Provenance

• 1884/1885: bought by Cyril Flower (1843-1907) , London;
• 1899: sold by Agnew's, London art dealers, to Edmund Davis (1861-1939) , 1-2 March 1899 (a/c #8801);
• By 1904-1905: probably given to his sister-in-law, Constance Halford (dates unknown) .
• 1914: Knoedler, New York art dealers.
• Before 1965: sold by Mrs Perle Reid Mesta (1889-1975) , Washington, DC, to a private collector.
• 1972: sold by Arpad Antiques, Washington DC, to a private collector, by September 1972.

Cyril Flower (later Lord Battersea) is recorded as buying 'Note in red & violet' after the Dowdeswell exhibition in 1884. 1

Edmund Davis married Mary Halford (ca 1866-1941), whose sister Constance Hannah Halford was a sculptor. It is likely that he passed the painting to his sister-in-law. It was lent by Constance Halford to exhibitions in 1904 and 1905. She married the artist William Cecil Rea (1860-1935) in 1907. There is then a gap in the known provenance until 1914, when it was with Knoedler's in New York and exhibited in that year (cat. no. 8) for sale at $4000. 2

According to Michael Arpad in Washington, DC, writing in 1972, it had recently been sold to a private collector. 3

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 24) as 'Note in red and violet – Nets'.
• 1904: 78th Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1904 (cat. no. 307) as 'A Note in Red and Violet: Nets'.
• 1905: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 77) as 'Note in Red and Violet'.