JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER PRINTS

[13] The Music Room, 1859
Etching and drypoint, printed in warm black ink on laid
paper, watermark Britannia, an impression in the fourth
(final) state: there was no published edition
5 5/8 x 8 1/2 inches (14.4 x 21.5 cm)
sheet 7 5/8 x 11 5/8 inches (19.4 x 29.8 cm)
Reference: Kennedy 33; Glasgow 39
The scene is the music room at the Hadens’ house at 62
Sloane Street, London. It is evening and Francis Seymour
Haden sits in an armchair reading a newspaper with his legs
outstretched, while his wife, the artist’s half-sister Deborah,
sits reading a book. Behind a table, also reading, is James
Reeves Traer, Haden’s medical partner and Whistler’s friend
and personal physician. A framed picture is propped against a
fireplace beneath a mantelpiece crowded with ornaments. In
the centre of the composition, a lamp stands on a round table,
providing light for the readers, as in Reading by Lamplight.
During the artist’s lifetime The Music Room was only
exhibited in America, in New York in 1881 and Chicago in
1900. Perhaps this was because of the rift between Whistler
and Haden which came to a head after Traer’s death in a Paris
brothel in 1867. Haden had arranged for his body to be buried
quickly and without ceremony in Père Lachaise cemetery,
and Whistler was outraged. A fight broke out between Haden
and Whistler and his brother William in a café in Paris, and
Whistler pushed Haden through a plate-glass window. The
two never spoke again.
[14] Greenwich Park, 1859
Etching and drypoint, printed in black ink on laid paper, an
impression in the third (final) state; there was no published edition
5 x 8 inches (12.6 x 20.1 cm) sheet 7 1/2 x 12 1/8 inches (19.1 x 30.7 cm)
Reference: Kennedy 35; Glasgow 41
This work was made at a time when Whistler and
Francis Seymour Haden often etched side by side.
A woman and two children sit on the grass beneath
a tree, with a standing female figure nearby. Whistler
made another etching at the same time, Greenwich
Pensioner, while Haden produced Sub Tegmine, a landscape
in which the reclining pensioner is seen in the
distance.
The first record of the etching in an exhibition was
the impression lent by Samuel Avery to the Union
League Club in New York in 1881.
22 EARLY printS and THE FRENCH SET james mcneill whistler: prints 23