Provenance

• 1880: sold at auction in Whistler's bankruptcy sale, Sotheby's, London, 12 February 1880 (lot 88) as 'A Satirical Painting of a Gentleman styled "The Creditor" ', and bought by Dowdeswell, London dealer, for 12 guineas (£12.12.0);
• Date unknown: sold by Dowdeswell's to Captain H. S. Hubbell (dates unknown), London.
• By 1892: bought by George Percy Jacomb-Hood (1857-1929).
• By 1910: bought by Theron Clark Crawford (1849-1925), London.
• 1912: bought by S. & G. Gump Co., San Francisco;
• 1914: sold by them to Alma de Bretteville Spreckels (1881-1968), San Francisco;
• 1920: bought by French & Co., New York art dealers;
• 1946: still with French & Co., New York.
• By 1957: with Knoedler & Co., New York (a/c #5236/5964);
• 1959: sold on approval to the Maryhill Museum, Maryhill, Washington, in February, but returned.
• 1977: presented by Mrs Spreckels to the California Palace of the Legion of Honor through the Patrons of Art and Music.

Whistler painted two other satirical pictures that relate to his feud with Leyland and which, according to Pennell (1908), Whistler intended should be in his studio when Leyland and the committee of creditors made their official inspection of the White House in 1879 (The Loves of the Lobsters [YMSM 209] and Mount Ararat [YMSM 210]).

The forthcoming bankruptcy sale was mentioned in various newspapers, including the Glasgow Evening Post on 17 December 1879, which described it as a 'pleasing example of satirical art'. As Whistler told Charles Augustus Howell (1840?-1890):

'How about the White House[? Did you see a paragraph in the World a couple of weeks ago? A huge portrait of a former patron, it would appear has been painted by Whistler representing the said Macaenas [sic] as a demon - "sitting on the famous White House" .... This is for exhibition in a well known auction room!' 1

According to both Graves and the Pennells, when Leyland learnt that The Gold Scab [YMSM 208] was to be included in Whistler's sale in 1880 he tried to take legal measures to have it removed. 2 At the sale, 'An occasional correspondent' of the New York Daily Tribune reported that the sale had included 'a most extraordinary caricature of one of Whistler's unaccommodating creditors – more fiend than man – reminding one of Mephistopheles with the sardonic replaced by the avaricious. This sold for $63, and was bought by- the creditors himself, perhaps!' 3

Again, according to the Pennells, The Gold Scab was sold by Messrs Dowdeswell to Captain Henry S. Hubbell, and found some years later by the London artist G. P. Jacomb-Hood in a pawnshop in the King's Road, Chelsea. 4 According to Jacomb-Hood himself, he got it from his frame-maker, who had bought it at a sale. In May 1892 Jacomb-Hood was offered £800 for The Gold Scab but refused to sell it, and Whistler wrote to him approvingly:

They tell me that you have been quite perfect about the Peacock Leyland Picture - That when they came & offered you the new money of the millionaire of the Burlington - you, to their bewilderment, quietly refused -

So simple is the conduct of a gentleman! but so rarely has work of mine fallen into the hands of such an one, that I cannot refrain from /congratulating him - and myself when the pretty occasion occurs!' 5

According to G. Egerton (dates unknown), The Gold Scab was on sale in Bond Street about 1897 for £30. 6

Sketches of 'The Gold Scab', Library of Congress, Washington, DC

It was possibly on the market around 1900, when it was sketched by Whistler, but, on the other hand, this could well have been a memory sketch.

It was eventually acquired by Theron C. Crawford, London, who offered it to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) in 1910 for £2000. 7 Instead, it was bought by S. & G. Gump Co., who arranged a special exhibition for it in their San Francisco gallery in 1913, and sold it in the following year to Mrs Spreckels. 8 It was bought from her by Messrs. French & Co. in 1920 or 1921 and was still with that firm in March 1946. 9 However, the subsequent provenance is unclear. It was with Knoedler's, who lent it to an exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1957 (cat. no. 49) and sold it on approval to the Maryhill Museum in February 1959, but it was returned. At some time it was returned to Mrs Spreckels' possession (it is possible that it was owned by her from 1914 on, but offered for sale through various art dealers), and she finally gave it to the San Francisco Museums.

Exhibitions

• 32nd Exhibition of Works of Modern Artists, Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Glasgow, 1893 or [Exhibition], Boussod, Valadon & Cie., of the Goupil Gallery, London, at Wellington Studios, Glasgow, 1893.
• Spring Exhibition, Goupil Gallery, London, 1900 (cat. no. 26) as 'Arrangement in Green and Gold'.
• Exhibition at S. & G. Gump Art Galleries, San Francisco, 1913 (no catalogue). 10
• The First Annual Fine Arts Exposition, Antique and Decorative Arts League, New York, 1934.

The Gold Scab, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

In 1892-1893 the Glasgow art dealer Alexander Reid (1854-1928), negotiated the loan of The Gold Scab in order to arrange for its exhibition, beside La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine [YMSM 050], Arrangement in Black and Brown: The Fur Jacket [YMSM 181], and Arrangement in Black: La Dame au brodequin jaune - Portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell [YMSM 242], in January 1893. 11 This did not go down well: it was described in the Glasgow Evening Post of 25 January 1893 as 'The Gold Scab,” that extraordinary Japanese grotesquerie, in which the artist caricatured Mr Leyland, his patron. The Gold Scab suggests a nightmare, consequent on too much lobster'.

Equally, the Goupil exhibition of 1900 was not a success for Whistler. The critic of The Builder disliked the picture intensely, describing it as '[A] curiosity in the shape of a life-size picture by Mr Whistler called ''Arrangement in Green and Gold'', but which appears to be a representation of the devil – or a devil playing the piano , and is about as repulsive a thing as could well be imagined.' 12 And The Times was seriously critical of both artist and gallery:

'It is a pity that the exhibition is marred by the presence of a huge and ugly caricature painted by Mr Whistler many years ago after a quarrel with one of his employers. It may have been excusable to paint it and to laugh over it with the artist's friends when the quarrel was fresh; it ought long ago to have been destroyed, and it certainly should not be exhibited at the Goupil Gallery.' 13