Provenance

• 1879: Lewis Page Jarvis (1845-1900);
• 1900: on the death of Lewis Jarvis in June 1900 the portrait passed to his widow, Ada Maud Jarvis (1850-1919);
• 1907: sold by her to Tooth, London art dealers, for £500;
• 1907: sold by Tooth to Agnew's, London dealers, for £750 (Agnew's # J1323), and by them to Knoedler, New York dealers, in January 1907;
• 1908: sold by Knoedler's to Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, 18 April 1908.

Knoedler's offered the portrait to Margaret Selkirk Watson Parker (1867-1936), Detroit, for $6500 in 1907 but sold it to Smith College in the following year. 1 It was purchased with the Winthrop Hillyer Fund by Smith College.

Exhibitions

• 1905: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 65) as 'Portrait of Mrs. Louis Jarvis'.

It was not, as far as is known, exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.