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

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YMSM 472
Rose and Brown: The Philosopher

Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Date: 1896-1897
Collection: The Comte de Ganay, Paris
Accession Number: none
Medium: oil
Support: wood
Size: 22.2 x 13.0 cm (8 3/4 x 5 1/8")
Signature: butterfly
Inscription: none

Rose and Brown: The Philosopher

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

  • 'The Philosopher' (1897, Goupil). 1
  • 'Rose et gris; – le philosophe (portrait)' (1897, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts). 2
  • 'Rose and Brown, The Philosopher' (1897, Society of Portrait Painters). 3
  • 'The Philosopher' and 'The Philosopher / Portrait of C. E. Holloway, Esq.'' (1905, ISSPG). 4
  • 'Rose and Brown: The Philosopher' (1980, YMSM). 5

'Rose and Brown: The Philosopher' is the preferred title.

Description

Rose and Brown: The Philosopher, private collection
Rose and Brown: The Philosopher, private collection

A small full-length portrait of a bearded elderly man in a greatcoat, standing in an interior. It is in vertical format. He has a grey beard and stands in three-quarter view to right. There is a fireplace behind him, to left, and a pale greyish/ochre wall further away, to right.

Sitter

Charles Edward Holloway (1838-1897) . According to Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913), Whistler admired Holloway's large watercolour Gorleston Harbour, painted in 1879, and met the watercolourist in 1880. 6 Albert Ludovici mentioned that they met in 1896, but this was probably incorrect. 7 The posthumous exhibition of Holloway's watercolours held at Goupil's in 1897 included Whistler's portrait of Holloway and many of Holloway's recent Venetian subjects, and a number of works with rather Whistlerian titles, such as A Harmony in Grey (cat. no. 40).

Notes:

1: Watercolour Drawings by C. E. Holloway, Goupil Gallery, London, 1897 (not catalogued).

2: Exhibition catalogue Paris 1897 (Société nationale)[more] (cat. no. 1258).

3: 7th exhibition, Society of Portrait Painters, London, 1897 (cat. no. 11).

4: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 96) in ordinary and in deluxe edition respectively.

5: YMSM 1980 [more] (cat. no. 472).

6: Way 1912 [more] , pp. 129-30, 143-44.

7: Ludovici 1926 [more] , pp. 93-94, 99.

Last updated: 13th November 2020 by Margaret