Provenance

• 1856: presumably acquired by the sitter, Henry Hudson.
• 1879: said to have been owned by a 'gentleman' in Hartford, CT.
• Date unknown: said to have owned by a relative of Henry Hudson, Miss Francis Storrs, CT;
• Date unknown: said to have been given by Miss Francis Storrs to her cousin Mary Wilcox Russell (1872-1933), Hartford County, CT, who married John Davenport Cheney (1870-1919) in 1905;
• 1933?: passed to her daughter Jane Davenport Cheney (1906-1989), wife of Benjamin McLane Spock MD (1903-1998);
• Date unknown: sold to a private collector.

Henry Hudson was a common name but the only one in Hartford, Connecticut, that has been identified was a barber born about 1827 who is recorded in Massachusetts, not Paris, in 1856. 1 No links to the other people mentioned above have been established and he is very unlikely to have been Whistler's sitter.

Francis Storrs has not been identified.

Frederick William Russell (1831–1895) of Chatham, Middlesex County, CT, and his wife Anna ('Annie') Jane Hudson (1834-1907) had several children, one of whom was named Harry Hudson Russell, and may have been named after the subject of Whistler's portrait. Sadly Harry Hudson Russell died shortly after birth in 1856.

By 1900 the widowed Anna Russell was living with her surviving children, Frederick Grenville Russell (1859-1902) and Mary Wilcox Russell (1873-1933) in Hartford, CT. Five years later Mary married John Davenport Cheney (1870-1919). It was their daughter Jane who eventually acquired the watercolour.

The aforementioned Anna Jane Hudson was the daughter of William Hudson (1797-1879) and Anna Miller (1796-1844), whose other children were Dr William Miller Hudson (1833-1901) and Mary Regina Hudson (1839-1860). This is a little tantalising, since it shows there was a doctor of near Whistler's age in the family.

Exhibitions

• 1879: on show in A. D. Vorce & Co., 207 Main Street, Hartford, CT.

According to the Hartford Daily Courant, 26 July 1879:

'There has just been placed on exhibition at Vorce's an exceedingly rare and interesting picture. It is a head in water color by the famous Whistler of London … painted by Whistler while a student at Paris, ... is a portrait of an American medical student who, like Whistler, occupied apartments in the once famous "Latin quarter". The picture is the property of a gentleman of this city and is probably the only specimen of Whistler's work in the state. It will be on exhibition for a few days and lovers of art should not fail to examine it.' 2