Provenance

• By 1904: owned by the Hon. John Prince Elton (1865-1948);
• 1948: bequeathed to his wife, Elizabeth Deborah Steele Elton (1875-1962), Waterbury, CT;
• 1962: bequeathed to her daughter, Charlotte (Mrs R. M. Cross, 1910-1998);
• 1987: sold to Coe Kerr, New York art dealers;
• 1989: sold to Thomas Colville (n/a) Fine Arts, New York;
• By 1995: sold to a private collector;
• After 2000: bought by Paula Crane Lunder (b. 1935) and Peter H. Lunder (b. 1933);
• 2013: given to Colby College Museum of Art, The Lunder Collection.

The Colby website comments:

'Whistler created this pastel—the first work by the artist to enter the Lunder Collection—as part of an uncompleted mosaic commission for the South Kensington Museum. A second pastel, also for the unrealized commission, shows a Japanese woman painting a fan. The artist in this image, holding a brush in her right hand, has paused in her work, allowing the parasol to gracefully frame her soft features.' 1