Provenance

• 1896 ca: either sold or stolen from Whistler's Paris studio;
• 1896/1900: with Alexander Reid (1854-1928), Glasgow art dealer, Scotland;
• 1900: purchased by John James Cowan (1846-1936), Edinburgh, in April 1900;
• 1901: returned to Whistler on 30 June 1901;
• 1904: probably returned in about April by Whistler's executrix Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) to J. J. Cowan;
• 1904/1906: sold to Alexander Reid (1854-1928), Glasgow;
• 1906: purchased by C. Vose & Sons, Boston, in December 1906;
• 1908: purchased by Hugo Reisinger (1856–1914), New York;
• 1914: bequeathed to his wife, Edmee Busch Reisinger (later Mrs C. E. Greenough) (1871-1955), New York;
• After 1940: passed to her son, Curt H. Reisinger (1891-1964), New York;
• 1948: gift of Curt H. Reisinger to the National Gallery of Art.

According to Whistler, his portrait of Alice Butt was painted in Chelsea, but the painting was stolen from his studio in Paris and 'painted upon' by someone else. 1 However, Alexander Reid later said that he had bought the painting directly from Whistler at his studio in rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris, about 1896, when it was newly completed, and sold it shortly afterwards to J. J. Cowan. 2 Cowan stated that he bought it from Reid in April 1900 for £450, and Reid then gave Cowan the impression that the former owner was a friend of Whistler who had bought the portrait from the artist and did not want Whistler to know he had sold it. 3 This is confirmed by Reid's own records: he recorded the sale of a 'Head of a Girl' to Cowan in April 1900. 4 When Whistler told him it had been stolen, Cowan returned the portrait to the artist with Study of a Girl's Head [YMSM 487] on 30 June 1901. 5

It was in Whistler's studio at his death in 1903, and in accordance with Whistler's expressed wishes, on 19 April 1904, his executrix, Miss R. Birnie Philip, attached a notice to the picture: 'Alice Butt, (Red)'- 'This picture was removed from Mr. Whistler's studio without his knowledge & worked on by some person unknown.' 6 She probably returned the portrait to J. J. Cowan at that time.

Within two years it was again with Reid. In December 1906 a 'Head of a Girl' was sold by Reid to Vose, Boston dealers, for £550; his son A. McN. Reid thought that 'This was possibly Cowan's picture.'

On 23 July 1907 Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) saw a photograph of q portrait of Alice Butt and said he remembered seeing it in Whistler's studio, in exhibitions, and Cowan's possession. 7

It was sold by Vose to Hugo Reisinger in 1908, and he lent it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1908, and to an exhibition in Berlin in 1910 (cat. no. 93). The painting passed to his wife (later Mrs Busch-Greenough) who lent it to a show in New York in 1940 (cat. no. 299), and to her son, Curt H. Reisinger, New York, who gave it to the National Gallery of Art in 1948. 8

Exhibitions

• It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

Whistler Memorial Exhibition, Boston 1904, photograph, GUL Whistler PH6/26

The photograph reproduced above shows it in Boston in 1904.