Documents associated with: Mr Whistler's Lithographs, The Fine Art Society, London, 1895
Record 18 of 84
System Number: 03410
Date: [5 November 1895][1]
Author: JW
Place: Lyme Regis
Recipient: Thomas Robert Way[2]
Place: London
Repository: Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Call Number: FGA Whistler 162
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]
Tuesday
I was really was too provoked with you Tom after reading your last letter about Wedmore[4] to write to you - thinking it better to let it all alone for a while. - How could you give away all the knowledge, that might be so useful to yourself, to that conceited empty pilfering ass Wedmore?
Why should he, who knows nothing be made an authority! - However I doubt if his article in the Art Journal[5] comes off at all! - Though this is between ourselves - for I refused, point blank, when Mr. Thomson asked me, to allow anything of mine to appear [p. 2] in any article of Mr. Wedmore's! - at which they were horribly shocked - for I think they depended upon that!
I will tell you something else in your ear - Mr Thomson later on asked if I wouldn't let them have something by & bye, if they were to have an article of Lithography - probably at the time of Dunthorne's Exhibition[6] - on my own - Yes I said I would try and manage it, if the article were written by Tom Way! who knows practically all about it - & from whom I am positive that Wedmore and others have obtained all that they pretend to know!
He acknowledged that that was quite true in the case of Wedmore - for he had sent him to you - Well and I think that he will ask you to write for him, when the [p. 3] time comes! So just lay low - and say "nothing to nobody"! -
All that you write me about using the papier vegetal[7] over rough drawing paper I know - Fantin[8] does it - but then he likes the work to look as though it were drawn on Papier Ingres[9] - I don't - moreover it wouldnt facilitate your putting it on stone - and in any case you would have to put the papier vegetal on a grained stone after all - otherwise the proof would smash, as it did with at first. Cant you get some of the Goulding proofs[10]? and send them down here - It would be fun to see them -
I have arranged with Mr Huish and Brown[11], for the Exhibition -
[p. 4] So Mr Brown will soon be coming to see you - I cant write more now.
Kindest regards to your Father[12].
J McN Whistler.
To
Ths. R. Way, Junr.
I sent you card yesterday authorizing you to proceed with the Robe Rouge[13].
This document is protected by copyright.
Envelope:
ToThomas Way. Junr.
21. Wellington Street
Strand
London
[stamp x 2:] POSTAGE & REVENUE / ONE HALF PENNY
[postmark:] LYME-REGIS / D / NO 6 / 95
[postmark on verso:] LONDON [illegible] / S. M. P. / 7K / NO 7 / 95
Notes:
1. [5 November 1895]
Dated from the postmark, and the almanac.
2. Thomas Robert Way
Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913), printer, lithographer and painter [more].
3. ALS
Published by Spink, Nesta R., The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, gen. eds Harriet K. Stratis and Martha Tedeschi, Chicago, 1998, vol. 2, p. 144, no. 154.
4. Wedmore
Frederick Wedmore (1844-1921), art critic [more]; see Way, Thomas Robert, Memories of James McNeill Whistler, the Artist, London and New York, 1912, p. 119.
5. Art Journal
Wedmore, Frederick, 'The Revival of Lithography,' The Art Journal, January 1896, pp. 11-14.
6. Dunthorne's Exhibition
Robert Dunthorne (b. ca 1851), of the Rembrandt Gallery, print dealer and publisher [more]; the exhibition consisted of 103 prints by 51 artists. JW exhibited four subjects but was so annoyed by the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, in which Goulding was given credit for the revival of lithography in England, that he wrote telling Dunthorne to withdraw his prints (see Spink. op. cit.).
7. papier vegetal
A paper prepared for drawing on, in lithographic crayon. It could be laid on a grained bard or paper surface for added effects of texture.
8. Fantin
Ignace-Henri-Jean-Théodore Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), artist [more].
9. Papier Ingres
Laid paper with a regular surface grain, suitable for drawings in pastel.
10. Goulding proofs
Frederick Goulding (1842-1909), printer and print-maker [more]. Goulding hoped that the exhibition would defray the expenses he had incurred as a result of printing lithographs shown in Paris at the Centenaire de la lithographie.
11. Huish
Marcus Bourne Huish (1843 - d.1921), barrister, writer and art dealer, Director of the Fine Art Society [more], and Ernest George Brown (1853 or 1854-1915), assistant manager at the Fine Art Society [more], who were organising an exhibition, Mr Whistler's Lithographs, The Fine Art Society, London, 1895.
12. Father
Thomas Way (1837-1915), lithographic printer [more].