Documents associated with: 104th Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy, London, 1872
Record 16 of 17
System Number: 10612
Date: [May 1887?][1]
Author: JW
Place: [London]
Recipient: Walter Sickert[2]
Place: [London]
Repository: Published
Document Type: PWfc[3]
The Harvest Moon[4] rises over Hampstead[5] and the cocks of Chelsea crow.
This document is protected by copyright.
Notes:
1. [May 1887?]
Dated by reference to exhibition (see below).
2. Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942), artist and writer on art [more].
3. PWfc
The source of this copy is Sidney Starr (1866 or 1867-1925), painter [more]. He told the Pennells that JW sent this telegram after W. R. Sickert praised Leighton. Published in Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 2, p. 20.
4. Harvest Moon
F. Leighton, Harvest Moon (z191). Sickert had praised Leighton's Summer Moon, which was in Royal Jubilee Exhibition, Manchester, 1887 (cat. no. 438). It had first been seen at the Royal Academy in 1872, and was a decorative and atmospheric picture of sleeping women (see Leonée and Richard Ormond, Lord Leighton, New Haven and London, 1975, cat. no. 201, pl. 118). According to Sitwell, Sickert's 1887 review appeared in the New York Herald (see Sickert, Walter Richard, A Free House! or The Artist as Craftsman, being the Writings of Walter Richard Sickert, London, 1947, p. 32).
5. Hampstead
Sickert lived in Hampstead. JW used the symbol of cockcrow to signify betrayal, as in the story of St Peter as told by St Luke (see JW to T. Watts-Dunton, #07398).