Harry Wickey Art

A nostalgic image of a bucolic farmyard and thatched cottage, hearkening to a bygone era. Etching with drypoint on laid watercolor paper, 9 7/8 x 11 3/4 inches, (251 x 229 mm), full...

James Whistler (1834-1903), J.H. Woods’ Fruit Shop, Chelsea, etching and drypoint, 1887-88. Signed with the butterfly on the tab and annotated “imp,” also signed with the butterfly in pencil verso and numbered “1”. References: Kennedy 265 second state (of 2), Glasgow 327 second state (of 4). Trimmed by the artist around the plate mark except for the tab, in excellent condition. Printed in black ink on ivory laid paper, 3 3/4 x 5 1/8 inches. A fine impression of this great rarity; the print was never published. Glasgow accounts for four impressions. watermark: partial arms of Amsterdam(cf. Spink/Stratis/Tedeschi, watermark nos. 12ff.) This is before the third state in which heavy shading was added around the woman at the center, and the heads of figures at right and left of the figure are defined. In Glasgow’s fourth state the shading and the figure were removed; no impression is known of this state, but the state is inferred from the cancelled plate. According to Glasgow “Joseph Henry Wood had a greengrocer’s shop at 1 Park Walk...

Etching with drypoint on cream wove paper with a deckle edge, 6 7/8 x 4 7/8 inches (200 x 125 mm); sheet 15 x 11 inches (380 x 280 mm), full margins. In excellent condition with mino...

Lower Manhattan and the Seaport as the artist imagined it would have appeared before 1835. New York: 1907. Etching with drypoint on Japon paper, 13 7/8 x 9 3/4 inches (353 x 248 mm...

Etching with drypoint on cream wove paper with deckle edges, 4 3/8 x 12 3/4 inches (233 x 323 mm); sheet 9 1/2 x 15 3/4 inches (240 x 338 mm), full margins. Signed and numbered 4/75 ...

An enchanting Southern landscape by the mother of the Charleston Renaissance. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, and educated under the tutelage of Thomas Anshutz at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, O'Neill Verner was a teacher, a mother, an artist, an ardent preservationist, and a skilled autodidact. Having previously focused on painting, in the early 1920s she found herself deeply moved by printmaking as a media, and especially so by the simple, peaceful themes and tableaus she discovered in Japanese art. She embarked on a effort to teach herself Japanese printmaking techniques, and in the process, produced the charming images of every day life in Charleston and its environs that earned her recognition as a cultural icon in her day, and in more modern times, as the mother of the Charleston Renaissance, which flourished well into the 1930s. In 1923 she opened a studio in Charleston where she focused on documenting the local color and the architecture and landscape that distinguishes Charleston as one of the South's most beautiful cities, all the while applying the gentle and poetic thematic sensibilities of Japanese printmaking. O'Neill Verner soon found herself in high demand when municipalities and institutions throughout the country sought commissions from her to document the beauty of their grounds and historic buildings. She worked as far north as the campuses of Harvard and Princeton, and extensively across the South, including in Savannah, Georgia, where through sweeping commissions she was able to marry her love of southern preservation and art. O'Neill Verner was a lifelong learner, and continued a path of edification that led her to study etching at the Central School of Art in London, to travel extensively through Europe, and to visit Japan in 1937, where she studied sumi (brush and ink) painting. She was a founding member of the Charleston Etchers Club, and the Southern States Art League. Her works are represented in the permanent collections of leading museums across the American south, and in major national institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston's Museum of Fine Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. O'Neil Verner...

James Whistler (1834-1903), The Mill, 1889, etching and drypoint, signed in pencil with the butterfly on the tab and inscribed “imp”, and inscribed “first state” (twice) and annotated “Wunderlich” and signed again with the butterfly verso. Reference: Kennedy 413, first state (of 5). Glasgow 457, second state (of 6; see discussion below) (cf. Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2011) On laid paper, in very good condition, trimmed just outside of the platemark all around except for the tab by the artist, 6 1/4 x 9 3/8 inches. A very fine impression of this great rarity, printed in black/brown ink with a slight veil of plate tone. provenance: H. Wunderlich & Co., New York Louis B. Dailey, New York (Lugt 4500) sale, Sotheby’s, New York, October 31, 2003, lot 69 literature; Neue Lagerliste 122: James McNeill Whistler – Etchings...

Etching with drypoint on lightweight Japon paper, 9 3/4 x 9 7/8 inches ( 247 x 250 mm); sheet 14 x 12 3/4 inches (355 x 324 mm), full margins. Signed in pencil in the lower margin. I...

James Whistler (1834-1903), The Traghetto, etching and drypoint, 1879-80, signed with the butterfly on the tab and inscribed “imp”. Reference: Kennedy 19...

James McNeill Whistler (1830-1903), Lagoon: Noon, etching and drypoint, 1879-1880, signed with the butterfly and inscribed “imp” on the tab [also signed with the butterfly in the plate lower left]. Reference: Glasgow 209, third state (of 3), Kennedy 216, third state (of 3); Lochnan 231, 4 7/8 x 7 7/8 inches. A fine impression with very little plate tone, and printed with extraordinary attention to the etching and drypoint details. The printed butterfly, usually only barely visible, is clearly defined in this impression (see detail below). Kennedy mades special note that an impression like this, with the clearly visible butterfly, was in the collection of John H. Wrenn. On a commission from the Fine Arts Society, Whistler created the plates of his Venice series...

James Whistler (1834-1903), The Bridge, Santa Marta, 1879-80, etching with drypoint, printed in sepia on fine laid paper. Signed with the butterfly and inscribed imp on the tab (also with an exceedingly light butterfly lower right in the plate). Kennedy 204, probably eighth (final) state; Glasgow 201, probably state 9 (of 9) (cf. Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2011), Lochnan 199. Trimmed to the platemark by the artist, h: 11.8 x w: 7.9 in / h: 30 x w: 20.1 cm. A fine impression, printed with subtle tone. The bridge theme occurs repeatedly in Whistler’s vistas. It is also the main focus of more than one of the Venetian prints. While some bridges are seen from below, from where one would see it if approaching in a gondola (for example Ponte del Piovan, Kennedy 209), The Bridge depicts the scene from a high perspective, opening up the view into the far distance. The small boat approaching the arch in the foreground is again, as in the earlier Thames prints, a stock motif that is probably ultimately derived from the Japanese woodcuts of Hokusai and Hiroshige. The bridge here is the Ponte de le Terese over the Rio de l’Arzere in the Santa Marta quarter. The early biography of Whistler by Elizabeth and Joseph Pennell is essential for its “immense quantity of information” but also notorious for “the inherent hyperbole and misinformation” (Eric Denker, Annotated Bibliography, in Fine, p. 184). Still, it is worth quoting from the Pennels’ appraisal of The Bridge: “Simplicity of expression has never been carried further. Probably the finest plate, in its simplicity and directness, is The Bridge. Whistler now obtained the quality of richness by suggesting detail, and also by printing. In The Traghetto...

London: Fine Art Trade Guild, c1900. Etching with drypoint on cream laid paper with a deckle edge 11 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (290 x 208 mm); sheet 15 x 11 5/8 inches (380 x 294 mm), full...