Detail from The Canal, Amsterdam, 1889, James McNeill Whistler, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

 

YMSM 458
A Paris Model

Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Date: 1897/1898
Collection: The Hunterian, University of Glasgow
Accession Number: GLAHA 46363
Medium: oil
Support: canvas, oval
Size: 57.8 x 44.5 cm (22 3/4 x 17 1/2")
Signature: none
Inscription: none
Frame: Oval cassetta moulding

A Paris Model

A Paris Model dates from between 1897 and 1898. The dress, format and technique confirm a date in the late 1890s. 1

It was painted in Whistler's studio at 86 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris, at some time between 1895 and 1899, according to a label on the verso written by Harold Wright (1885-1961), probably from information provided by Whistler's sister-in-law Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958) .

A Paris Model, The Hunterian
A Paris Model, The Hunterian

It may have been one of the oval paintings on which Whistler was working in 1898. The frame has the stamp of Claude Chapuis (1829-1908), and Whistler wrote to his sister-in-law on 28 October 1898, 'I want you to drive over to Chapuis ... and say that Monsieur hopes he is getting on all right with the two ovals - and his frames - Ask when I am to have them.' 2

Notes:

1: YMSM 1980 [more] (cat. no. 458). A possible earlier date, around 1895, is suggested in Spink 1998 [more] , vol. 1, p. 131.

2: Whistler to R. Birnie Philip, [28 October 1898], GUW #04743.

Last updated: 22nd October 2020 by Margaret