James McNeill Whistler to Richard D’Oyly Carte: A Letter Comes to Light at the British Library

Abstract

• Recently catalogued papers of the Doyly Carte family held at the British Library have brought to light a ‘lost’ letter from the American artist James McNeill Whistler to theatrical impresario and hotelier Richard D’Oyly Carte. The letter refers to Whistler’s decoration scheme for Carte’s home at No. 4 Adelphi Terrace (demolished in 1936) and to plans (not taken forward) for Whistler to decorate the restaurant in the newly built Savoy Hotel, which opened in 1889. Whistler’s letter to Carte is reproduced, transcribed, and discussed in context. The essay also considers the letter’s intriguing physical context in the D’Oyly Carte papers, hinged to the front flyleaf of the first volume of a two-volume biography of Whistler by Elizabeth and Joseph Pennell (1908). The biography belonged to Carte’s son, Rupert D’Oyly Carte, who has annotated the letter.