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Titles
Several possible titles have been suggested:
- 'Head of a Girl' (1900, A. Reid). 1
- 'Alice Butt - No. 1' (1900, Whistler). 2
- 'Alice Butt' (1901, Whistler). 3
- 'Head of a Girl' (1908, Metropolitan Museum of Art). 4
- 'Kopf eines jungen Madchens' (1910, Königliche Akademie der Künste, Berlin). 5
- 'Alice Butt (2)' (1980, YMSM). 6
The numbering, 'Alice Butt (2)', serves to distinguish this painting from Alice Butt (1) [YMSM 437].
Description
Alice Butt (2), National Gallery of Art
A half-length portrait in vertical format, showing a girl with long wavy dark brown hair, facing the viewer. She has a dark brown dress or coat with grey collar, and sits against a warm orangey red background.
Sitter
Alice Caroline Butt (1879-1954). According to Whistler, he painted 'a little child called "Alice Butt" - charming - quite Italian in type' in Chelsea. 7 A sketch by the artist's wife. Beatrice Philip (Mrs E. W. Godwin, Mrs J. McN. Whistler) (1857-1896), and presumably done at the same time, catches the child's fragile beauty with sparing outlines (it is now in the Hunterian, University of Glasgow). 8
Notes:
1: A. McN. Reid, 1963, GUL WPP file.
2: Note by Whistler, [March/May 1900], GUW #12717.
3: Whistler to J. J. Cowan, 2 July [1901], GUW #00746.
4: Loan display, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1908.
5: Ausstellung Amerikanischer Kunst, Königliche Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1910 (cat. no. 93).
6: YMSM 1980 [more] (cat. no. 438).
7: Note by Whistler, [March/May 1900], GUW #12717.
8: The Hunterian, GLAHA 46568. MacDonald, Margaret F., Beatrice Whistler: Artist & Designer, Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, 1997, p. 32 (cat. 64).
Last updated: 23rd March 2021 by Margaret
