© Gary-Donald Arts Fine prints on the internet since 2001  
   
 
“The Forge”
    
 
Inventory #:
 4442
4442
  
Artist:
 Whistler, James A. M.  
Dates/Bio:
 Am. 1834-1903  
Medium:
 Etching and Drypoint  
Date:
 1861  
Size (H/W):
 Image area - 7 3/8" x 12 3/8" (18.7 x 31.4 cm); Sheet size - 9 3/8” x 14 3/8” (23.8 x 36.5 cm)  
Description:
 Kennedy Catalogue #68, fourth state of four, printed on thin Japan paper, a brilliant early impression with richly-inked burr. The changes made in this state eliminated the white spot behind the blacksmith’s head. Signed on plate “Whistler 1861” lower right.
(click on image for photos)
  
Other Notes:
 This work was included in the “Thames Set”. It was drawn at Perros-Guirec in Brittany in the summer of 1861. As to the printing, this image is unique. Whistler wrote a long “letter to the editor”, sent from Venice on August 16, 1880 and published in the New York Tribune on Sept. 12, 1880, in which he disputes some comments of Seymour Haden that were published in Scribner’s Magazine about the status and printing of the plates for this set. Haden alluded to a “steel plate printer” as having printed the set. Whistler writes “Instead of the ‘Steel plate printer’, Delatre, then at his prime, had himself printed these etchings --a fact which, amusingly enough, Mr. Haden admits further on, in direct contradiction to his first broad statement. Moreover, I had myself pulled proofs of them all; indeed, one in the set of sixteen plates, a drypoint, called “The Forge” (for by the way they were not all of the Thames), I alone printed.”    
Condition:
 Very good condition. Matted in new 100% rag mats, hinge mounts. Old yellow mounting tape residues in places along the sheet edges well away from the image area, with some soiling on the sheet margin edges, none of which affects the image in a mat window.    
Price:
 $2,895 - free shipping in USA Status: Available  
 
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