Detail from The Canal, Amsterdam, 1889, James McNeill Whistler, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

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YMSM 464
Brown and Gold: Lillie 'In our Alley!'

Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Date: 1898
Collection: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Accession Number: 1943.177
Medium: oil
Support: canvas
Size: 51.2 x 30.7 cm (20 3/16 x 12 1/16")
Signature: none
Inscription: none
Frame: Grau-style, American, M. Grieve, ca 1930 [7 cm]

Brown and Gold: Lillie 'In our Alley!'

Brown and Gold: Lillie "In our Alley!" dates from 1898. By New Year's Day 1899 the newly completed painting, not yet varnished, had arrived at the house of John James Cowan (1846-1936) in Edinburgh. 1

Brown and Gold: Lillie 'In our Alley!', Fogg Art Museum
Brown and Gold: Lillie 'In our Alley!', Fogg Art Museum

It was exhibited with the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in 1899 (cat. no. 136) as 'Brown and Gold - Lillie "in our Alley !" '

Whistler's biographers, the Pennells, visited Whistler's Fitzroy Street studio on 14 July 1900 and were under the impression that they saw this portrait, but they could easily have mistaken it for another portrait of Lillie. 2

Notes:

1: Cowan to Whistler, 8 January 1899, GUW #00727; Whistler to Cowan, [9] January 1899, GUW #00728.

2: Pennell 1921C [more] , p. 77.

Last updated: 21st November 2020 by Margaret