Titles

Variations on the title have been suggested:

• 'Rose and Brown' (1897, Whistler). 1
• 'little Nellie – Rose & Red' (1900, Whistler). 2
• 'Rose and Gold "Pretty Nellie Brown" ' (1904, Copley Society, Boston). 3
• 'Rose and Gold: "Pretty Nellie Brown" ' (1980, YMSM). 4

Whistler obviously changed his ideas about the dominant colours. Our title "Rose and Gold: 'Pretty Nellie Brown' " is based on the 1904 Copley Society title, the first published title.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art website comments, 'The title of this portrait of the daughter of one of Whistler’s London patrons indicates that a pleasing arrangement of subtle color values, not a scrupulous likeness of the sitter, was the artist’s true aim.' 5

Description

A half-length portrait of a girl in vertical format. She has brown shoulder-length hair and a deep fringe, and looks directly at the viewer. Her face is lit from the left. She wears a pinkish-brown jacket over a pinkish-white blouse. Her hands are folded in her lap.

Sitter

Helen Elsie Brown (1887-1966) was about ten when she posed to Whistler. Her father Ernest George Brown (1851-1915) was a London art dealer and was working with The Fine Art Society when they commissioned Whistler to make the first set of 'Venice Etchings' in 1879. He was later at the Leicester Galleries. He helped to arrange Whistler's exhibitions with The Fine Art Society: Venice etchings in 1880 and 1883 and pastels in 1881, his lithographs in 1895, and a selection from his collection of silverware in 1902.

Brown married Elsie (Eliza) Taylor in 1895 and lived at Dulwich Village where both their children, Helen ('Nellie', the sitter for this portrait) and Oliver Frank Brown were born. She went on to study music, while Oliver followed his father's footsteps, and became an art dealer.