System Number: 03388
Date: [15 October 1894][1]
Author: JW
Place: Paris
Recipient: Thomas Robert Way[2]
Place: London
Repository: Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Call Number: FGA Whistler 141
Credit Line: Charles Lang Freer Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of the Estate of Charles Lang Freer
Document Type: ALS
110. Rue du Bac.
My dear Tom -
I have been so busy that I really, do you know, cannot quite remember whether I acknowledged the most excellent and interesting long letter[3] from Wellington Street the other day, or no?!
However of that very shortly! - Also I will send a proof of the "Mallarmé[4]". I certainly thought I had presented your Father[5] with one - but I will now[6] -
You have never seen it then? - It is very beautiful - and as a portrait of the poet extraordinary -
What I want you to do now is to pull me half a dozen proofs of the "Bébés
du Luxembourg" - giving all the richness that the stone is capable of - This drawing by the way was done on [p. 2] the old Austrian stuff! - Pull the proofs for me on the old Dutch[7]. - and do Tom left let me have them directly if you can -
Mr. Thomson[8] passed through on Friday - on his way to London - I told him that I had a great mind not to let the Virtue[9] people have that, or anything else! - I suppose he will see you directly - Of course the printing will be under precisely the same conditions as before. -
The last proofs you sent are beautiful! Surely your Father must feel that the "Fruitière de la Rue de Grenelle" - is more beautiful in quality as lithograph than what we obtained before! and as to the sleeping lady, he ought to like it beyond any lithograph I have done! - I do! -
Soon I hope to send you some more draped figures - and other drawing - but I am awfully busy - You must both go to the New Gallery - and see my portrait of Mrs. Sickert[10] - I have told them to send you Private View tickets -
With kindest messages
[butterfly signature]
This document is protected by copyright.
Envelope:
ToThs. R. Way. Junr.
21. Wellington Street
Strand
London
Angleterre
[stamp:] POSTE / 25 / REPUBLIQUE FRANCAISE
[postmark:] PARIS / 80 / R. DU BAC / 4E ' 15 / OCT / 94
[postmark on verso:] [LONDON W.] C. / S. M. P. / [OC?] 16 / 94
Notes:
1. 15 October 1894
Dated from the postmark. Published in Spink, Nesta R., The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, gen. eds Harriet K. Stratis and Martha Tedeschi, Chicago, 1998, vol. 2, p. 125, no. 126.
2. Thomas Robert Way
Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913), printer, lithographer and painter [more].
3. letter
The relevant letter from Way to JW is missing.
4. Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), Symbolist writer and poet [more].
5. Father
Thomas Way (1837-1915), lithographic printer [more].
6. now
JW had promised to send a proof of Stéphane Mallarmé (cat. no. 60) in November 1892.
7. Dutch
JW was using a thin transparent Austrian lithographic transfer paper, and the lithographs were printed on Dutch and other old watermarked papers.
8. Mr. Thomson
David Croal Thomson (1855-1930), art dealer [more]. Thomson had been abroad since the end of September, at which time he had missed dining with JW in Paris. JW had apparently seen him on his return journey; JW to Thomson, [29 September 1894], #.
9. Virtue
Messrs. Virtue, owners of The Art Journal, in which Nursemaids: 'Les Bonnes du Luxembourg' (C.81) was to be published.
10. Mrs. Sickert
Ellen Melicent Sickert (1848-1914), née Cobden, writer [more]. Green and Violet: Portrait of Mrs Walter Sickert (YMSM 338) was exhibited at 4th Exhibition, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1894, and as 'Blue and Violet Portrait of Mrs. Walter Sickert' at the Society of Portrait Painters in October 1894.