Southend Pier F1904.82a-c: Curatorial Analysis | Whistler in Watercolor

Maker nationality and date: 1834-1903

Date(s): 1882-1884

Medium: Watercolor on paper

Dimension(s): H x W: 17.9 × 25.4 cm (7 1/16 × 10 in)

Credit Line: Gift of Charles Lang Freer

Object Number: F1904.82a-c

Production location: England, Southend-on-Sea

Theme: Riverview

Signature(s): Blue butterfly in lower right quadrant

Provenance: To 1904
Thomas Way Sr. (1827-1915), London, or Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913), London, to 1904 [1]

From 1904 to 1919
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919), purchased from Thomas Way Sr. or Thomas Robert Way in 1904 [2]

From 1920
Freer Gallery of Art, gift of Charles Lang Freer in 1920 [3]

Notes:

[1] See Original Whistler List, Paintings, pg. 20, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Thomas Way Sr. and his son, Thomas Robert Way, were lithographers who worked closely with Whistler on several of his projects. They helped with the printing of his etchings, as well as the printing of Whistler’s promotional materials. Both Thomas Way Sr. and Thomas Robert Way owned many Whistler works. Thomas Way Sr. acquired several of these works at the time of Whistler’s bankruptcy, and he passed some of them on to his son (see The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, 1855-1903, ed. Margaret F. MacDonald, Patricia de Montfort and Nigel Thorp, On-line Edition, People, biographies of Thomas Way and Thomas Robert Way; http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence).

Charles Lang Freer acquired many Whistler pieces from the Ways. However, museum records do not always specify whether it was the younger or elder Way who was the source of a particular object. Further, archival sources indicate that the junior Way sometimes acted on behalf of his father: whilst negotiating the sale of his own Whistler works to C.L. Freer, he would concurrently negotiate the sale of some of his father’s Whistler works to Freer. In cases where it is unclear whether it was the junior or senior Way who actually owned a piece acquired by C.L. Freer, the provenance record will simply state that the object was purchased from “Thomas Way Sr. or Thomas Robert Way.”

[2] See note 1.

[3] The original deed of Charles Lang Freer's gift was signed in 1906. The collection was received in 1920 upon the completion of the Freer Gallery.

Exhibition History: Palais de l'École des Beaux-Art, Exposition des Oeuvres de James McNeill Whistler, May 1905
Freer Gallery of Art, American Paintings, Pastels, and Water Colors, and Drawings. J.A.McN. Whistler, May 2, 1923 to January 7, 1924

Selected Curatorial Remarks: 1. Glazer, Jacobson, McCarthy, Roeder, 2019:
Traditional landscapes held little interest for Whistler, but he declared "the sea to me, is, and always was, most fascinating!" Rendered with simplicity, Whistler's seascapes in watercolor capture different sites, seasons, and atmospheric conditions, but rely on simple, broad washes punctuated with calligraphic details and a flattened, tripartite composition. The works feature a narrow, tonally balanced palette produced by multiple pigments mixed together.
Whistler's use of a paper block to enable painting en plein air is evidenced by microscopic remnants of adhesive and blue paper around the cold-pressed paper of all Southend works. Developed as a holiday spot in the early 1800s, Southend's long wooden pier was completed in 1848 when Princess Charlotte of Wales visited the town. By the 1880s it was a mecca for working class day-trippers. Convenient to London, Whistler visited the seaside town repeatedly.
2. Katherine Roeder, 2018:
Southend scenes were painted after Whistler's supply purchase in fall of 1881, and prior to the spring Dowdeswell Gallery exhibition of 1884.

Selected Published References: 1. Curry: James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, Pg. 184
The effect of this watercolor is brisk, almost jarring. Most of the forms, including the boats, the pier, and the figures in black, have a transparent quality. But the artist added a few people in bright, thick gouache at the bottom center of the composition. These include one couple wearing sharply contrasted black, white, and pink, and another where the woman's flounced gown is pink and chartreuse. Electric-blue garments worn by members of the group with a child make a third strident passage of color. Whistler broke the horizontal bands of sand, sea, and sky with figures and masts, and he flattened the pictorial space with two touches of brick red--one in the face of the man at dead center on the beach and the other in the sail of the tiny boat out in front of the long pier.

Catalogue Raisonne number: M892
MacDonald Catalogue number

Previous owner(s): Thomas Way Sr. (1837-1915)
Thomas Robert Way (C.L. Freer source) (1861-1913)
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919)

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Southend Pier

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