Provenance

• 1885: sold, according to Messrs Dowdeswell, on Whistler's behalf to Edward John Poole (b. ca 1848) .
• By 1902: Elbert Jan van Wisselingh (1848-1912) , art dealer, claiming to have bought it direct from Whistler, sold it to John James Cowan (1846-1936) , Edinburgh;
• 1904: bought from Cowan on 13 June, through William Stephen Marchant (1868-1925) , London dealer, by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) , Detroit;
• 1919: bequeathed to the Freer Gallery of Art.

The sale of several pictures to Poole is documented, and he was willing to lend works from his collection in the 1880s and early 1890s, but it is not entirely clear what happened to this particular watercolour. 1 On 7 November 1902 Cowan told Freer that van Wisselingh had bought this watercolour from Whistler; a few days later, on 19 November, when sending Whistler a list of his collection, Cowan queried the title, calling it 'Morby Hall'. 2

Further details are given in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 908).

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 28) as 'Moreby Hall'.
• 1904: 78th Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1904 (cat. no. 80).
• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 100) as 'Moreby Hall'.

By the terms of Freer's will, this work cannot be lent to another venue.