The catalogues for New York and Providence are almost identical, and were printed by The De Vinne Press. However, the third catalogue for the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy does not bear their printer’s mark. It was re-set after a different design and contains several newly included drawings (possibly replacing sold items) and one more painting by Shannon, which is number 29 in the catalogue: ‘The Toilette of Venus’. The painting was on loan from ‘William Macbeth, Esq’, who lived in Southampton (Long Island).
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| Douglas Volk, 'William Macbeth', oil on canvas, 1917 Brooklyn Museum, Gift of a group of American artists and amateurs, 18.38 [Photo: Brooklyn Museum] |
William Macbeth (1851-1917) was an art dealer form Scottish-Irish descent, who arrived in the USA in 1871 and began his career with Frederick Keppel and Co. In 1892, he established the Macbeth Gallery in New York. His records are in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian: Macbeth Gallery Records. The records do not mention the names of Ricketts and Shannon, the additional painting does not occur in the files (as far as I could see, not all have been digitised).
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| 'Birnbaum, Martin' card, Macbeth Gallery Records [Smithsonian, Washington] |
The files contain an address card of Martin Birnbaum that seens to be of later date and does not mention the Shannon painting that Birnbaum lent from the gallery. Possibly this painting was from Macbeth's private collection.
The toilet was one of Shannon’s favourite subjects, and the titles of various paintings on this theme differ very little from one another (apart from the fact that they always use the British rather than the American spelling), and the paintings depict women, sometimes with a child or a servant nearby, washing or combing their hair.
The exhibition contained two of these 'Toilet' paintings, numbered 'I' and 'II'. These are probably the paintings knowns as ‘Toilet Scene I’ and ‘Toilet Scene II’, which have been in the collection of Manchester Art Gallery since 1948.
Other 'Toilet' paintings are in the Watts Gallery, Compton, the Usher Gallery, Lincoln, and the Carlisle City and Art Gallery, Carlisle.
'The Toilette of Venus' is an early (Americanised) title for an early painting by Shannon, first exhibited in 1904 as 'The Toilet of Venus', apparently also known as 'The Green Marble Bath', and eventually called 'The Bath of Venus' that was acquired by the The Tate in 1940. Former owners were: Francis Howard (acquired in 1940), Jeremiah Colman (bought in 1918), the Viscount and Viscountess Northcliffe (sold in 1918), and now we can add the name of an earlier owner: William Macbeth (1914), and the date of the exhibition in Buffalo.
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| Charles Shannon, 'The Bath of Venus' [Tate Gallery London] |
