Provenance

• Before or in 1910: at the shop of Walter Thomas Spencer (1864-1936), a second-hand book-seller in New Oxford Street, Holborn;
• 1910: bought with about fifty other paintings by Frida Uhl Strindberg (1872-1943) and sold by her to Walter Dowdeswell (1858-1929).
• 1967: sold in May by The Fine Art Society, London dealers, to a private collector;
• 1977: sold by him to Michael Parkin (d. 2014), London dealer, in October.
• 2017: present whereabouts unknown.

The early history and provenance of Sketch for the Portrait of Carlyle (1) [YMSM 133] remains obscure.

It surfaced in 1910, when Walter Dowdeswell (1858-1929) showed it, together with other paintings, to the Pennells on 15 September 1910. It was described as 'a sketch of Carlyle on the back of the gold-brown nocturne' when it was being restored 'in a remote part of Camden Town.' 1 The Pennells also identify Frida Strindberg as the lady who bought the fifty or so canvases from W. T. Spencer and sold them to Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell. 2 At the time of publication of the Pennell's Whistler Journal, in 1921, it was still in the possession of Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell in London.

Exhibitions

• It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.