• Chelsea Children
  • Chelsea Children

Chelsea Children

A group of children looking into a shop window; signed with the butterfly to the right of the shop door.
Maker nationality and date
1834-1903
Date(s)
ca. 1897
Medium
Watercolor on paper
Dimension(s)
H x W: 12.7 x 21.6 cm (5 x 8 1/2 in)
Credit Line
Gift of Charles Lang Freer
Object Number
F1902.116a-c
Production location
England, London, Chelsea
Theme
Cityscape
Signature(s)
Brown butterfly in center of right half
Provenance
Exhibition History
Palais de l'École des Beaux-Art, Exposition des Oeuvres de James McNeill Whistler, May 1905
Selected Curatorial Remarks

1. Glazer, Jacobson, McCarthy, Roeder, wall label, 2019:
Whistler was fascinated by street scenes throughout his career, from his early etchings and watercolors of the quiet village of Saverne in the Rhineland, to a busy flower market in northern France, and on to the children in his London neighborhood.

These scenes not only appealed to Victorian critics and art collectors, but they also provided subtle allusions to the social and economic realities of the day. In Chelsea Children, a child looks longingly into a shop window advertising stewed eels, an inexpensive meal favored by the poor. Like most of Whistler's street scenes, Chelsea Children is painted on hot-pressed paper. Its smooth surface allowed the artist to use delicate brushstrokes for greater detail.

2. Susan Hobbs, 1978:
Whistler painted many views of shopfronts, both in oil and in watercolor. He particularly enjoyed contrasting the geometrical quality of the windows with small, sprightly figures.

Selected Published References
1. Curry: James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, Pg. 193
Most of the children in the painting peer through the windows of what may be a curiosity or art shop of some kind, although one little girl stands apart from the rest, gazing into a fishmonger's shop under a sign reading "Stewed Eels." The artist's butterfly signature is next to the art-shop entrance. Whistler wanted to have an art dealership himself, as is seen in a surviving drawing [The Blue Butterfly, ink, Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow]. In 1897 Whistler finally leased rooms at No. 2 Hinde Street, Manchester Square, to house the Company of the Butterfly, formed to sell his work without the intervention of dealers. Although it seems that Freer bought Chelsea Children from Whistler's enterprise, the artist was no businessman, and he did much better painting shops than running them. Whistler has allowed spots and lines of primary red, yellow, and blue to soak into the paper, imparting a shimmering brightness to this glimpse of his Chelsea neighborhood.
Catalogue Raisonne number
M1511
MacDonald Catalogue number
Previous owner(s)
Company of the Butterfly (C.L. Freer source) (1897-1903)
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919)
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