sur Paris (An American Glance at Paris), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, 1997.
• Cartwright, Derrick R., Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920 (The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, 1999, pp. 13, 27 (checklist); fig. 4, p. 13.
• Rivières et rivages: les artistes américains, 1850–1900 (Waves and Waterways: American Perspectives, 1850–1900), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, 2000.
• American Classics: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2002.
• Modern Harmonies: Whistler Reflects on his Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2003.
• Studied Abroad: Painted Impressions from the Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, 2003–2004.
• Le Passage à Paris: les artistes américains en France, 1860–1930 (Passing through Paris: American Artists in France, 1860–1930), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, 2005.
• Davidson, Susan, ed., Art in the USA: 300 años de innovación, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, 2007 (Spanish version) repr. p. 117.
• Gallery Installation, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 2015-2016.

Journals 1906-Present

• MacInnes, Margaret F., [M. F. MacDonald], 'Whistler's Last Years: Spring 1901 - Algiers and Corsica', Gazette des beaux-arts, vol. 73, 1969, pp. 323-42, at p. 342.

Websites

• Terra Foundation website at http://collection.terraamericanart.org.

Unpublished

• None.

Other

• None.