James McNeill Whistler Salute - Sundown

Date 1880
Materials Chalk and pastel on paper
Dimensions 20.0 cm x 26.8 cm
Marks Signed with butterfly at centre right; inscribed in pencil at bottom centre: "No. 20 10 1/4 x 4 3/4"; inscribed in pencil at right (on backboard): "60-9 / 4 1 / 8 x 91 / 8"; inscribed in ink by Harold Wright on verso (on backboard): "Whistler / Sunset over Venice".
Further information GLAHA 46083.
Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours: A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1995 (809).

Note When Whistler was declared bankrupt in 1879, the Fine Art Society helped by commissioning him to make a set of etchings of Venice. Whistler made fifty etchings and one hundred pastels. The title of this pastel refers to the Santa Maria della Salute, the large building seen on the horizon. Whistler wanted to capture the essence of the view quickly and simply. Look how the lower half of the paper is almost bare, apart from Whistler’s butterfly signature. The city is suggested through a simple strip of colour, broken with shapes indicating buildings and towers and their reflections in the water. The sunset is very beautifully depicted with simple bands of purple and yellow. The pastel, which can be easily smudged, gives this work a soft, unfocused quality, making Venice appear mysterious and poetic. Notice that Whistler did not hide the brown paper but used its colour as part of the design.