Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Head of an Old Man smoking' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). 1
• 'Tête d'un marchand de pots de faïence fumant sa pipe' (1905, L. Bénédite). 2
• 'Tête de vieillard fumant / 'Tête de vieux fumant une pipe' (1945/1950, J. W. Revillon). 3
• 'Head of an Old Man Smoking' (1980, YMSM). 4
• 'L'homme à la pipe / Tête d'un vieux marchand de pots de faïence fumant sa pipe' (2016, Musée d'Orsay). 5

The earliest known title, 'Head of an Old Man Smoking', also used in the 1980 catalogue, has been retained.

Description

A head and shoulders portrait of an elderly, wrinkled and weather-beaten man, looking directly at the viewer, wearing a battered hat and smoking a pipe. He has a brown jacket over a white shirt, but no cravat. It is in a vertical format.

Sitter

The first owner, Charles L. Drouet (1836-1908) , told the Pennells in 1900 that the sitter, who sat to Whistler for 40 sous, was a seller of 'pots-de-chambre' (chamber pots). 6 The Pennells however, interpreted the subject later as:

'Head of an Old Man Smoking, an old pedlar of crockery whom Whistler came across one day by chance in the Halles, brought to his studio and painted, a full face with large brown hat, for long the property of M. Drouet.' 7