Documents associated with: Whistler, Thomas
Record 5 of 5
System Number: 02678
Date: October 1897
Author: JW
Place: Paris
Recipient: Thomas Delano Whistler[1]
Place: [America]
Repository: Glasgow University Library
Call Number: MS Whistler LB 1/154
Document Type: ALS
Paris -
Oct. 1897 -
Your letter, my dear Tom, has been forwarded to me here -
I have been pleased to know, for some time past, that your sister[2] had done so well with work of mine -
Now that you too in your turn, have sold so happily "the White Girl"[3], and so completely rid your family of all future partition [p. 2] in the tradition of your Fathers[4] brother, I do not, for the life of me, see how I could, by any ordinary intercourse, supply affection of at the enthusiastic quality rate this last excellent commercial transaction seems to have evolved -
J McNeill Whistler
This document is protected by copyright.
Notes:
1. Thomas Delano Whistler
Thomas Delano Whistler (1857-1921), engineer, JW's nephew [more]. Published in Spink, Nesta R., The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, gen. eds Harriet K. Stratis and Martha Tedeschi, Chicago, 1998, vol. 2, p. 154, no. 171, giving the recipient incorrectly as Thomas R. Way.
2. ALS
Written on narrow bordered mourning paper.
3. sister
Julia de Kay Revillon (1855-1930), née Whistler, JW's niece [more].
4. 'the White Girl'
Symphony in White, No. I: The White Girl (YMSM 38). Thomas Delano Whistler had inherited the picture from Julia de Kay Whistler (1825-1875), née Winans, JW's sister-in-law [more]. He sold it through the dealers Boussod, Valadon and Co., New York, on 28 February 1896 for $6500 to Arthur Harris Whittemore (1864-1927), businessman and collector [more]. JW was bitter about what he regarded as the profiteering of collectors and dealers on his early works.
5. Fathers
That is, George William Whistler (1822-1869), engineer, JW's half-brother [more].