The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Head of a woman probably dates from 1872.

Head of a woman, Fogg Art Museum

The drawing is fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 442).

Images

Subject

Sitter

Head of a woman, Fogg Art Museum

Possibly Elizabeth Dawson (b. 1840).

Technique

Technique

Head of a woman, Fogg Art Museum

See MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 442).

Conservation History

The paper is darkened within the mount.

History

Provenance

• Before 1939: owned by Hunt Henderson (1869-1939), New Orleans;
• 1939: bequeathed to Tulane University, New Orleans, 1939;
• 1941: sold in April with 20 other works, through the Macdonald Gallery, New York, to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943);
• 1943: bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum.

See further details in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 442).

Exhibitions

It was not, as far as is known, exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 442) as 'Head of a woman'.

Books, General

• Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr., Virginia Anderson, and Kimberly Orcutt, (eds), American Paintings at Harvard, Vol. 2, Paintings, Drawings, Pastels and Stained Glass by Artists Born 1826-1856, Cambridge, MA, and New Haven, CT, 2008, p. 402 (cat. no. 431) repr.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Gillerman, Dorothy W., ed., Grenville L. Winthrop: Retrospective for a Collector, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, 1969, p. 243.

Websites

• Fogg Art Museum website at https://www.harvardartmuseums.org.