UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

System Number: 07392
Date: [15 August 1882]^[1]
Author: JW
Place: [London]
Recipient: Walter Théodore Watts-Dunton^[2]
Place: [London]
Repository: Glasgow University Library
Call Number: MS Whistler W1380
Document Type: ALS

'15 Aug 1882'^[3]

Two things my dear Watts - First mind you come in on Sunday at 3 o'clock - dont be so awfully late as you were the other day -

Then secondly - You have forgotten to give an order to the auctioneers clerk about letting me have my picture at Rossetti's^[4] -

I have sent for it twice - and twice they have refused to give it up without an order -

Do pass by in the morning if you can - or telegraph to the man, so that I may have it tomorrow -

Always yours

[butterfly signature]

This document is protected by copyright.

Notes:

1.  [15 August 1882]
Dated '15 Aug 1882' in an unknown hand, at top right. The type of signature confirms the year date.

2.  Walter Théodore Watts-Dunton
Walter Theodore Watts (later Watts-Dunton) (1832-1914), solicitor, novelist and poet [more]. He was a good friend of both JW and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), artist and poet [more].

3.  '15 Aug 1882'
Added in pencil, in unknown hand.

4.  my picture at Rossetti's
D. G. Rossetti was JW's neighbour in the 1860s, and helped sell several of his paintings. After Rossetti's death on 9 April 1882, his collection was sold. It included 'An oil painting in gilt-oak frame, Woman looking out of window, with landscape background, by James A. Whistler' (auction catalogue, T. C. Wharton, Martin and Co., London, 6 July 1882, p. 18, lot 328). This was probably A White Note (YMSM 44), painted in 1862, which Rossetti may have acquired then or at the time of JW's bankruptcy in 1879. Whether JW bought it back at the auction or it was withdrawn from the sale is not known. According to a label on the back it was acquired by Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942), artist and writer on art [more], and it was certainly lent by him to the [Exhibition], New English Art Club, London, 1888.