Works by Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A. (British 1775-1851)

The first work offered (Lot 84), is the only known oil sketch from Turner’s famous Liber Studiorum (Latin for Book Studies), a project considered to be the most important artistic achievement of the great English Romantic artist’s career. The work titled The Straw Yard is a rustic scene with horses standing in front of a thatched barn, while men load bales onto a haystack. All other works in this series were created as etchings.

Liber Studiorum was a vast body of work which involved Turner categorising works by subject such as, ‘Mountainous’, ‘Marine’, ‘Historical’, and ‘Pastoral’. These were then further broken down into sub-categories including ‘Modern-Day Country Scenes’, into which category The Straw Yard falls. The study was initially untitled when it was published in 1808, later becoming known as The Straw Yard by early scholars and collectors of the Liber. Initially intended as a series of 100 mezzotints, the Liber became one of the most important achievements of Turner’s career. Despite not being finished, a total of 71 mezzotints were presented in 14 parts, with a frontispiece, over a period of 12 years between 1807 and 1817.

Art historian Gillian Forrester notes: “To form the compositions Turner created brown watercolour drawings and then etched outlines on to copper plates. He then collaborated with professional engravers, who under his direction created his scenes, in order to create prints.”

This oil study of The Straw Yard was produced at the same time as its engraved version (plate 7 in part II of the Liber, published in 1808). It is in the same direction as the engraving and compositionally closer to the print than the preparatory drawing. Forrester believes that this sketch might have been a way for Turner to “explore the balance of light and shade in the composition”, which seems likely, considering Tuner was known as the ‘painter of light.’  

Another work by Turner from the same private collection is also being offered (Lot 85) - a charming study titled River Landscape in France. The work in soft hues, depicting an indistinct riverbank with trees and a building in the distance, demonstrates a more spontaneous and dynamic painting style that Turner adopted from the 1820s until the end of his life. The artist became increasingly fascinated by the effects of light and shadow on his chosen subject. To capture the minute changes of form and colour that develop from ever-changing atmospheric effects, his style became more abstract and experimental, with colour, overall form, and an emotional interpretation becoming a central focus.

It is often difficult to identify the subjects of many of the studies Turner did at this time, not only because of his change in style, but also because he travelled continually during the 1820s and 1830s throughout Britain and Europe. The technique that he adopted during this period was to work simultaneously on several sheets at the same time. Then, as they developed, they were either rejected or not as the artist began to see the direction of the finished work.

A contemporary of Turner, William Leighton Leitch (1804-1883), who was Vice President of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours for over 20 years, described the process following a visit to the artist’s studio, as follows: “There were four drawing-boards, each of which had a handle screwed to the back. Turner, after sketching in his subject in a fluent manner, grasped the handle and plunged the whole drawing into a pail of water by his side. Then, quickly, he washed in the principal hues that he required, flowing tint into tint, until this stage of the work was complete. Leaving the first drawing to dry, he took the second board and repeated the operation. By the time the fourth drawing was laid in, the first would be ready for the finishing touches.” [1]

The late art historian Gerald Wilkinson (1926-1988) noted that: “Most of [these studies] are clearly ends in themselves. Though of potential use in more complex works, they are ideas, thoughts observations, experiments and sometimes they are beginnings given up for one reason or another.” [2]

Works by James McNeill Abbott Whistler (1834-1903)

In addition to the two works by Turner, and belonging to the same private collector, are three significant works by the American, James McNeill Abbott Whistler (1834-1903). All three works are offered on the open market for the first time after 40 years.

Whistler is considered one of the greatest exponents of a form of ‘total art’, which combines poetry, music, and the art of living. His work not only made an impression on the public and his patrons, but also on a generation of artists behind him, both in Europe and America.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA in 1834, Whistler spent part of his childhood in Russia, where his father was employed as a civil engineer building the country’s first railroad. He eventually enrolled at West Point, where he was known to draw pictures on tent flaps, chairs, and anything else he could get his hands on. Whistler was well-travelled, and aside from spending time in America and Russia, he also spent time in Paris and London, the latter becoming his adopted home. Indeed, Whistler would live between London and the US, while also travelling across Europe, for most of his life.

Starting in the last 20 years of his life, Whistler created over 100 prints, pastel drawings, and paintings of sparsely clad, or nude female models. Early collectors of Whistler’s work, including the American industrialist Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919), believed these images to be among the artist’s greatest achievements. One such work is Nude Model Reclining (M.1606) (Lot 140), one of three pastels Whistler drew on the same day (June 4th 1900, in his studio on Fitzroy Street, London). The same sitter in all three works is the actress and artist’s model, Ethel Warwick (1882-1951).

This study offered by Dreweatts is worked up than the other two versions, which are in the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow. This work depicts a reclining female figure in coloured pastels. Whistler often created a new work over the top of an old drawing with which he was dissatisfied, as is the case here. If one looks closely, there is the faint form of a woman in blue underneath, against a yellow background. In chalk and pastel on brown paper, this work features Whistler’s signature butterfly monogram, based on a stylised design of his initials. Whistler developed this in the late 1860s, following criticism of his overtly conspicuous signature. In each work the monogram was carefully positioned, to be considered part of the overall composition and not merely as a maker’s mark. 

Nude Model Reclining (M.1606), has exceptional provenance and has been included in some notable collections. It was first owned by Whistler’s sister-in-law Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), who was his secretary and model during his life, and executor and heir on his death. It was also in the private collection of Sir Bruce Ingram (1877-1963), a journalist, entrepreneur, and newspaper editor. It has been in the current private collection for over 40 years.

The final two works on offer are from one of Whistler’s most popular periods - his time in Venice during the 1880s.

The artist’s Venetian period came about following a very public and very costly court case with the English writer, art critic and philosopher John Ruskin (1819-1900), who had publicly criticised his work. Keen to avoid public scrutinization, Whistler took a commission by the Fine Art Society in 1879, to go to Venice to create a series of twelve etchings. Captivated by the city, he stayed for fourteen months instead of the designated three and completed approximately fifty etchings and 90 pastels, as well as other paintings, much to the Society’s delight. His Venetian works encapsulated a ‘Venezia minore’ - a ‘Venice of the Venetians’. This involved exploring daily life of the Venetians in locations used by the locals, rather than typical tourist views. The resulting artworks portrayed small squares, back alleys, and isolated canals, rather than the traditional sights of San Marco, the Grand Canal, and the Rialto Bridge.

Passionate about discovering the ‘hidden’ Venice, Whistler worked ‘en plein air’, drawing directly on to etching plates to create a mirror image of what was in front of him. His belief was that the ‘artist is born to pick and choose and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful—as the musician gathers his notes and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos, glorious harmony.’ This was a deliberate process, emphasised by the fact that Whistler reversed any lettering, such as street, or shop signs on his plates, so that they read correctly in the print. [3]

While etchings were having a revival towards the end of the 19^th century, Whistler was intent on developing his pastels and it was in Venice where they became more sophisticated. They were described at the time as: ‘broad films of pigments with sharp, concentrated brilliant strokes’ [4]. His Venetian pastels, many of which were produced while exploring the city in a gondola, had a considerable influence on the American artistic community, as well as on the Society of American Painters in Pastel, founded in 1882. Otto Bacher, one of the many American art students in Venice in 1880, gives this description of seeing Whistler: “Kitted out virtually as his studio, with materials, and the old gondolier would take him to his various sketching points… He generally selected bit of strange architecture, windows, piles, balconies, queer water effects, canal views… He always carried two boxes of pastels, an older one for instant use... and a newer box with which he did his principal work." [5]

His work in Venice was innovative and fresh and enabled Whistler to re-establish himself again as a major artist in Europe and America. His first series of Venetian etchings were exhibited by the Fine Art Society in 1880, on his return to London and were a huge success. The following year they held an exhibition of 53 of his Venetian pastels and a third exhibition presented his second series of Venetian etchings.

One of the two works to be offered at auction and created on this trip, is A Venetian Canal (M. 0754) (Lot 141). It depicts the entrance to the Rio de la Do Torre, one of several smaller canals that runs from the Grand Canal into an intricate maze of buildings in the Sante Croce region of Venice. Captured from a moored gondola at the Palace Ca’Peasro, Whistler chose a narrow format of paper to capture this scene. A former pupil of Whistler, the artist Mortimer Mempes (1855-1938), recounts how Whistler described his technique there as follows: “I began first of all by seizing upon the chief point of interest. Perhaps it might have been the extreme distance – the little palace and the shipping beneath the bridge. If so, I would begin doing that distance in elaboration, and then would expand from it until I came to the bridge, which I would draw with one sweep. If by chance, I didn’t see the whole of the bridge I would not put it in. In this way the picture must necessarily be a perfect thing from start to finish". [6]

Whistler created this pastel and chalk drawing on distinctive brown paper, which was provided by London lithographer, Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913). Way was a great friend of Whistler and had taught him lithography. As well as providing him with good quality paper, Way and his son helped Whistler with his exhibition of Venetian pastels in 1881, and even created a series of colour lithographs of the works, for a publication called Studio, which included the present pastel. A Venetian Canal (M.0754) proved extremely popular and was to be exhibited at the Rotterdam exhibition of 1906, one of several posthumous exhibitions of Whistler’s work.

The second work titled Venetian Canal (recto); Bridge Over Canal (verso) (M. 0766) (Lot 142), also in chalk on brown paper, captures the Rio dei Tre Ponti from the Fondamenta San Marco, with the Ponte del Guglie depicted on the back. Art Historian Dr Alastair Grieve (1940-2022) noted: “Whistler has drawn the view from a slightly elevated position so that he is  looking down on the Fondamenta, from a bridge that is no longer extant. He has used the edge of the structure to form a vertical axis in the centre of his paper. The bridge with two arches in the distance in his pastel is part of the Ponte dei Tre Ponti, a knotty interchange of bridges which was rebuilt in 1933 when the Rio Novo was made. It is obscured… today by a bridge with a pointed top, the Ponte del Pagan." [7]

Whistler’s delight in the architecture and the constantly changing views of Venice, is evident in Venetian Canal (recto); Bridge Over Canal (verso) (M. 0766), which seems to embody the lively portrayal that Whistler wrote in a letter to his mother describing “the colours of the walls and their reflections on the canals are more gorgeous than ever – and with sun shining upon the polished marble, mingled with rich, toned bricks and plaster - this amongst the city of palaces becomes really a fairyland – created one would think especially for the painter." [8]

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Auction Details

Wednesday 12 June, 10.30am BST
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

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Footnotes

1. (J. Gage, J.M.W. Turner, A Wonderful Range of Mind, London, 1987, p. 89)
2. Wilkinson, Turner’s Colour Sketches 1820-34, London, 1975, p. 150
3. Mr Whistler’s 10 O’Clock lecture, 1885, published in the Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, https://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/miscellany/tenoclock/
4. Getscher, James Abbott McNeill Whistler pastels, 1991, p. 22
5. Otto Bacher, With Whistler in Venice, New York, 1906, pp. 74-5
6. Mempes, Reminiscences of Whistler, London, 1903, p. 22-3
7. Grieve, op. cit.p.59
8. Schwander, op. cit, p. 95