Head of a Young Girl dates from the late 1890s. It was first exhibited in the Spring Exhibition, Goupil Gallery, London, 1900 (cat. no. 27) as 'Head of a Young Girl'. Whistler immediately wrote to ask William Stephen Marchant (1868-1925) at Goupil's, 'I wish now - for hitherto I have had no time to enquire - that you would tell me what is all this that you have been exhibiting without a word of request or warning to me! ... What is the Young Girl's head you have - and to whom does it belong?' 1 This was almost certainly Alice Butt (1) [YMSM 437], which dates from between 1896 and 1898.