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Wapping
James Abbott McNeill Whistler1860-1864
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Washington, DC, United States
Details
- Title: Wapping
- Creator: James McNeill Whistler
- Date Created: 1860-1864
- Physical Dimensions: overall: 72 x 101.8 cm (28 3/8 x 40 1/16 in.) framed: 92.1 x 123.5 x 7.6 cm (36 1/4 x 48 5/8 x 3 in.)
- Provenance: Purchased c. 1864 by Thomas DeKay Winans [1820-1878],Baltimore;[1] his daughter, Celeste Winans [Mrs. G. M.] Hutton, Baltimore, until at least 1923; Flora MacDonald White, New York; sold 29 September 1928 to John Hay Whitney [1904-1982], Manhasset, New York; deeded 1982 to the John Hay Whitney Charitable Trust, New York; gift 1982 to NGA. [1] According to an unidentified newspaper clipping in the Winans-Hutton Family Scrapbook, ms. 916, box 18, Maryland Historical Society Manuscripts Division, Winans purchased _Wapping_ in 1867 when it was exhibited at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (according to the same source Whistler "wanted it for exhibition at Goupil's, in 1892, but could not get it and it has not been seen in Europe since 1867." Elizabeth Robins Pennell and Joseph Pennell, _The Life of James McNeill Whistler_, 2 vols., London, 1908: I:88, indicated that Winans brought the painting to Baltimore shortly after the 1867 Paris exhibition. Winans had accompanied the artist's father Major George Washington Whistler to Russia in 1844, where they began construction on a railroad line between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Winans became wealthy through the venture, and shortly after returning to Baltimore in 1851 built "Alexandroffsky." Whistler had briefly worked for the Winans Locomotive Company at Baltimore in 1854, after his discharge from West Point. His elder half-brother George Whistler married into the Winans family. For biographical information on Winans see Bertram Lippincott III, "The Hutton Family of 'Shamrock Cliff'," _Newport History. Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society_ 64, no. 221 (Fall 1991): 164-166; and Alexandra Lee Levin, "Inventive, Imaginative, and Incorrigible: The Winans Family and the Building of the First Russian Railroad," _Maryland Historical Magazine_ 84 (Spring 1989): 50-55.
- Medium: oil on canvas
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