Titles

Whistler's own title is not known. Minor variations in the title are as follows:

• 'Lillie – An Oval' (1904, Royal Scottish Academy). 1
• 'Lily - (an oval)' (1905, R. Birnie Philip). 2
• 'Lily' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). 3
• 'Lillie: An Oval' (1980, YMSM). 4

'Lillie: An Oval' is the accepted title.

Description

An oval half-length portrait of a young woman seated, in vertical format. She is in slight three-quarter view to left, looking rather seriously at the viewer. She has thick auburn hair, cut in a long fringe. She wears a plum-coloured cap on the back of her head and dark reddish brown clothes. Her hands are clasped in front of her, at lower left. The background is a warm reddish brown.

Sitter

Lilian ('Lily') Pamington (b. 1887/1888) was a popular model with Whistler, who was discovered on a cab ride through the city of London, when he was looking for such child models. She posed around 1900, at which time, if she was indeed the Lilian Pamington recorded in census records, she was about eight years old.

Very little is known about her, although she appears in nine of Whistler's portraits, including several where she appears in similar pose and dress: Study for 'Brown and Gold: Lillie "In our Alley!" ' [YMSM 463], Brown and Gold: Lillie 'In our Alley!' [YMSM 464] and Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal [YMSM 469].

Comments

' "Lillie: An Oval," one of the late portraits here, might fit comfortably into some medieval dream by Dante Gabriel Rossetti', wrote Paul Richard for The Washington Post during the major retrospective exhibition of 1995. 5