The Butcher's Dog

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

This impression has Whistler's printer, Thomas Way's collector's stamp on the verso, Lugt 2456. See the text below with Way's comments on this image

Quoted from The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, Vol. I catalogue raisonne, pg. 469:

"In his memoir of 1912, T.R. Way recalled Whistler's remarks when asked about the location of the shopfront depicted in this lithograph. The artist identified the site as part of a group of old Queen Anne houses on Cleveland Street. Way could not remember any such buildings and, when he went to seek them out, found the subject instead to be 'a sort of superior industrial dwelling of quite recent date.' Way, a serious antiquarian who recorded many old London buildings in his own lithographs, was clearly amused by Whistler's mistake. He concluded his remarks about the matter by saying that the artist was 'always attracted by the picturesqueness of old buildings, yet, from sundry remarks, I am pretty sure that his antiquarian knowledge was very slight.' In any event, Way's perseverance provides us with a locale on Cleveland Street, close to the studio Whistler had taken at 8 Fitzroy Street.

"The Butcher's Dog was transferred and proved along with the drawing for St. Giles-in-the-Fields (cat. no. 167) on 13 April 1896 (App. II.4). Whistler then made successive revisions to the stone. In the second edition (1905) of his catalogue, T.R. Way maintained that there were four states of 'The Butcher's Dog', adding that 'the modifications made to each are clear, when they are laid side by side, they are not easy to describe.' There was considerable variation in the inking of the stone. Some impressions... were so lightly inked that Whistler's alterations are difficult to discern, while others were inked so heavily that it may seem as though more tonal work was added to the stone."