Print collector's quarterly (6.1916)

Pennell contributed to the “Star,” on April 8, an appre-
ciation which it is a pleasure to quote: —

“I stepped in at Dunthorne’s the other afternoon to
have a look at the etchings of Amsterdam by Mr.
Whistler. There are only eight of them, I think, but
they are eight of the most exquisite renderings by the
most independent man of the century. With two excep-
tions they are only studies of very undesirable lodgings
and tenements on canal banks, old crumbling brick
houses reflected in sluggish canals, balconies with figures
leaning over them, clothes hanging in decorative lines,
a marvellously graceful figure carelessly standing in the
great water-door of an overhanging house, every figure
filled with life and movement, and all its character ex-
pressed in half a dozen lines. . . . Another etching there
was, of a stretch of country looking across a canal, wind-
mills beyond, drawn as no one since Rembrandt could
have done it, and in this plate the greatest of modern
etchers has pitted himself against the greatest of the
ancients, and has come through only too successfully
for Rembrandt. There are three or four others, I un-
derstand, not yet published, but this is the gem so far.
The last is a great drawbridge, with a suggestion of
trees and houses, figures and boats, and a tower in the
distance, done, I believe, from a canal in Amsterdam.”1
In this same year, 1889, Whistler exhibited in Amster-
dam his paintings, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, The
Fur Jacket, and Effie Deans-Arrangement in Yellow and
Grey, and received the award of a gold medal.
The Effie Deans had been bought the year before by
1 The Life of James McNeill Whistler, p. 275.
390