Provenance

• By 1894: with Alexander Reid (1854-1928) , Glasgow art dealer;
• By 1895: owned by William Burrell (1861-1958) , Glasgow, until at least 1907.
• 1929: consigned by Vicars Brothers to Christie's, London, 1 March 1929 (lot 122) as 'A Mother and Child', and bought by Colnaghi's, London dealers;
• 1929: sold to Kennedy, New York dealers, 4 May 1929;
• 1929: sold through Martin Birnbaum (1878-1970) to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943) , 8 November 1929;
• 1943: bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum.

See also MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 1288).

Exhibitions

• 1894: 64th Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1894 (cat. no. 322) as 'Mother and child'.
• 1895: A Collection of Paintings representing The Glasgow School, Artists of Denmark and Some Others, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1895 (cat. no. 163, repr.) as 'Mother and child'.

On 30 November 1895, Lucy Monroe in The Critic commented that Whistler had 'sent three pastels, delicate and exquisite in colour – suggestions, dreams, flashes of light from the wings of the butterfly as it flits by.'