Titles

There is one confusing variation on the title, as follows:

• 'Brown and Gold' (1900, Exposition Universelle, Paris) 1
• 'Gold and Brown' (1908, Pennell). 2
• 'Brown and Gold' (1980, YMSM). 3

Pennell was mistaken, and the title is Brown and Gold .

Description

A full-length self-portrait of a man in a long dark overcoat, his left hand held in front of his body at waist height, and his right, extended out to the side. He stands against a dark, shadowy background.

Sitter

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) .

MacDonald comments:

'Whistler’s last self-portrait, Brown and Gold, worked and reworked over many years, shows signs of his increasing fragility. The long coat is there, and the hint of a cane. The hair has faded. He is lost in shadow. The brushstrokes are soft, tentative, much rubbed out. Ghostlike marks of earlier versions are partially erased. Whistler kept the portraits in his studio, revisiting the full-length at intervals until his death.' 4

Comments

Both Pennell and Gallatin were wrong in thinking that a pen and pencil drawing in the Library of Congress, Portrait of Whistler [M.1533], was done by Whistler after this portrait; it was a drawing related to a self-portrait of similar title, Gold and Brown [YMSM 462]. 5