Titles

Several small variations in title are known:

• 'Wortley: note in green' (1884, Dowdeswell). 1
• 'Note en vert: Le Village de Wortley' (1887, Petit). 2
• 'Note in Green: Wortley' (1980, YMSM) 3
• 'Wortley; Note in Green' (2019, Freer Gallery of Art). 4

In 1884, an unidentified newspaper columnist objected to the title: 'I soon got tired of guessing Whistler’s puzzles, for I am an ordinary Philistine, and cannot see why a grass field should be dignified with the name of a "note in green".' 5

'Note in Green: Wortley' is the preferred title, consistent with other works.

Description

A landscape in horizontal format. A green field leads up a hill to trees surrounding a sprawling house, possibly a farm-house, with a narrow track curving into the distance at right.

Site

The view is probably of Wortley, six miles south-west of Barnsley, Yorkshire, the seat of Lord Wharncliffe. Whistler could have known the family through one of his friends, Archibald James Stuart-Wortley (1849-1905), grandson of the first Baron and first president of the SPP in 1891. Whistler also painted a portrait of a house-guest at Wortley, Gay Paget in the garden of Wortley Hall, Yorkshire [M.0854].