Documents associated with: Fair Women, Grafton Galleries, London, 1894
Record 13 of 19
System Number: 07232
Date: 1 March 1894
Author: JW
Place: Paris
Recipient: Edward Guthrie Kennedy[1]
Place: [New York]
Repository: Glasgow University Library
Call Number: MS Whistler W1220
Document Type: ALd
110. Rue du Bac - Paris -
March 1 - 1894
I never doubt, dear Mr. Kennedy, that you mean all for the best[2] - Only you have not understood, evidently, what I said about the owners of my pictures selling them at enormous profit - and there is no use, at this distance, going back upon that question - However I wonder what you think I can be about, in the Studio, if you believe that I am not painting "new pictures!" - At the present moment there are, in The Grafton Gallery, three pictures[3] of mine - brand new - and finer, so they say, than anything I have ever done of their kind before - Two of them I want four hundred guineas apiece for, and the third - a smaller panel, and a beauty, two hundred & fifty - Do you want to buy them? - But you tell me you cannot - Then why this strange retort - This apparently unanswerable retort to something that had gone before? Why this chalange [sic] for new work? There is plenty of it in the Studio now - Do you know any one in America wanting it? You will say that this is not a fair test - & that people don't buy without seeing - But you have seen the "Nocturne[4] Blue & Gold - Battersea" - & your authority is great enough with any buyer in America, if there were one who wanted a Whistler Nocturne, to insure his purchasing this as one of the very finest quality - To send a work over to "the States" "on approval" is scarcely what the men you speak of, as making their money there, do -
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Notes:
1. Edward Guthrie Kennedy
Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932), dealer with H. Wunderlich and Co., New York [more].
2. you mean all for the best
JW is referring to Kennedy's letter of 20 February 1894, #07231.
3. three pictures
At Fair Women, Grafton Galleries, London, 1894, JW showed Dark Blue and Silver (YMSM 412) and Violet and Blue: Among the Rollers (YMSM 413). The word 'three' is double underlined.
4. Nocturne
Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Cremorne Lights (YMSM 115).