The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Sketch for 'La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine' probably dates from between 1863 and 1864. ¹

Sketch for 'La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine', Worcester Art Museum, MA

La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine, Freer Gallery of Art

It is dated from its relationship to a more finished composition, La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine y050.

Images

Subject

Titles

Only two titles have been suggested:

• 'The Princess' (1890, Christie's). ²
• 'Sketch for "La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine'' ' (1980, YMSM). ³

Sketch for 'La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine' is the generally accepted title.

Description

Sketch for 'La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine', Worcester Art Museum, MA

A small full-length study of a woman, in vertical format. She has long black hair, and faces three-quarter left. She wears a pale cream robe, possibly a kimono, over a pale green dress, and holds a decorated fan in her right hand. Behind her is a folding screen. There is a vase containing sprays of blossom to right, in front of the screen, and more blossoms at upper left.

Sitter

Unknown. She does not look like Marie Spartali (Mrs W. J. Stillman) (1844-1927), the model for the final version of the composition.

Technique

Composition

Sketch for 'La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine', Worcester Art Museum, MA

La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine, Freer Gallery of Art

According to the Pennells, Whistler made 'a number of small studies and sketches in oil and pastel that show how he had perfected the idea beforehand' for La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine y050. ⁴

This study is close in composition to the final painting, but does not show the same model, who looks here more Oriental in feature. The model's hair is much less abundant than in La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine y050 and is decorated with beads.

Most of the decorative details of La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine y050 – the painting on the screen, the pattern on the rug and the flowers on her dress – are omitted in the study. On the other hand, there are flowers behind the screen in the upper left corner of the study that do not appear in the final painting.

Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey: The Chinese Screen, Private Collection

An unfinished painting, Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey: The Chinese Screen y051, reproduced above, was once said to be related to La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine y050, but appears to be a portrait of a woman in contemporary dress, with a screen behind her, in an interior. It bears only a superficial resemblance to La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine.

Technique

Sketch for 'La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine', Worcester Art Museum, MA

The Worcester Art Museum website comments:

'Worcester's painting is a preparatory study for a portrait of Christine Spartali, whose father served as Greek consul-general in London while Whistler was there. This fluidly brushed sketch blocks out the general arrangement and color scheme of the more detailed work.' ⁵

A comparatively broad brush was used to fill in large areas with quick, broad brushstrokes, occasionally nearly dry of paint. On the clothes, the brushstrokes sometimes follow the curves of the drapery and sometimes criss-cross each other. Some details were added with a much smaller, unusually heavily loaded brush that left a blob at the end of each stroke. The blossoms seem to have been added with a palette knife, creating curious wriggly, jagged shapes.

Conservation History

Unknown.

History

Provenance

• 1875/1878?: acquired by Charles Augustus Howell (1840?-1890), London;
• 1890: after Howell's death, auctioned at Christie's, London, 13 November 1890 (lot 433) as 'The Princess', and bought by Messrs Dowdeswell, London dealers;
• 1891: sold by Dowdeswell's to Elbert Jan van Wisselingh (1848-1912), art dealer in The Hague and at the Dutch Gallery, London;
• 1893: sold by Van Wisselingh to Prof. Frederick Brown (1851-1941) of the Slade School of Art, London;
• 1899: sold by Brown through David Croal Thomson (1855-1930) of the Goupil Gallery, London, to Agnew's, London dealers, 27 May 1899;
• 1899: sold by Agnew's to Alexander Young (1828–1907), London, on 29 May 1899;
• after 1902: sold by Young to Boussod, Valadon & Cie.
• 1902/1918: various art dealers.
• 1918: Sent by Durand-Ruel, New York art dealers, to the Macbeth Galleries, New York, 30 April-25 May 1918;
• 1919: sold by the Howard Young Galleries, New York, to a New York collector.
• 1919/1933: acquired by Theodore T. Ellis (1887-1934) of Worcester, MA;
• 1934: after his death on 6 January 1934, and litigation regarding his will in 1935, passed to his widow, Mary Murphy Griffin (Mrs T. T. Ellis) (d. 1940);
• 1940: Mary G. Ellis bequeathed the picture to the Worcester Art Museum.

It is not known when it was acquired by Charles Augustus Howell, but it was auctioned at Christie's after Howell's death and bought by Messrs Dowdeswell for £5.10.0. According to a photograph in the Witt Library, Dowdeswell's sold it in 1891 to the Dutch art dealer E. J. van Wisselingh, who sold it to Professor Frederick Brown in 1893. ⁶

Much of the early provenance is given in the American Art News, according to which, it was sold by Brown through D. C. Thomson of the Goupil Gallery, London, to Agnew's on 27 May 1899. ⁷ It was then sold to Alexander Young in May 1899, and was seen by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919) of Detroit in Young's collection in 1902. ⁸ Boussod, Valadon & Cie bought it from Young. ⁹ Then – again according to the American Art News – it passed through the hands of various dealers including Durand-Ruel (in 1918), and the Macbeth Galleries (in April-May 1918), and, in the following year, the Howard Young Galleries sold it to a New York collector for $50,000. ¹⁰ It was finally owned by the publishers of the Worcester Telegram and the Evening Gazette, Theodore T. Ellis, and his wife Mary G. Ellis. She inherited the painting after his death, and after the settlement of complications arising from his will, and bequeathed it to the Worcester Art Museum in 1940. ¹¹

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 (cat. no. 49), plate 35, as "Sketch for 'La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine' ".

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

COLLECTION:

• None.

EXHIBITION:

• None.

SALE:

• Christie's, London, 13 November 1890 (lot 433) as 'The Princess'.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Merrill, Linda, The Peacock Room. A Cultural Biography, New Haven and London, 1998, pp. 66-67, repr. fig. 1:24.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 2 vols, London and Philadelphia, 1908, vol. 1, p. 123.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins and Joseph, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 6th edition, revised, Philadelphia, 1920, p. 306.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908, p. 18.
• [Stubbs, Burns A.], The Whistler Peacock Room, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1951, p. 19.
• Sutton, Denys, Nocturne: The Art of James McNeill Whistler, London, 1963, pp. 42, 48, 59.

Books, General

• Ellis, David B., A Pre-Raphaelite Marriage: The Lives and Works of Marie Spartali Stillman and William James Stillman, Woodbridge (Antique Collectors Club), 2006, repr. pl. 7, p. 25.
• Tomoko Sato, ‎Toshio Watanabe, Japan and Britain: An Aesthetic Dialogue 1850-1930, London (Lund Humphries in association with Barbican Art Gallery and the Setagaya Art Museum), p. 106.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Young, A. McLaren, James McNeill Whistler, Arts Council Gallery, London, and Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1960 (cat. no. 10).
• Sweet, Frederick A., James McNeill Whistler, Art Institute of Chicago and Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, 1968 (cat. no. 8).
• From Realism to Symbolism: Whistler and His World, Wildenstein, New York, and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1971 (cat. no. 14).
• Taynton, Carol (intro.), Whistler in New England Collections, [checklist], Boston, 1977 (no cat. number).
• Andreeva, Galina, and Margaret F. MacDonald, Whistler and Russia, State Tretyakow Gallery, Moscow, 2006, pp. 32, 182 (cat. no. 1), repr. p. 32.
• Calloway, Stephen, and Lynn Federle Orr (eds), The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2011, repr. pl. 81 (no catalogue number).

Journals 1906-Present

• American Art News, 22 March 1919, p. 3, repr.
• The Century, vol. 98, 1919, p. 218.
• Sawyer, Charles H., Worcester Art Museum Annual, vol. 4, 1941, pp. 43, 47.

Websites

• Worcester Art Museum website at http://www.worcesterart.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 38) 'Sketch for "Princesse du pays de la porcelaine" '.

Other

• None.