Titles

One title is known:

• 'Portrait of Miss Marian Draughn' (1980, YMSM). 1

Description

Judging from Whistler's tiny sketch, Five paintings at the Galerie Georges Petit [M.1600], reproduced above, it was a full-length portrait of a woman surrounded by fluttering draperies, and facing the viewer, with a curtain behind her.

It is just possible that it was a nude study such as La Sylphide [YMSM 494]. However, it far more likely that it showed Miss Draughn in fashionable or theatrical dress.

Sitter

'Marion' or Marian Draughn (1878-1940) was born Flossie Settle, the daughter of Thomas Settle (1831–1888), judge and politician in North Carolina. She had a successful career as an actress, and a slightly stormy personal life.

The Pennells state that the illustrators Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) and Philip William May (1864-1903) sent her to Whistler – probably in Paris – and Whistler called her his ‘Coon Girl’. 2

She may have been one of the ‘Gibson Girls’: a collection of Gibson’s pen drawings of beautiful young American women was published in London in 1900. She starred in The Education of Mr. Pipp (a play written by Augustus Thomas based on a series of cartoons by Gibson) at the Broadway Theatre in 1905.