Manuscript/Mixed Material Letter, James McNeill Whistler to David Croal Thomson containing the artist's famed butterfly signature and discussing his hope that no painting of his remain in England, [July 1895].

Title

• Letter, James McNeill Whistler to David Croal Thomson containing the artist's famed butterfly signature and discussing his hope that no painting of his remain in England, [July 1895].

Created / Published

• July 1895?

Headings

• -  Artists
• -  Great Britain
• -  Painters
• -  Goupil Gallery
• -  Art critics
• -  Ruskin, John (1819-1900)
• -  Thompson, David Croal (1855-1930)
• -  Manuscripts

Genre

• Manuscripts

Notes

• -  Reproduction number: A92 (color slide; page 1 and envelope); A93 (color slide; page 2)
• -  This letter from one of the nineteenth century's most important painters to the man who functioned almost as a personal agent reveals the artist's personality and illuminates contemporary exhibition practices and marketing strategies. When expatriate American painter James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) wrote this letter, he was at the height of his fame. He could well afford to display his egotism and set conditions for the sale of his works. Whistler, who had left the United States at the age of twenty-one and never returned, was one of the most flamboyant personalities of mid-century Bohemian Paris. He learned from the old masters displayed there as well as from the avant-garde painters of the day. Although he established a permanent home in London in 1859, he frequently returned to France for extended visits, and he was in Paris at the time he wrote this July 1895 letter to David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), manager of the Goupil Gallery, the London branch of a French firm.
• -  Thomson had played an important role in establishing Whistler's reputation in Britain by staging a retrospective exhibition in 1892 and by marketing Whistler's prints at Goupil's and publishing two lithographs in the influential Art Journal, which he edited. Whistler signed his letter to Thomson with his characteristic "Butterfly" design and defended that manner of signature on his paintings by refusing the request to print his name on the "bottom right hand corner" of a painting and telling Croal to inform the buyer that his picture "is signed--as completely as one of his own cheques is signed." He also instructed Croal on marketing his works and expressed indignation that a resale of his painting should net the original buyer a profit of 650 pounds, declaring that none of them had a right to "make one penny" from his talent. He proceeded to demand that no canvas of his should remain in England. Perhaps this animosity was left from the shocked reception the country gave to his 1874 one-man exhibition, followed three years later by influential critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) denouncing Whistler's "cockney impudence" in a notice about the painting, The Falling Rocket, in which Ruskin likened the artist's work to "throwing a pot of paint in the public's face." (Fors Clavigera, 2 July 1877, cited in Elizabeth R. and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1911), 154.) Whistler won the ensuing libel suit, but he was paid nothing and became impoverished by the litigation. England made amends by honoring Whistler in the mid-1880s with the title of president of the venerable Society of British Artists, but today the great collections of Whistler materials are in Glasgow, Scotland, and Washington, D.C.

Source Collection

• Pennell-Whistler Collection of the Papers of Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell and James A. McNeill Whistler

Repository

• Manuscript Division

Online Format

• pdf
• image

IIIF Presentation Manifest

• Manifest (JSON/LD)