Provenance

• By 1908: Walter Thomas Spencer (1864-1936) , a second-hand bookseller at 27 New Oxford Street, had 100 rolls of damaged canvases in an attic ;
• 1908: Frida Uhl Strindberg (1872-1943) bought some canvases and then changed her mind and wanted to return them, returning twice to London for this purpose;
• 1910: this painting was one of 'about fifty' canvases sold by W. T. Spencer to the London art dealer Dowdeswell in September 1910 and on 15 September Dowdeswell took Elizabeth Robins Pennell (1855-1936) and Joseph Pennell (1860-1926) to a man in Camden Town, who was restoring some of the canvases;
• 1911: William Stephen Marchant (1868-1925) held an exhibition of oils by Walter Greaves that had been owned by Spencer.
• Date unknown (1919?): said to have been owned by E. Ellis (fl. 1900/1910) Esq.
• Date unknown, after 1921: said to have been in the J. Vaughan Collection at some time.
• Date unknown: said to have been owned by 'Edmund David', possibly meaning Edmund Davis (1861-1939) and confusing the painting with one lent by Davis to the 'Fair Ladies' exhibition.
• ca 1945: sold by 'the heirs of a very great devotee of Whistler's who died several years ago in London. It was one of about ten paintings all attributed to the artist and all bought by de Beer'; 1
• 1945: Max de Beer (1898-1974) , art dealer, 54/55 Piccadilly, London. 2
• 1948: considered but rejected for purchase by Frederick R. Robinson, Director, Springfield Museum of Fine Arts.
• After 1957?: Silberman Galleries, New York City.
• Date unknown: acquired by Anna Spencer Brugh Singer (1868-1962) ;
• Before 1956: given to the Singer Museum, Laren.

Spencer said he bought paintings by Walter Greaves (1846-1930) from a second hand furniture dealer, and that Greaves also made paintings to order for Spencer for US clients; 3

It was considered possible that it was among the canvases partly destroyed by Whistler at the time of his bankruptcy. The Pennell's journal goes into this question at some length; E. R. Pennell recorded visits to Messrs Dowdeswell in 1910. Her account, with additional material by her husband, 'J' - Joseph Pennell - was published in the Whistler Journal in 1921:

'Thursday, September 15th, 1910. Walter Dowdeswell wrote to me on Tuesday that he had something of extraordinary interest to put before us, and would we be in town in two weeks' time. ... Yesterday he telegraphed asking us to come to-day at noon; we said yes, but when noon came to-day, J. was so busy I went alone. Walter Dowdeswell took me upstairs into the front room on the first floor told me he had something by way of a sensation for me – that in our Life of Whistler we referred to rolls of paintings carried off at the time of the bankruptcy; well, some of those had been brought to him, they had been in a cellar for years; a most romantic story altogether but he couldn't tell it yet. ... Old Dowdeswell and the other brother, Charles, joined us, in a great state of excitement. The old man they say aged eighty had come up to town on purpose. They felt that we ought to have the first chance to see these things, our book was so wonderful, ...

At last Walter Dowdeswell told the story. A lady who brings them things occasionally, told them of rolls which she had bought for nothing from a second-hand book-seller for the sake of one old English picture which she recognized for what it was and sold to somebody in Munich. The Dowdeswells looked over the rolls. The paintings were shockingly dirty but they saw passages that were unmistakably Whistler and they bought them and she brought more which they bought too; they have about fifty in all; and really, it was difficult to know how to pay her for she didn't know the value and asked nothing, and they knew the value and felt they should pay her more than she asked, and the end was she felt as if they had made her fortune for her, though I gathered that her eyes were enough opened to make them pay more for the second than the first lot. When he had finished J. said he knew that second-hand dealer, his place was in Holborn. No, Dowdeswell said. Then New Oxford Street, he was not quite sure which. Yes, said Dowdeswell. Spencer, said J. Yes, said Dowdeswell. So it is the shop where Elmer Adler last summer found the Whistler charcoal drawings and spoke of rolls of things being there. It looks as if the whole business might come from Greaves. In the end Walter Dowdeswell took us to a man, in a remote part of Camden Town, who is restoring a few. There were so many they have been given to different restorers ...

Altogether it was an interesting afternoon. There is no question that things did disappear at the time of the bankruptcy and auction, that there is comparatively little to represent some ten years or so of Whistler's work, and it is just possible that these rolls of paintings may be the explanation. They may have come from Greaves, from whom Spencer had letters and those charcoal drawings. ...

Monday, September 19th. To the restorer's with Dowdeswell. … On a smaller canvas was a three-quarter length of a lady in white, the dress in the fashion of the Sixties. She is standing in the centre of the canvas, turned full face, she is dark, her short upper lip shows her teeth, and her black hair is rolled up on the top of her head somewhat in the fashion of the little figure in grey before the screen, the study for La Princesse, which Dowdeswell showed us the first day. Her arms hang at her sides and around the wrists are curious deep cuffs or wristbands of some thicker and heavier white muslin. She stands against a greenish-black curtain, rather elaborately finished in comparison with the figure which is not carried very far, and the face which is hardly more than rubbed in. This is much less interesting. It might be one of the Greek group of his friends, an Ionides or a Spartali.' 4

The later provenance is incomplete and not entirely substantiated.

Exhibitions

No early exhibition history is known.

Gallery records suggested that it had been exhibited in the Ninth Exhibition of Fair Women in February 1909 (cat. no. 160). However, this was incorrect: the actual painting exhibited was Symphony in White, No. 3 [YMSM 061], which was then owned by Edmund Davis (1861-1939). 5

The early records associated with Young woman in a white dress are confusing and misleading, to say the least. One label on the verso reads 'GROSVENOR GALLERY / PICTURE EXHIBITION.', with the 'Title of Picture' written as 'Symphony in White', 'The Girl in White Muslin Dress', but it was never exhibited there: it cannot be found in any of the exhibition catalogues of the Grosvenor Gallery.

Another label is for the 'London International Exhibition Society ... UNITED ART GALLERY'. The United Arts Gallery (not United Art Gallery) was founded in a new building at 116 New Bond Street by the London International Exhibition Society in 1881 to encourage young artists 'by affording them facilities for study in the great Continental academies, supplying them with grants of money.' 6 It was a short-lived venue, with exhibitions of mainly European works in 1881 and 1882, after which, due to the illness of the manager, the lease was transferred to Messrs Goupil in 1882, and the remaining stock sold at auction by Messrs Foster on 18 April 1883. 7 It is possible that a number of these labels were arbitrarily added to paintings in the stock of an art dealer.

A third label on the painting suggests that this painting was in an exhibition shortly after Whistler's death in 1903, but no record of this exhibition has been found, and Whistler's name is misspelt; the label is probably a forgery. The label reads as follows:

'EXHIBITION / OF / PAINTINGS, WATERCOLOURS, PASTELS, ETCHINGS / and LITHOGRAPHS, / BY THE LATE JAMES McNIELL [sic] WHISTLER / First President of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers.'

The catalogue number is given as 80, and the lender as 'E. Ellis Esq'. Similar labels are seen on a large group of paintings formerly attributed to Whistler, including Harmony in White and Blue [YMSM 126], and several paintings known to be by Walter Greaves (1846-1930). 8

In 1974 a journalist, 'Atticus' published an article, 'Greaves takes the credit', in The Sunday Times, heralding an exhibition of the work of Walter Greaves (1846-1930) at the Michael Parkin gallery in Motcomb Street, Belgravia. Atticus wrote that according to 'Alfred Haynes ... a Chelsea newspaper boy, known to Greaves', a 'huge load of canvasses' were removed from Whistler's studio by 'Mary Woods, not only Whistler's model but his mistress ... at the time of his bankruptcy in 1892'. 9 This account contains obvious mistakes: Maud Franklin (1857-ca 1941), not Mary Woods, was Whistler's model at the time of his bankruptcy, which was in 1879, not in 1892. However, Atticus also mentioned the misspelt label quoted above, and added,

'A mysterious figure called Ellis was probably responsible for the labelling. He sold the pictures to the last owners, who kept them stowed away in an attic until Parkin tracked them down. It was probably Ellis who priced them too. One of them has the fancy price of £2,400 on it. Well, it was fancy for those days, in 1919.' 10

Andrew McLaren Young (1913-1975) told Atticus that he had 'long suspected that several Whistlers in public collections were possibly by Greaves.' 11

Some of the pictures that have the misleading labels attached may have been based on paintings destroyed by Whistler, and reworked by another hand. It is possible that Walter Greaves (1846-1930) was involved in the 'repair', 'restoration' or repainting of these canvases. Some of them may have been by Greaves himself. Some appear to have nothing at all to do with Greaves or Whistler.