$2,142
Estimate: $800 - $1,200
Auction: February 18, 2021 10:00:00 AM EDT
London: (Chatto and Windus), 1888. First edition. Small 8vo. 29, (3) pp. Presentation copy, signed by Whistler on title-page with his butterfly monogram, to British diplomat and poet, Sir James Rennel Rodd: "Rennell Rodd-from his camarade". Sometime bound in full vellum, stamped in gilt; scattered pencil annotations to text; original wrappers bound in. Together with: Rodd, Rennell Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf Philadelphia: J.M. Stoddart & Co., 1882. First edition, edition deluxe. 12mo. Original full flexible vellum, stamped in red and in brown, scattered minor soiling, wear, and rubbing; top edge gilt, other edges untrimmed; text printed on thin hand-made paper, interleaved with light green tissue leaves.
"For two or three years nobody was more intimately and sympathetically associated with Whistler than Sir Rennell Rodd, the present minister for Great Britain at Stockholm. Of their friendship...Sir Rennell Rodd writes us: 'It was in '82, '83 that I saw most of him-in Tite Street...Jimmy, unlike many artists, liked a camarade about the place while he was working, and talked and laughed and raced about all the time, putting in touches delicately, after matured thought, ten yards away, with preternaturally long brushes...I used to help Whistler often with printing his etchings. It was very laborious work. He would manipulate a plate for hours with the ball of the thumb and the flat of the palm to get just the right superficial ink left on the plate, while I damped and roughed the paper, which came out of old folio volumes, the first and last sheets, with a fairly stiff brush." (The Life of James McNeill Whistler, Vol. 2, Pennel, p. 11).
Whistler's lecture, "Ten O'Clock", was first delivered in London in 1885, and was part of his longer battle of letters with art critic John Ruskin, here arguing in defense of art for art's sake and against the social uses of art.