Provenance

• 1884: bought by Wickham Flower (1835-1904) , London;
• 1904: sold at auction after Flower's death, Christie's, London, 17 December 1904 (lot 39), bought by Colnaghi, London art dealers, for £378;
• 1905, January 4: sold by Colnaghi's to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit, with Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud [YMSM 271], for £567;
• 1919: bequeathed by C.L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

Unsold paintings were returned to Whistler's studio after the first Dowdeswell exhibition in 1884. Subsequently Whistler wrote to Charles William Dowdeswell (1832-1915):

'Mr Flower has been here this morning and after fixing upon 'The Sweet Shop', 'The Sun Cloud', and the little Chelsea Embankment - I have forgotten the exact name - but you know the one I mean, [sketch] has gone away saying that he will now write to me and make me a formal proposal -

So send me by return the prices as they were in the catalogue - that I may know what I am about -

By the way I might have a few catalogues (as I have none whatever) - and one full priced one.' 1

The three paintings were An Orange Note: Sweet Shop, Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud [YMSM 271] and Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church [YMSM 305]. Whistler suggested 205 guineas for the three, or £160 for the first two. 2 On 15 August 1884 Flower made Whistler an offer, asking : 'Wd. £160 - - buy the 3 little pictures? … You will probably say quite impossible & in that case I must wait till your next little Exhibition.' 3

Whistler's response was to haggle:

'Perhaps we may manage an "arrangement" in business after all … you have made your proposition - and now behold here is mine -

The Catalogued price of each of the three little pictures is as follows:

(No. 38.) An orange note - The Sweet Shop - 200. gs (No. 52.)

Note in blue & opal - The Sun Cloud - 130 [gs] (No. 44.)

Harmony in brown & gold - Old Chelsea Church - 80 [gs]

[Total] 410. gs.

The £160. that you propose for these three is barely half the sum asked for the first two -

For 205 guineas - that is half the Catalogue price - you shall have the three! - or if you do not wish to spend more than you say let me keep my third little bit and take the two that you liked first, The Sweet Shop & The Sun Cloud.' 4

And as a result, Wickham Flower settled on An Orange Note: Sweet Shop and Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud [YMSM 271].

A woodcut of An Orange Note: Sweet Shop was illustrated by Walter Dowdeswell (1858-1929) in an article on Whistler in the Art Journal in 1887. 5

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 38) as 'An orange note – Sweet Shop'.
• 1887: Probably Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 206) as 'Note en orange: Boutique de bonbons'.
• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 84) as 'Note orange; la boutique aux bonbons (An Orange Note. The Sweet Shop').

This painting was mentioned frequently in reviews of the 1884 exhibition, which were kept by Whistler in his press cutting albums. Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) in The Artist raved about it:

'Perhaps the most remarkable ... a simple subject - a doorway, a tiny shop window piled with oranges and cakes, a shelf full of bottles containing lollipops, and three little figures; but for tone and wonderful breadth of detail, which gives us the contents even of the bottles, this little gem can hold its own with canvases a hundred times its size, and will doubtless become historical, as one of the most beautiful, refined, and powerful creations by the author of the Peacock Room.' 6

In an unidentified review, a critic commented on a small panel, probably this: 'Some of the smallest productions, such as the little Chelsea shop, scarcely bigger than the hand, are really prodigies of finish, and as elaborate in detail as if they were from the hand of Meissonier.' Linking Whistler with the classicist painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) is rather unusual! 7

The Graphic was enthusiastic: 'The "Sweet Shop," with a pile of oranges forming the key-note of colour, is an exquisite little work of its kind.' 8 The Globe displayed more modified rapture: 'the little "Sweet Shop" with a pile of oranges in the window' was among several 'admirable studies, most harmonious in tone, produced with little apparent labour, but conveying an impression of completeness.' 9 The Morning Post described it as 'excellent in tone and wonderfully clever in the suggestion of minute detail without extravagant elaboration'. 10 And 'Cigarette' wrote appreciatively in The Topical Times: 'of the oils my fancy was struck with 38, "An Orange Note." It is only a "sweet shop," but there is both harmony and humour of a subtle sort in it.' 11 In a London newspaper, Frederick Wedmore (1844-1921) also described it favourably:

'a shop in Chelsea. The shop is probably the most perfect little thing of its kind that was ever wrought by an artist who has learnt to see. . . It is without detail, without apparent labour, without dramatic interest, but it is exquisite in colour, faultless in tone, and its well considered mystery has, at least, the interest of suggestiveness.' 12

Wearing another hat, Wedmore wrote equally positively in the Academy (he still assumed that it was 'a Chelsea sweet-shop'):

'[W]hen Mr Whistler speaks it is because there is something fresh to be said; a new pretty thing has been seen, or a thing has been seen newly, and clamours to be recorded … perhaps it is only the bottles of pear-drops and bull's-eyes and the pile of oranges in the shadowed window of a Chelsea sweet-shop ... In any case it is fresh or freshly seen, and in almost every case it is set down engagingly. Of course Mr Whistler has not to do with what is called imagination; he has to do with the vivacious record of sometimes trivial fact. He perceives intently, and what he perceives he chronicles.' 13

By the terms of C. L. Freer's bequest to the Freer Gallery of Art, the painting cannot be lent to another venue.