Composition
Arrangement in Black: Girl Reading, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Study: Seated Figure, Freer Gallery of Art
Reading, lithograph, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Rosenwald Collection
The costume and composition are closely related to a portrait in chalk of Maud Franklin (1857-ca 1941), Study: Seated Figure [M.0694], and two lithographs, probably done about 1879, one of them being Reading c017.
Technique
Arrangement in Black: Girl Reading, Metropolitan Museum of Art
It is thinly painted, with slightly spiky brushwork, rather more jerky than Whistler's usual work, though perfectly consistent over the panel. It is possible that it has slightly darkened.
The Metropolitan Museum catalogue describes it as 'Constructed of quickly applied dabs of paint, the woman can be discerned only from changes in color tones and variations of brushstroke. In many areas the distinction between figure and background is obscure.' 1
Conservation History
Unknown.
Frame
Arrangement in Black: Girl Reading, Metropolitan Museum of Art
After the painting was bought by J. C. Bancroft it was framed by Frederick Henry Grau (1859-1892), Whistler's London frame-maker, before being sent to Boston on 27 June 1891. 2 The frame bears Grau's signature on the verso. 3
Notes:
1: Spassky, Natalie, with Linda Bantel, Doreen Bolger Burke, Meg Perlman, and Amy L. Walsh, American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 2, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born between 1816 and 1845, pp. 394-96.
2: Whistler to B. Whistler, [15 June 1891], GUW #06594.
3: Dr Sarah L. Parkerson Day, Report on frames, 2017. See also Parkerson 2007 [more] .
Last updated: 25th November 2020 by Margaret
