Silver Chalice, Japanese Bronze and Red Taper, c.1884-1889
Oil on canvas, 17 1/8 x 11 5/8”
Signed upper right
This is private picture. Weir owned the Renaissance chalice but its connection with the bronze and taper is unclear, and not enough is seen of the painting behind them to recognize it. The picture mat at the left, however, bears James Whistler’s signature and his famous butterfly mark, and since Weir’s painting style here emulates the famous expatriate’s to some extent, he may have intended this painting to be a tribute to Whistler.
The very intimacy, however, both in the choice of objects and in the odd composition and tight viewpoint, prefigures the intensely personal way in which Weir and other Impressionists would respond to the Connecticut landscape.