Provenance

• 1871/1874: the sitter's father, Frederick Richards Leyland (1832-1892) commissioned a portrait of his daughter Florence;
• 1876: the commissioned portrait of Florence Leyland was incomplete at the time of Whistler's quarrel with F. R. Leyland in 1876-1877.
• 1879: a partially destroyed portrait of Maud Franklin may have been among canvases acquired by the London printer Thomas Way (1837-1915) at the time of Whistler's bankruptcy;
• 1881: Way may have returned this canvas of Maud Franklin to Whistler;
• ca 1884: a portrait of Florence Leyland was painted over one of Maud Franklin and sent to F. R. Leyland;
• 1892: after the death of F. R. Leyland, passed to the sitter, Florence Leyland (1859-1921) , then Mrs Val Prinsep;
• 1905: after the death of Valentine Cameron Prinsep (1836-1904) it was, according to Brooklyn Museum records, sold in 1905 through an agent to Obach, London dealers;
• 1906: bought from Obach's by Aaron Augustus Healy (1850-1921) for the Museum of Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, April 1906, with the support of the Museum Collection Fund of 1906, the Loeser and Hearn funds, and with assistance from E. L. Beers, Henry Harper Benedict (1844-1935), F. S. Benson, G. C. Brackett, C. H. de Silver, Aaron Augustus Healy (1850-1921), J. A. Mollenhauer, C. A. Schieren, and R. B. Woodward;
• 1950: de-accessioned through Knoedler, New York dealers (Knoedler labels #41819, 64266).
• 1950/1965: owned by private collectors, and, at some time, Hirschl & Adler, New York.
• 1965: Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York, advertised it for sale in December 1965;
• 1967: presented by Mr and Mrs Benjamin Strouse (dates unknown) , through Robert Schoelkopf and Leslie Katz of New York, to Portland Museum of Art, 21 December 1967.

It was commissioned, according to the Pennells, by the sitter's father, Frederick Richards Leyland, but was still incomplete at the time of Whistler's quarrel with Leyland in 1876-1877. It was suggested by the Pennells that this was among full-length portraits acquired by the London printer Thomas Way, one of Whistler's chief creditors in 1879:

'The bankruptcy was the opportunity for the greatest carelessness and, apparently, the greatest advantage was taken of it. Some years later on, Thomas Way gave him back one roll of large six-foot full-length portraits: the Sir Henry Cole, a Miss May Alexander, three Miss Leylands. One of these three is probably the painting in the Brooklyn Museum.' 1

This may not be entirely accurate. Among the portraits listed by the Pennells, Portrait of Sir Henry Cole [YMSM 180] did not survive, although Miss May Alexander [YMSM 127] did, and another Leyland portrait, The Blue Girl: Portrait of Miss Elinor Leyland [YMSM 111] survived in fragmentary form. If the portrait of Florence Leyland was involved, it must have been returned very quickly, and may have been destroyed.

The extant portrait appears to have been painted on a second canvas, over what was originally a portrait of Maud Franklin, and was completed and returned to Leyland at some time in or after 1884, and certainly before Leyland's death in 1892.

The provenance thereafter is clear until 1950, when it was on the art market for several years until 1965, and two years later it was presented to the Portland Museum of Art.

Exhibitions

• 1877: probably I Summer Exhibition, Grosvenor Gallery, London, 1877 (cat. no. 8) 'Harmony in Amber and Black'.

The provenance of the Portrait of Florence Leyland is not entirely clear, nor is its exhibition history. However it is possible that it was shown in its early state at the first summer exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 as a 'Harmony in Amber and Black'.

At that time Whistler exhibited two full-length portraits, listed as cat. no. 8, 'Harmony in Amber and Black' and cat. no. 9, 'Arrangement in Brown'. 2 The portraits were described by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) as sisters 'caught in a London fog', which suggests that the models looked similar, and that he did not like the dark effect of the paintings. 3 A review by William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) was more explicit, and it implied that the catalogue numbers were incorrect. The two 'life-sized full lengths', he commented,

'seem to have been inverted in the numbering of the catalogue; or else what Mr Whistler regards as amber and black appears to the unpurged popular eye more like brown, and vice versa. The picture which we accept as the Brown has considerable grace, but it is hardly equal to the Amber and Black - a blonde lady in white muslin with black bows, and some yellow flowers in the corner'. 4

The 1980 catalogue raisonné suggested incorrectly that 'Harmony in Amber and Black' was Arrangement in Black and Brown: The Fur Jacket [YMSM 181], and the 'Arrangement in Brown' was Harmony in Grey and Peach Colour [YMSM 131], basing this partly on Whistler's admission that he had repainted the 'Harmony in Amber and Black'. 5 Arrangement in Black and Brown: The Fur Jacket [YMSM 181] was indeed exhibited, but as the 'Arrangement in Brown'. If, as implied by Wilde, the same model posed for both portraits, then the model for both was Maud Franklin (1857-ca 1941).

Harmony in Grey and Peach Colour [YMSM 131] corresponds at least in part to Rossetti's description of a 'Harmony in Amber and Black' and is an early portrait of Maud Franklin. She wears a white dress trimmed with grey and black, with traces of a black bow at the front, and there are other black details, a grey wall, and accessories and flowers that can just about be considered pale 'amber' (or 'peach').

Linda Merrill, in her excellent reconstruction of the events preceding the Whistler v. Ruskin trial, suggested that the work shown in 1877 as 'Harmony in Amber and Black' was the painting now known as Portrait of Florence Leyland. 6 The white dress, the black bow (not bows), and the dark background that appear in the portrait, as seen in the photograph above, correspond roughly to the descriptions by Rossetti and Wilde. Merrill suggests that the features of Maud Franklin were superimposed on the Portrait of Florence Leyland in time for the exhibition, but also notes that the 'amber' of the Grosvenor title appears to be missing.

However, the extant painting has been so much rubbed down and repainted that the 'amber' could lurk under the darkness that now swallows up so much of the detail in the completed painting. An image with intensified colour, reproduced above, may be closer to its original colour.

Finally, it is quite possible that the portrait of Maud Franklin exhibited in 1877 as 'Harmony in Amber and Black' was repainted after the exhibition, and the features of Florence Leyland were imposed after 1878, possibly at the time of the photographs of ca 1881, and possibly based on a portrait of Florence on an earlier canvas that was not in a fit state to be passed to Leyland.