Provenance

• 1857: commissioned by Charles Phelps Williams (1804-1879) of Stonington, Connecticut;
• 1857/1858: presumably sent to Stonington, to Charles Phelps Williams and his wife, Georgia Palmer Babcock (Mrs C. P. Williams) (1837–1910).

Although Whistler assumed in 1900 that the copy was still in Stonington, no further record of it exists. His account is as follows:

'Then in Paris, when I was first studying, Captain Williams from Stonington; Stonington Bill they called him, got me to paint his portrait, and then gave me a commission to copy as many pictures as I chose for twenty-five dollars a piece, and I copied a picture, ... of a woman holding up a child toward a barred window and a man seen looking through the bars ... I have no doubt I made something very interesting out of them. There were very wonderful things even then, the beginning of harmonies and purple schemes. I suppose it must have been intuitive. … Probably all these are still at Stonington and are shown as wonderful things by Whistler!' 1

Exhibitions

No exhibitions are known.