Blanche Marchesi
Nationality: French
Date of birth: 1863
Place of birth: Paris
Date of death: 1940
Category: collector
Identity:
Mme Blanche Marchesi was a singer, violinist and singing teacher.
Life:
Marchesi was a collector and bought a number of works by Whistler. She purchased Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour y319 from him in February 1903 for 150 guineas. According to her, 'We really had to push his hand to sell it to us. He told us that he wanted to paint the face a little more but the model vanished... Belle de jour, Whistler explained to us, is a blue and violet flower, which colour scheme he took for that picture' (B. Marchese to Knoedler's, 23 March 1914). Marchese also bought The Giudecca - Winter; grey and blue m0739, Sunset; red and gold - The Gondolier m0806, La Toilette m1101 and r.: The Blue Girl; v.: Woman holding a fan m1223. She lent a number of the works she owned to the Whistler memorial exhibition held in London in 1905, including a figure study related to A Study m0416 but not by Whistler, which shows the same model posing but was probably drawn by Walter or Henry Greaves or by some other artist such as J. E. Christie who attended life classes with Whistler at Barthe's studio in Limerston Street in London.
Bibliography:
; 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 .
