Tone and atmosphere dominate many of Whistler’s Venetian etchings, and tonal wiping here suggests night falling across the Bacino (Basin of Saint Mark’s). We look toward the entrance of the Giudecca Canal at a large sailing ship anchored to the left of San Giorgio Maggiore. Equal weight is given to real and reflected forms, and gondolas, formed by smudged drypoint lines, appear as though through rising mist. The artist began to work on the plate soon after he arrived in September 1879 and the print was published by the Fine Art Society in December 1880 as part of Venice, a Series of Twelve Etchings (the "First Venice Set"). As in most of Whistler’s etchings, the image reverses the actual view.
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Howard Mansfield A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etchings and Drypoints of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Caxton Club, 1909, cat. no. 181.
Edward Guthrie Kennedy, Royal Cortissoz The Etched Work of Whistler: illustrated by reproductions in collotype of the different states of the plates. The Grolier Club, 1910, cat. no. 184 ii/v.
Katharine A. Lochnan The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler. Ex. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 14–November 11, 1984; The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, November 24, 1984–January 13, 1985. Yale University Press, Art Gallery of Ontario, New Haven, 1984, cat. no. 197, pp. 194-199, 281.
Alastair Grieve Whistler's Venice. New Haven and London, 2000, fig. no. 197, pp. 157-58, 189-90, 192.
Margaret F. MacDonald Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice. Aldershot and California, 2001, pp. 69, 71, 77-9, 82, 84, 88, 92, 94, 128, pl. 94, 95.
Gordon Cooke James McNeill Whistler, The Embroidered Curtain. Exh. cat. The Fine Art Society, London, London, 2007, cat. no. 21.
Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Joanna Meacock James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow on-line website at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk. University of Glasgow, 2012, cat. no. 222 vi/ix.
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The Met's collection of drawings and prints—one of the most comprehensive and distinguished of its kind in the world—began with a gift of 670 works from Cornelius Vanderbilt, a Museum trustee, in 1880.
