“A FUNDAMENTAL SOURCE FOR WHISTLER SCHOLARSHIP”: THE PENNELLS’ TWO-VOLUME LIFE OF JAMES MACNEILL WHISTLER, 1908, IN STRIKING ART DECO BINDING
PENNELL, E.R. and J. The Life of James McNeill Whistler. London / Philadelphia: William Heinemann / J.B. Lippincott, 1908. Two volumes. Quarto, 20th-century full tan and russet morocco, top edges gilt, uncut.
Signed limited first edition, number 146 of only 150 copies on Japon paper signed by the publisher, of the first official biography of Whistler, “the greatest artist and most striking personality of the 19th century,” authored at his request and published shortly after his death, with over 160 illustrations (most full-page photogravures), in a striking Art Deco binding.
This richly illustrated two-volume first edition of The Life of Whistler “remains the fundamental source for Whistler scholarship.” Researched and written at Whistler’s request by his longtime friends and fellow artists Joseph Pennell and Elizabeth Robins Pennell, this first official biography of the artist especially benefits from “the importance the Pennells attached to preserving Whistler’s legend… Initiating research just after the artist’s death… the Pennells worked from the modernist premise that Whistler had lived ahead of his time and his genius went unacknowledged in his own age” (Merrill, Peacock Room, 23-4). Among the over 160 illustrations within are impressive full-page photogravures of Whistler’s Portrait of the Painter’s Mother, his striking portraits of Théodore Duret, Sir Henry Irving, Mrs. Huth, the Leylands and others, images of the Peacock Room, paintings such as The Fur Jacket and many luminous landscapes.
Fine condition.