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

 

The Yellow Room

Provenance

  • 1892: possibly with the Goupil Gallery, London.
  • By 1896: owned by Alexander Arnold Hannay (1858-1927) , London.
  • After 1896: with the Goupil Gallery, London.
  • By 1923: with Scott & Fowles, New York;
  • 1923: bought by Ellen Henderson (1869-1935) , New Orleans, Louisiana, 22 January 1923;
  • 1935: bequeathed to Hunt Henderson (1869-1939) ;
  • 1939: passed by family descent to his wife, Jeanne Henderson (d. 1970), and their son Charles Crawford Henderson (d. 2016) ;
  • 2017: auctioned, Christie's, New York, 23 May 2017 (lot 11), unsold;
  • 2017: acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Marguerite and Frank A. Cosgrove, Jr, Fund.

'3' is written on the verso of the card. Unidentified marks on the verso of the wood backing include 'G / 1892' in a square, and the name of Goupil & Co.

Exhibitions

  • 1884: possibly 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 21) 'Harmony in violet and yellow'.
  • 1896: Loan Collection of Watercolour Drawings, Guildhall Corporation of London Art Gallery, London, 1896 (cat. no. 108) 'A Drawing'.

The Irish painter Walter Frederick Osborne (1859-1903) sketched the woman's figure in this watercolour when it was exhibited at the Guildhall in 1896. 1

A label on the verso from an unidentified source reads 'No:59 - 'A Study - woman seated'.

Notes:

1: National Gallery of Ireland, PD 4007 TX 1, website at http://catalogue.nli.ie, drawing by Osborne repr. R. Anderson, 'Whistler in Dublin,' Irish Arts Review, vol. 3, no. 3, Autumn 1985, pp. 46-47, repr. drawing by Osborne.

Last updated: 5th June 2021 by Margaret