UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

System Number: 03343
Date: [8 October 1893]^[1]
Author: JW
Place: Paris
Recipient: Thomas Robert Way^[2]
Place: London
Repository: Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Call Number: FGA Whistler 100
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^[3]

---

'3 Octr 93'

110. Rue du Bac. Paris -

My dear Tom -

One of these days I daresay I shall come and have another go with colour in Wellington Street^[4] - tell your Father^[5] - Only now mind one thing - you are not to talk to everyone or any one about this stump^[6] phase of the lithograph that I am developing! -

That is mine you know - and I dont want all the busy lot that you have got about you just now, to get bedeviling with it before I have established the success [p. 2] and beauty of the thing - To tell me that the stump had existed since the beginning of time in lithography would be no answer -

This particular application of it - and the chic that I shall get out of it just now when no one dreams of it ought not to be in a manner intruded upon by those tiresome people who unscrupulously vulgarize everything before it has been properly even thought out! -

I am sending you today more beautiful paper but dont use it until I send you one or two new drawings - and then we can have more proofs of the whole lot -

With kindest messages to your Father -
Always sincerely

J McN Whistler

This document is protected by copyright.

---

Envelope:

To
Thomas Way Junr.
21. Wellington Street
Strand -
London -
Angleterre
[torn stamp:] POSTE / 10 / REPUBLIQUE FRANCAISE
[postmark:] PARIS.80 / R. DU BAC / 6E 8 / OC / 93
[postmark on verso:] LONDON W.C. / BA / OC[T?] 9 / 93

---

Notes:

1.  [8 October 1893]
Dated from the postmark. A pencilled note in another hand on p. 1, '3 Octr. 93', probably represents a mis-reading of the first, blurred, postmark.

2.  Thomas Robert Way
Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913), printer, lithographer and painter [more].

3.  ALS
Published in Spink, Nesta R., The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, gen. eds Harriet K. Stratis and Martha Tedeschi, Chicago, 1998, vol. 2, p. 64, no. 48.

4.  colour in Wellington Street
JW had made a colour lithograph (Figure Study in Colors (C.39)) with Thomas Way in 1890, and was working on colour lithographs with Henri Belfond (fl. 1891-1894), lithographic printer [more], from 1891 until 1893 (Nude Model, Back View (C.45), Draped Figure, Standing (C.46), Lady and Child (C.55), Draped Figure, Reclining (C.56), Red House, Paimpol (C.66), Yellow House, Lannion (C.67)).

5.  father
Thomas Way (1837-1915), lithographic printer [more].

6.  stump
When working on his Brittany lithographs, JW adapted the stump technique, invented by Hullmandel (see #03339). He was encouraged to use the technique by T. R. Way, who sent the results of his own stump experiments to JW in 1892 (see #06097). Way was familiar with the history of the technique, and referred to the work of James Duffield Harding in an article (Rothenstein, W., and Thomas R. Way, 'Some Remarks on Artistic Lithography,' The Studio, vol. 3, no. 13, April 1894, pp.16-20, p. 18; see also Way, Thomas Robert, and G. R. Dennis, The Art of James McNeill Whistler, London, 1903, pp. 78, 81).