The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Portrait Sketch of a Lady dates from the late 1870s. ¹

Portrait Sketch of a Lady, Freer Gallery of Art

It is dated partly on the basis of provenance (it is believed to date from the period shortly before Whistler's bankruptcy, and acquired at that time by Thomas Way (1837-1915)), and also by the technique (the thinness of the paint and 'dripping' are similar, for instance, to that seen in Arrangement in Yellow and Grey: Effie Deans y183).

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title has been suggested:

• 'Portrait Sketch of a Lady' (1980, YMSM). ²

Description

Portrait Sketch of a Lady, Freer Gallery of Art

A head and shoulders portrait of a woman in three-quarter view to right. She has brown hair arranged in a large bun. She wears a dark coloured costume with a white collar, ruffle or scarf at the neck. She is looking downwards and may have been reading a book but the lower right corner is unfinished. The background is very dark. The canvas is in vertical format.

Sitter

Head of a woman, Fogg Art Museum

Portrait Sketch of a Lady, Freer Gallery of Art

Not identified. There are tantalising similarities of pose and hairstyle between the painting and some drawings, particularly Head of a woman m0442, but these do not help identification.

Technique

Technique

Portrait Sketch of a Lady, Freer Gallery of Art

It is painted on fine weave canvas. It was painted very thinly, with areas of bare canvas at lower right, and extensive dripping of the dark paint from her hair and dress.

Conservation History

It was relined and resurfaced in 1923, resurfaced again in 1947, and cleaned and surfaced in 1951, according to Freer Gallery of Art files.

Frame

Portrait Sketch of a Lady, Freer Gallery of Art

Stubbs listed a frame for this portrait (05.329) but this has since been given to Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen y060. It is now in a Grau-style frame. ³

History

Provenance

• 1879: Thomas Way (1837-1915), London;
• 1905: sold by Way's son, Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913) to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

It may have been among pictures dispersed at the time of Whistler's bankruptcy, as later described by Thomas Robert Way (1861-1913):

'the other canvasses, mostly portraits ... more or less destroyed [by Whistler] at the time of his bankruptcy before he handed them over as part of his "assets" to his creditors ... rejected by the auctioneers as unsaleable, and ... bought by a picture dealer for my father.' ⁴

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

By the terms of C. L. Freer's bequest to the Freer Gallery of Art, the painting cannot be lent.

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. 184), plate 125, as 'Portrait Sketch of a Lady'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Way, Thomas Robert, Memories of James McNeill Whistler, the Artist, London and New York, 1912, pp. 135-36.
• Sutton, Denys, James McNeill Whistler: Paintings, Etchings, Pastels and Watercolours, London, 1966, repr. pl. 125.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Stubbs, Burns A., Paintings, Pastels, Drawings, Prints and Copper Plates by and attributed to American and European Artists, together with a List of Original Whistleriana in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1948, p. 15 (05.328-29).
• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 115, 292, pl. 18.

Journals 1906-Present

• Horowitz, Ira M., 'Whistler's Frames', The Art Journal, vol. 39, Winter 1979-80, pp. 124-31.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1905.328a-b.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 244).

Other

• None.