The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Portrait of Mrs Lewis Jarvis dates from 1879. ¹

According to Houfe, Whistler borrowed £50.0.0 from Lewis Page Jarvis (1845-1900) in the summer of 1879 and agreed to paint his wife, Ada Maud Jarvis (1850-1919). ² The portrait was started in the late summer at the White House in Tite Street, and Whistler wrote to Mrs Jarvis on 16 August 1879, 'I shall be quite prepared for you today at 3 o'clock if convenient to you.' ³

Portrait of Mrs Lewis Jarvis, Smith College Museum of Art

Whistler visited them at their country house at Blunham near Bedford that autumn and was consulted on colours for the interior decoration; meanwhile the portrait was completed, framed, and sent to Mrs Jarvis in September 1879, 'The little head ought to have been far away more charming - but I did my best at the time which I am afraid was very poor.' ⁴

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title has been suggested:

• 'Portrait of Mrs. Louis Jarvis' (1905, ISSPG). ⁵
• 'Portrait of Mrs Lewis Jarvis' (1980, YMSM). ⁶

Description

Portrait of Mrs Lewis Jarvis, Smith College Museum of Art

A head and shoulders portrait of a woman, in vertical format. She is facing the viewer. She has a dark, high-necked dress with a ruffle, and a small white frilly cravat trimmed round her neck with a narrow red ribbon. She has reddish brown hair and a small fringe.

Sitter

Mr and Mrs Jarvis and their daughter Olivia, photograph, ca 1898

Ada Maud Jarvis (1850-1919), née Ada Maud Vesey-Dawson, was the daughter of an Irish barrister. She married Lewis Page Jarvis (1845-1900), a brewer, in October 1876. She died on 23 July 1919.

Technique

Technique

Portrait of Mrs Lewis Jarvis, Smith College Museum of Art

There are signs of alterations to the right side of the neck, and the head was originally further left. It was painted fairly thickly, but the paint has been carefully worked and smoothed down so that the general effect is of a flat, decorative design, in subtle, washed out colours.

The Collections Database of the Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium comments:

'This painting of the Irish wife of Whistler’s friend was rendered rapidly in a narrow range of subdued colors. … Though the bust format was, for him, atypical, Mrs. Lewis Jarvis is fully representative of his highly aesthetic, consciously distilled style.

Rendered on a rough, irregular canvas, the sitter’s likeness never fully covers the surface. Instead, her image seems to hover, faint and thin, stained onto the fiber instead of being painted. The hues, low in tone, range from the light coppery green of her dress to the pale lavender-gray of the background. Here, Mrs. Lewis Jarvis’s form is calm, restrained, and iconic. Though she confronts the viewer directly, it is impossible to fully meet her gaze. This effect is accentuated by Whistler’s burnished gold-leaf frame that further quiets the fleeting, wan image within.' ⁷

Conservation History

Portrait of Mrs Lewis Jarvis, photo

Unknown.

Frame

Described on the 'Five Colleges' website, 'Whistler’s burnished gold-leaf frame ... quiets the fleeting, wan image within.' ⁸ The stretcher size is given as 25 x 16", 63.5 x 40.64 cm.

History

Provenance

• 1879: Lewis Page Jarvis (1845-1900);
• 1900: on the death of Lewis Jarvis in June 1900 the portrait passed to his widow, Ada Maud Jarvis (1850-1919);
• 1907: sold by her to Tooth, London art dealers, for £500;
• 1907: sold by Tooth to Agnew's, London dealers, for £750 (Agnew's # J1323), and by them to Knoedler, New York dealers, in January 1907;
• 1908: sold by Knoedler's to Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, 18 April 1908.

Knoedler's offered the portrait to Margaret Selkirk Watson Parker (1867-1936), Detroit, for $6500 in 1907 but sold it to Smith College in the following year. ⁹ It was purchased with the Winthrop Hillyer Fund by Smith College.

Exhibitions

• 1905: 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. 65) as 'Portrait of Mrs. Louis Jarvis'.

It was not, as far as is known, 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. 206), plate 138, as 'Portrait of Mrs Lewis Jarvis'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 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. 65) as 'Portrait of Mrs Louis Jarvis'.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907 (cat. no. 416).
• Way, Thomas Robert, Memories of James McNeill Whistler, the Artist, London and New York, 1912, p. 115.
• Pousette-Dart, Nathaniel, (ed.), James McNeill Whistler,(with introduction by Joseph & Elizabeth Robins Pennell), New York, 1924, p. 40.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908 (cat. no. 170).

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Smith College Museum of Art Handbook, 1925, repr. frontispiece.
• Smith College Museum of Art Catalog, 1937, p. 12, repr. p. 67, 'Mrs Lewis Jarvis'.
• Davis, John, and Jaroslaw Leshko, The Smith College Museum of Art: European and American Painting and Sculpture 1760-1960, Smith College Museum of Art, 2000.

EXHIBITION:

• Eighth Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, Buffalo, 1913.
• Inaugural Exhibition, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY, 1913 (cat. no. 134).
• Oils, Water-colors, Drawings and Prints by James McNeill Whistler, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1934.
• Portraits from the Collection, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, 1962 (cat. no. 17).
• Spink, Nesta, Whistler: The Later Years, University of Michigan Art Gallery, Ann Arbor, 1978 (checklist, cat. no. 97).

Journals 1906-Present

• Anon., 'The Eighth Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists', Academy Notes, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, vol. 8, July 1913, pp. 90-122, repr. p. 90.
• Houfe, Simon, 'Whistler in the Country: His Unrecorded Friendship with Lewis Jarvis', Apollo, vol. 98, Ocober 1973, pp. 282-85, repr. p. 282.

Websites

• Collections Database, Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium, website at http://museums.fivecolleges.edu.
• Smithsonian Institution website at https://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=record_ID:siris_ari_268510.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 135).

Other

• None.