Edward William Hooper

Identity:

Edward William Hooper was a collector. He had two daughters, Ellen Sturgis (Mrs John Briggs Potter) and Fanny (Mrs G. S. Curtiss).

Life:

Hooper was a graduate of Harvard, a Union officer during the Civil War, and later, a trustee of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and manager of the Suffolk Savings Bank in Boston.

He bought a couple of paintings by Whistler, Interior y022 and A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend y366. Interior y022 was bequeathed to his daughter Fanny and A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend y366 to his other daughter Ellen.

According to Ellen, A Red Note: Fête on the Sands, Ostend y366 was bought when Whistler was painting her portrait, Hooper having commissioned Whistler to paint his eldest daughter in 1890, Portrait of Ellen Sturgis Hooper y391. The seventeen year old posed for Whistler in the south-facing studio at 21 Cheyne Walk, and her father attended all the sittings. She had twenty sittings, despite her father's stipulation that there should be no more than ten sittings of an hour each, due to his daughter's weak state (GUW #09138).

E. W. Hooper wrote to Whistler in 1891 encouraging him to submit plans for the decoration of a panel for Bates Hall. He also suggested to Beatrice Whistker in that year that Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle y137 might be purchased for the Boston Public Library (GUW #02169) but instead it went to the city of Glasgow.

Bibliography:

Armstrong, J. B., 'Portrait of a Lady: A Recollection of Whistler', Art Journal, vol. 25, spring 1966, pp. 250-51; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 ; MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 . 'Edward W. Hooper', Wikipedia.