UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

System Number: 13812
Date: 14 March [1894]^[1]
Author: JW
Place: Paris
Recipient: Albert Maeterlinck^[2]
Place: [Antwerp]
Repository: Glasgow University Library
Call Number: MS Whistler M521
Document Type: ALS

110. Rue du Bac. Paris -

le 14. Mars -

My dear Sir -

I am delighted to receive your most amiable and courteous letter -

It certainly is kind of you to undertake this correspondence - and I fear that I shall abuse your friendly good nature by at once begging you to convey, for me, my thanks to the President^[3] for his flattering invitation - [p. 2] I shall be most pleased to avail myself of it, and to take this occasion of sending to so great an Art Centre as Antwerp^[4] at this, one of its most brilliant moments of triumph -

On no account however will I exhibit in the "English Section". -

If there be an "American Section", place might be found for me there -

If not, I might be received as an invited guest in some "Strangers' Gallery"!! - but under no circumstances will I have works of mine left to the friendly care of British Envoys from Burlington House^[5]! -

Of this I should like to have an assurance from you -

I trust indeed that we may come to Amtwerp this season - and shall be too glad to see you again and to thank Madame Maeterlinck^[6] for all her kind hospitalities, when it was my great good fortune to be defended^[7] by her distinguished husband! -

One thing more, it will [p. 3] take a little time to borrow and collect the pictures I would like to send - for, if at all, I should of course wish to be very well represented -

One or two I can send from Paris - so that I should like to know who the agents are here -

Some I hope to get from London -

Some may be sent direct from Hamburg^[8] where for the moment they are lent to their Exhibition -

Believe me, my dear Sir
With many thanks for the trouble you are taking -
Very Sincerely Yours

J McNeill Whistler

This document is protected by copyright.

Notes:

1.  4 March [1894]
Dated by reference to exhibition (see below).

2.  Maeterlinck
Maître Albert Maeterlinck, attorney in Antwerp [more].

3.  President
See the letter from Baron Georges Caroly (1862-1935), collector, Secretary to the Exposition Universelle in Antwerp in 1894 [more], to A. Maeterlinck, 6 March 1894, #00190.

4.  Antwerp
Arrangement in Black: Portrait of Señor Pablo de Sarasate (YMSM 315) was JW's main contribution to Exposition Universelle des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp, 1894.

5.  Burlington
The home of the Royal Academy, London.

6.  Madame Maeterlinck
Mme A. Maeterlinck, wife of the attorney [more].

7.  defended
Maeterlinck represented JW in his lawsuit to suppress publication of Whistler, James McNeill, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, ed. Sheridan Ford, Paris, 1890.

8.  Hamburg
Grossen Kunst-Austellung des Kunst-Vereins, Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 1894.