Titles

One title predominates, as follows:

• 'Portrait of Dr. William McNeill Whistler' (1905, ISSPG). 1
• 'Portrait of Dr. William McNeill Whistler (Portrait of My Brother)' (1969, Art Institute of Chicago). 2
• 'Portrait of Dr William McNeill Whistler' (1980, YMSM). 3

'Portrait of Dr William McNeill Whistler' is the preferred title.

Description

A half length portrait of a man in three-quarter view to right. He wears a pale grey jacket, a short black cravat, a white shirt, and a round brimmed black hat. His hair is dark brown and curly, with a white curl on his forehead suggesting that he, like his artist brother and half-sister, Deborah, shared a genetic mutation called the Waardenburg syndrome. The background is a greyish ochre. The canvas is in vertical format.

Sitter

The artist's younger brother, William McNeill Whistler (1836-1900) , was a medical officer in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. In 1865 he was sent to England to deliver despatches and never returned to America again. After travel in Russia, he worked first in Paris, and afterwards in London at St George's Hospital. As a specialist in diseases 'of the upper air passages', he was appointed physician to the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat. In 1886, he took an active part in founding the London Throat Hospital, of which he was senior physician until his death. 4 In 1877 he married Helen ('Nellie') Euphrosyne Whistler (1849-1917), of the wealthy Greek Ionides family, who were patrons of Whistler.

A photograph, reproduced above, shows his appearance in later life. Two lithographs by Whistler of his brother The Doctor c110 and Portrait of Dr Whistler, No. 2 c111, dating from 1895, are not related to the oil portrait.