Provenance

• 1896: bought from Hugo Othmar Miethke (1834-1911) of Miethke & Wawra, art dealers, Vienna, by Colnaghi, London art dealers;
• 1897: sold by Colnaghi's to Dr Max Linde (1862-1940) , Lübeck;
• 1904: with a Paris art dealer;
• 1904: bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) , Detroit;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

It was bought as 'An Arrangement in black and white' from H. O. Meithke by Colnaghi's in December 1896, and sold by them to an important collector, the opthalmologist Dr Linde of Lübeck, on 22 March 1897 for £900, under the title 'Damenbildniss', according to Colnaghi's stock books (a/c no. 580). According to Emil Heilbut (1861-1921), 'Amerikanerin' was still in Dr Linde's collection in 1903. 1 It was sold through art dealers in Paris, according to the Pennells. 2 Indeed, on 9 April 1904 Théodore Duret (1838-1927) wrote to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) of Detroit that he could get the portrait for him from some people in Paris. 3 Duret hung it in his apartment in the rue Vignon, Paris, and Freer bought it in June 1904 for 62,500 francs. 4

Exhibitions

• II Summer Exhibition, Grosvenor Gallery, London, 1878 (cat. no. 55) as 'Arrangement in White and Black'.
• II Kunstausstellung der Berliner Secession, Berlin, 1900 (cat. no. 343) as 'Damenbildniss'.
• Comparative exhibition of Native and Foreign Art under the auspices of the Society of Art Collectors, New York, 1904 (cat. no. 175) as 'Arrangement in Black and White No.1'.
• Sixth International Art Exhibit, Venice, 1905.

One newspaper reported in 1878 that Whistler had asked a visitor to his studio whether he should send the 'arrangement in white and black' to the Grosvenor, and this 'art cynic of the Whistler school' advised him to do so! 5

Whistler made a pen drawing of the portrait, Arrangement in White and Black [M.0691], for reproduction by Blackburn in 1878. 6 The critic of The Times on 2 May 1878 described Whistler's two portraits of Maud Franklin as: 'two of those vaporous full lengths – of young ladies in this case – it pleases him to call "arrangements" ... as if the colour of the dress imported more than the face; and as if young ladies had no right to feel aggrieved at being converted into "arrangements".' 7 The Evening Mail on the following day asserted that 'Mr. Whistler's "arrangements" in blue and green, in black and white, in blue and yellow, flesh-colour and green, once more puzzle the uninitiated.'

The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, on 28 May 1878, contrasted Whistler's work with that of Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-1898), whose paintings Laus Veneris (Laing Art Gallery), Chant d'Amour (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Pan and Psyche (Harvard Art Museums) were in the Grosvenor that year:

'[Mr. Whistler] … out-heroded Herod by his unspeakable "arrangements," "symphonies," "harmonies," and the like … If Mr. Whistler's theories of art be true, if it is right to sketch in the rudest fashion some figure which looks as if it was lost in a London fog, then one fails to see how Mr. Burne Jones' ideas of art can be true.'

It is true, however, that Whistler's portraits of women in contemporary dress were an enormous contrast to Burne-Jones's trio of classical and literary figures.

By the terms of C. L. Freer's bequest to the Freer Gallery of Art, the painting cannot be lent.