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

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Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

  • 'Portrait, "Arrangement in Black" ' (1874, Flemish Gallery). 1
  • 'Portrait of F. R. Leyland, Esq.' (1905, ISSPG). 2
  • 'Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland' (1980, YMSM). 3

'Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland' is the preferred title.

The 'Arrangements in Black' are numbered inconsistently, roughly as follows:

  • Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland was the first in Whistler's series of 'Arrangements in Black'.
  • In the Pall Mall exhibition of 1874 Arrangement in Black, No. 2: Portrait of Mrs Louis Huth [YMSM 125] was exhibited specifically as 'No. 2' in the series.
  • A photograph of Arrangement in Black, No. 3: Sir Henry Irving as Philip II of Spain [YMSM 187] was mistakenly labelled by Whistler as 'Arrangement in Black, No. 2', but it was exhibited several times as 'Arrangement in Black, No. 3'.
  • However, Arrangement in Black and Brown: The Fur Jacket [YMSM 181] was exhibited as 'Arrangement in Black, No. 3', in 1888-1889, and the drawing of Whistler's portrait of Lady Meux (Arrangement in Black: Lady Meux [YMSM 228]) was also given that title.
  • No painting seems to have been listed or exhibited as 'Arrangement in Black, No. 4'.
  • Arrangement in Brown and Black: Portrait of Miss Rosa Corder [YMSM 203] and Arrangement in Black: La Dame au brodequin jaune - Portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell [YMSM 242] were both called, at different times, 'Arrangement in Black, No. 5' or 'Arrangement in Black, No. 7' (the latter as 'arrangement en noir, no. 7').
  • A portrait of Maud Franklin (1857-ca 1941) (Harmony in Black and Red [YMSM 236]) was the only painting called 'Arrangement in Black, No. 6'.
  • The eighth in the series was Arrangement in Black, No. 8: Portrait of Mrs Cassatt [YMSM 250].
  • Number 9 has not been identified.
  • There was no 'Arrangement in Black, No. 10', but there was a Harmony in Black, No. 10 [YMSM 357], which may have been intended as part of the series.

Description


                    Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland, Freer Gallery of Art
Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland, Freer Gallery of Art

A full-length portrait of a man dressed in a black suit, in vertical format. He stands with his right foot forward, his right hand on his hip. The left hand is hidden by a grey coat hanging over his arm. A silver buckle is visible on one shoe. He has dark hair, a moustache and beard, and stands in slight three-quarter view to right, against a black background.

Sitter

Frederick Richards Leyland (1832-1892) , collector and shipping magnate.

Frederick Parsons, F. R. Leyland, photograph
Frederick Parsons, F. R. Leyland, photograph

An albumen print by John Robert Parsons (1925/1826-1909) (a photographer also patronised by Whistler) shows Leyland in the 1860s. 4

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) knew Leyland and had made elaborate drawings of him; he wrote of Whistler's portrait that 'the head of Leyland is very like him.' 5

Leyland, a wealthy ship-owner, was Whistler's major patron in the 1870s, until their confrontation over Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room [YMSM 178]. 6 Curry notes that in this portrait the black dinner suit 'signals economic if not social power; it is the colour of mastery, new money as well as old embraced it.' 7

According to Walter Greaves (1846-1930), Whistler kept rubbing the portrait down, and eventually got 'a well known Italian model named Fosco to pose nude for the figure.' 8 Whistler made a drypoint of the Italian model, probably named Fusco (fl. 1870s) rather than 'Fosco', about the same time. Fusco [106] shows the model posing in the nude, but in a pose unrelated to the oil portrait. 'Fusco' appears to have been a professional model. He may have been a model at life-classes organised by Victor Aristide Louis Barthe (b. ca 1839-d.1910), which Whistler attended in the 1870s. Fusco is a fairly uncommon name, but there was a family of that name based in Bradford, and later Edinburgh. For instance, in the 1881 census two Italian-born British subjects, Benedetto Fusco, aged 30, and Michelangelo Fusco, aged 23, travelling musicians, were recorded in Bradford, Yorkshire. 9


                    Portrait study of Frederick R. Leyland, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Portrait study of Frederick R. Leyland, Metropolitan Museum of Art

                    Portrait of Frederick R. Leyland, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Portrait of Frederick R. Leyland, Metropolitan Museum of Art

There are two drawings of Leyland by Whistler, not related to the oil, r.: Portrait study of Frederick R. Leyland; v.: Head of a boy [M.0425] and Portrait of Frederick R. Leyland [M.0426].


                    The Gold Scab, California Palace of The Legion of Honor
The Gold Scab, California Palace of The Legion of Honor

                    Caricature of F. R. Leyland, The Hunterian
Caricature of F. R. Leyland, The Hunterian

At the time of the 'Peacock Room' dispute, Whistler painted a grotesque oil, The Gold Scab [YMSM 208], and several caricatures (F. R. Leyland [M.0721] and Caricature of F. R. Leyland [M.0720]). These drawings mock the frilled shirt favoured by Leyland, which is a prominent feature in the oil portraits. Evening shirts with ruffles had once been a conspicuous feature of male fashion, but were rather passé in 1870 and totally outmoded by the time the portrait was exhibited in 1874. 10

Notes:

1: Mr Whistler's Exhibition, Flemish Gallery, 48 Pall Mall, London, 1874 (cat. no. 1).

2: 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. 100).

3: YMSM 1980 [more] (cat. no. 97).

4: Ford, Colin, 'A Pre-Raphaelite partnership: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Robert Parsons', The Burlington Magazine, vol. 156, May 2004, pp. 308-18, online.

5: Letters to Ford Madox Brown, [autumn] and 31 May 1874, quoted by Doughty, Oswald and John Robert Wahl (eds), Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 4 vols, Oxford, 1965-67, vol. 3, pp. 1287, 1307. Portrait drawing, private collection, UK; see Merrill 1998 [more] , p. 125. An 1879 crayon portrait by Rossetti is in Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, online in http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s346.rap.html Surtees, Virginia,The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). A Catalogue Raisonné, Oxford, 1971, vol. 1, p. 171 (cat. no. 346).

6: For a full analysis of this dispute, see Merrill 1998 [more] .

7: Curry 2004 [more] , p. 46.

8: Marchant, William, Walter and H. Greaves (Pupils of Whistler), Goupil Gallery, London, 1922, pp. 19-20.

9: Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2012, website at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk (G.106).

10: Merrill 1998 [more] , p. 128.

Last updated: 23rd April 2021 by Margaret