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Titles
Only one title has been suggested:
- 'Portrait of Mr Mann' (1980, YMSM). 1
Description
A portrait of a man.
Sitter
In 1860 Whistler etched Mr Mann [73]. It had been catalogued by Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) as 'Mr. Mann' because Whistler wrote 'Mr. Mann' on an impression in the collection of Samuel Putnam Avery (1822-1904). 2 No Christian name was given. However, Lt Col. N. Newnham Davis queried Mann's title, claiming it was a portrait of his father, H. N. Davis, etched by Whistler 'in the studio of a mutual friend, Mr. Mann'. He added, 'Mr Mann was tall and lanky and sombre in expression, my father was fat, pleasant-looking and generally smiling.' 3
It is possible that the sitter for the 1860 etching was the artist Joshua Hargrave Sams Mann (1826-1887) who was then 35. 4 If he was also the sitter for an oil portrait in 1873, he would then have been 47. However, there is absolutely no proof of this identification.
Notes:
1: YMSM 1980 [more] , cat. no. 158.
3: Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2012, on-line website at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk (G.73).
4: Ibid.; to complicate matters further, it was also suggested that the sitter for the etching was Henry Newnham Davis (1826-1873).
Last updated: 15th November 2019 by Margaret
