Provenance

• 1879: bought by Thomas Way (1837-1915), London;
• 1897: probably returned to Whistler.

According to the Pennells, a large six-foot canvas of a Miss Leyland was acquired by the London printer Thomas Way at the time of Whistler's bankruptcy and returned to him much later:

'Some years later on, Thomas Way gave him back one roll of large six-foot full-length portraits: the Sir Henry Cole., a Miss May Alexander, three Miss Leylands. One of these three is probably the painting in the Brooklyn Museum. Of another in riding habit, a drawing reproduced in M. Duret's Whistler, T. R. Way said was a sketch, though it looks to us more like the Mrs. Cassatt.' 1

This was probably one of the 'unfinished portraits of two of [Leyland's] daughters', painted 'in a very high key', and 'more or less destroyed' by Whistler at the time of his bankruptcy in 1879, according to T.R. Way, and bought by a picture dealer, after Leyland had refused to take them, on behalf of Thomas Way Sr. T. R. Way hung them in his rooms until Whistler asked him to take them down.

Portrait of Miss Leyland (2) [YMSM 110] was presumably one of the '10 large portraits' that Thomas Way returned at the time of his final settlement with Whistler in 1897. 2

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.