[DECADENT AMERICAN ARTISTS, 1888]. [PRESENTATION COPY]. Le "Ten O'Clock" de M. Whistler Whistler, James McNeill (Stephane Mallarme, translator) Art and Design,Boston Book Fair 2025

Small 4to (196 x 147 mm). 29 pp., 1 f., edges untrimmed. Original printed wrappers (darkened and dust soiled, edges chipped, two small repairs). One of [250] copies printed on Van Gelder watermarked laid paper (the only paper), deckled edges, text in excellent condition, with an ink correction on p. 10 and one work cancelled on p. 17. Red cloth chemise. EXCELLENT ASSOCIATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY WHISTLER TO HIS "CONFRERE" AND SOMETIME COLLABORATOR, THE PAINTER ANTONIO DE LA GANDARA, SIGNED WITH WHISTLER'S FAMOUS STYLIZED BUTTERFLY. The present pamphlet represents the first and foremost means by which Whistler's views on Art were made available to his French contemporaries. In Feb. 1885, Whistler delivered this lecture in London at 10 o'clock at night, deliberately choosing this most unfashionable time because it would not compete with any other evening engagement. It was an iconoclastic hour-long talk, its presentation completely unprecedented, with abnormal passages such as: "There are those also, sombre of mien [i.e. manner], and wise with the wisdom of books, who frequent museums and burrow in crypts Collecting comparing compiling classifying contradicting. Experts these for whom a date is an accomplishment a hall-mark, success Careful in scrutiny, are they, and conscientious of judgement Establishing, with due weight, . unimportant reputations discovering the picture, by the stain on the back testing the Torso, by the leg that is missing filling folios with doubts on the way of that limb disputatious and dictatorial, concerning the birthplace . of inferior persons speculating . in much writing, upon the great worth of bad work . True clerks of the collection, they mix memoranda with ambition and reducing Art to Statistics, they file the Fifteenth Century and pigeonhole the Antique!" "Mallarmé instantly succumbed to Whistler's magic and was touched, as though by a conjuror's wand, by the ebony cane which this great dandy of painting wielded so elegantly. Everything in Whistler justified the curiosity and affection which Mallarmé felt for him: his mysterious and pondered art, full of subtle practices and complicated formulae, the singularity of his person, the intelligent tension of his face, the lock of white hair amid the black, the diabolical monocle restraining his frowning brows, his prompt wit in the face of the scathing retorts and cruel ripostes, that ready and incisive wit which was his weapon of defense and attack" (Henri de Régnier, quoted by Robin Spencer in "Whistler: A Retrospective," p. 257). Whistler's "Ten O'Clock" was one of only three Mallarmé works that he translated from English into French, the others being Poe's "The Raven" (1875) and Poe's "Poems" (1888). THE RECIPIENT: Whistler's friend Antonio de La Gandara (1861-1917) was an esteemed French painter whose portraits were in great demand by the fashionable (and wealthy) elite of Paris and beyond. His painting style is often compared to Whistler's, and indeed for a time La Gandara they shared a studio in Paris. Both artists provided illustrations for Robert de Montesquiou's "Les Chauves-Souris" (1893). La Gandara was the subject of a major retrospective at the Musee Lambinet, Versailles in 2018, and a catalogue raisonne of his works was published by Xavier Mathieu in 2025. SIGNIFICANT ASSOCIATION COPIES OF WHISTLER'S "TEN O'CLOCK" ARE RARE ON THE MARKET. Almost all the so-called "presentation copies" were inscribed by Mallarme, not Whistler himself. NUMBER OF PRESENTATION COPIES INSCRIBED BY WHISTLER THAT HAVE APPEARED AT AUCTION: 1. Christie's Paris 11/26/19 lot 180, to Charles Morice, the author; 2. Maggs Catalogue 460 (1925!) to Whistler's secretary. NB: A presention copy inscribed by Mallarme to the painter Berthe Morisot from both of them (but not signed by Whistler) sold at Sotheby's Paris 10/15/15 (lot 125) for EUR 37,500.