James McNeill Whistler Terrey's Fruit Shop, Chelsea

Date c.1885-1886
Materials Watercolour on paper laid down on card
Dimensions 12.6 cm x 20.6 cm
Marks Signed with a butterfly at the centre right; inscribed in pencil on verso: "o / & / 45 (underlined) / green".
Further information GLAHA 46098.
Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler: Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours: A Catalogue Raisonne, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1995 (1002).

Note It is easy to see what appealed to Whistler about George Terrey’s greengrocer's shop at 45 Cheyne Walk. Look how the vegetables in the window provide vivid touches of colour and varying shapes for the artist to paint. The window itself forms a kind of decorative grid against which these forms are placed. Notice how Whistler was not interested in painting the details of the shop and its customers. Rather he wanted to concentrate on the subtle use of colour and shape. Amusingly though, he shows the woman on the far right looking up as if at Whistler’s butterfly signature, which he places above the head of the second woman. Whistler was a customer of Terrey, and the greengrocer was among those to whom Whistler owed money at the time of his bankrupcy in 1879.