Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Portrait, "Arrangement in Black" ' (1874, Flemish Gallery). 1
• 'Portrait of F. R. Leyland, Esq.' (1905, ISSPG). 2
• 'Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland' (1980, YMSM). 3

'Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland' is the preferred title.

The 'Arrangements in Black' are numbered inconsistently, roughly as follows:

• Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland was the first in Whistler's series of 'Arrangements in Black'.
• In the Pall Mall exhibition of 1874 Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth [YMSM 125] was exhibited specifically as 'No. 2' in the series.
• A photograph of Arrangement in Black, No. 3: Sir Henry Irving as Philip II of Spain [YMSM 187] was mistakenly labelled by Whistler as 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2', but it was exhibited several times as 'Arrangement in Black, No. 3'.
• However, Arrangement in Black and Brown: The Fur Jacket [YMSM 181] was exhibited as 'Arrangement in Black, No. 3', in 1888-1889, and the drawing of Whistler's portrait of Lady Meux (Arrangement in Black: Lady Meux [YMSM 228]) was also given that title.
• No painting seems to have been listed or exhibited as 'Arrangement in Black, No. 4'.
• Arrangement in Brown and Black: Portrait of Miss Rosa Corder [YMSM 203] and Arrangement in Black: La Dame au brodequin jaune - Portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell [YMSM 242] were both called, at different times, 'Arrangement in Black, No. 5' or 'Arrangement in Black, No. 7' (the latter as 'arrangement en noir, no. 7').
• A portrait of Maud Franklin (1857-ca 1941) (Harmony in Black and Red [YMSM 236]) was the only painting called 'Arrangement in Black, No. 6'.
• The eighth in the series was Arrangement in Black, No. 8: Portrait of Mrs Cassatt [YMSM 250].
• Number 9 has not been identified.
• There was no 'Arrangement in Black, No. 10', but there was a Harmony in Black, No. 10 [YMSM 357], which may have been intended as part of the series.

Description

A full-length portrait of a man dressed in a black suit, in vertical format. He stands with his right foot forward, his right hand on his hip. The left hand is hidden by a grey coat hanging over his arm. A silver buckle is visible on one shoe. He has dark hair, a moustache and beard, and stands in slight three-quarter view to right, against a black background.

Sitter

Frederick Richards Leyland (1832-1892) , collector and shipping magnate.

An albumen print by John Robert Parsons (1925/1826-1909) (a photographer also patronised by Whistler) shows Leyland in the 1860s. 4

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) knew Leyland and had made elaborate drawings of him; he wrote of Whistler's portrait that 'the head of Leyland is very like him.' 5

Leyland, a wealthy ship-owner, was Whistler's major patron in the 1870s, until their confrontation over Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room [YMSM 178]. 6 Curry notes that in this portrait the black dinner suit 'signals economic if not social power; it is the colour of mastery, new money as well as old embraced it.' 7

According to Walter Greaves (1846-1930), Whistler kept rubbing the portrait down, and eventually got 'a well known Italian model named Fosco to pose nude for the figure.' 8 Whistler made a drypoint of the Italian model, probably named Fusco (fl. 1870s) rather than 'Fosco', about the same time. Fusco [106] shows the model posing in the nude, but in a pose unrelated to the oil portrait. 'Fusco' appears to have been a professional model. He may have been a model at life-classes organised by Victor Aristide Louis Barthe (b. ca 1839-d.1910), which Whistler attended in the 1870s. Fusco is a fairly uncommon name, but there was a family of that name based in Bradford, and later Edinburgh. For instance, in the 1881 census two Italian-born British subjects, Benedetto Fusco, aged 30, and Michelangelo Fusco, aged 23, travelling musicians, were recorded in Bradford, Yorkshire. 9

There are two drawings of Leyland by Whistler, not related to the oil, r.: Portrait study of Frederick R. Leyland; v.: Head of a boy [M.0425] and Portrait of Frederick R. Leyland [M.0426].

At the time of the 'Peacock Room' dispute, Whistler painted a grotesque oil, The Gold Scab [YMSM 208], and several caricatures (F. R. Leyland [M.0721] and Caricature of F. R. Leyland [M.0720]). These drawings mock the frilled shirt favoured by Leyland, which is a prominent feature in the oil portraits. Evening shirts with ruffles had once been a conspicuous feature of male fashion, but were rather passé in 1870 and totally outmoded by the time the portrait was exhibited in 1874. 10