Provenance

• After 1903: sold by Jean Guiffrey (1870-1952) , Paris, to Percy Moore Turner (1877-1950) , London art dealer;
• By 1929: sold by Turner to E. A. Lewis (dates unknown) , London;
• 1929: sold by Lewis through Joseph Stransky, New York art dealer, to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943), New York;
• 1943: bequeathed by Winthrop to Harvard University.

The early history of this painting is not clear. According to Manson, Whistler gave the painting to a re-liner in Paris, possibly in payment for work done. 1

In the early 1890s Whistler was living in Paris but seems strange that he should have given away a self-portrait, and equally strange that any picture-framer would accept a picture in lieu of payment. Claude Chapuis (1829-1908) was his main re-liner in Paris. He was a picture liner for the National Museums of France. By 1900 his nephews, 'Messieurs Brisson', had joined Chapuis' firm and were listed as Chapuis’ successors in the Paris Almanach for 1901. In the late 1890s Whistler was worried about paintings being taken from his studio or lost in some way, and he was certainly sending pictures to Chapuis/Brisson in 1900. However there is no correspondence to help establish any history of this portrait in Whistler's lifetime, nor is there any documentation to support the provenance before 1929.

Winthrop, who bought the picture in 1929, was informed that it was given by the artist to one of his frame-makers who sold it to one of the officials of the Louvre after 1903, who then sold it to the Keeper of paintings in the Louvre, Jean Guiffrey, who in turn sold it to P. M. Turner, from whom it was bought by E. A. Lewis by August 1929. It was bought from Lewis through Stransky by G. L. Winthrop in 1929 for £1500 and bequeathed by him to Harvard University.

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.