Etching printed on old laid paper, 1879
This is exactly the same state as “The Adam and Eve”, Old Chelsea above, but printed on European paper that was probably a flyleaf from an old book (the watermark is 1814). It is inscribed à mon ami P. G. Hamerton. / J. McNeill Whistler (presumably a record of Whistler’s inscription on a mount, as it is not in the artist’s handwriting). Whistler often crossed swords in print with the art critic Philip Gilbert Hamerton, but he had agreed that his etching of Billingsgate could be published in Hamerton’s journal The Portfolio in January 1878, and in the new edition of Hamerton’s influential Etching and Etchers in 1880.
Bequeathed by G. J. F. Knowles 1959
Collections record: P.81-1959
