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According to Whistler, his portrait of Alice Butt was painted in Chelsea, but the painting was stolen from his studio in Paris and 'painted upon' by someone else. 1 However, Alexander Reid later said that he had bought the painting directly from Whistler at his studio in rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris, about 1896, when it was newly completed, and sold it shortly afterwards to J. J. Cowan. 2 Cowan stated that he bought it from Reid in April 1900 for £450, and Reid then gave Cowan the impression that the former owner was a friend of Whistler who had bought the portrait from the artist and did not want Whistler to know he had sold it. 3 This is confirmed by Reid's own records: he recorded the sale of a 'Head of a Girl' to Cowan in April 1900. 4 When Whistler told him it had been stolen, Cowan returned the portrait to the artist with Study of a Girl's Head [YMSM 487] on 30 June 1901. 5
It was in Whistler's studio at his death in 1903, and in accordance with Whistler's expressed wishes, on 19 April 1904, his executrix, Miss R. Birnie Philip, attached a notice to the picture: 'Alice Butt, (Red)'- 'This picture was removed from Mr. Whistler's studio without his knowledge & worked on by some person unknown.' 6 She probably returned the portrait to J. J. Cowan at that time.
Within two years it was again with Reid. In December 1906 a 'Head of a Girl' was sold by Reid to Vose, Boston dealers, for £550; his son A. McN. Reid thought that 'This was possibly Cowan's picture.'
On 23 July 1907 Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) saw a photograph of q portrait of Alice Butt and said he remembered seeing it in Whistler's studio, in exhibitions, and Cowan's possession. 7
It was sold by Vose to Hugo Reisinger in 1908, and he lent it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1908, and to an exhibition in Berlin in 1910 (cat. no. 93). The painting passed to his wife (later Mrs Busch-Greenough) who lent it to a show in New York in 1940 (cat. no. 299), and to her son, Curt H. Reisinger, New York, who gave it to the National Gallery of Art in 1948. 8
The photograph reproduced above shows it in Boston in 1904.
1: Whistler to J. J. Cowan, 2 July [1901], GUW #00746.
2: Reid to C. Vose & Sons, 29 November 1906, files of National Gallery of Art; letter from William P. Campbell, National Gallery of Art, to A. McL. Young, 5 July 1972, GUL WPP.
3: Cowan to Whistler, 5 July 1901, GUW #00748.
4: Information from Reid's son, A. McN. Reid, 1963, GUL WPP.
6: GUL Whistler LB6, p. 246.
7: Letter to R. C. & N. M. Vose, photocopy, GUL WPP.
8: Letters from J. Revillon to J. Walker, 26 August 1949, and reply, 14 October 1949, GUL WPP file and National Gallery of Art curatorial files.
Last updated: 23rd March 2021 by Margaret