The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Note en rouge: L'Eventail dates from between 1883 and 1884. ¹

Note en rouge: L'Eventail, Freer Gallery of Art

It is dated from the technique and butterfly signature. It was first definite exhibition was in the Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 170) .

Images

Subject

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Note en rouge. L'Eventail' (1887, Petit). ²
• 'The Little Red Note' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). ³
• 'Note en rouge: L'Eventail' (1980, YMSM). ⁴

The descriptive title of 1887 (with modified punctuation) has been accepted. The preferred title is therefore 'Note en rouge: L'Eventail'. 'L'Eventail' is French for the fan.

Description

Note en rouge: L'Eventail , Freer Gallery of Art

A figure study in horizontal format. A woman in a white dress with red-trimmed skirt (or white tunic over a red skirt) lies on a couch, her head to right. She holds a very large red open fan that conceals much of her torso and sticks up above her. The background is very dark.

Sitter

Not identified.

Comments

Curry suggested that this was an explicitly 'suggestive' figure, the finger on her lips, and the open fan, being recognised as inviting gestures in 19th century 'fan language'. ⁵

Technique

Technique

Note en rouge: L'Eventail , Freer Gallery of Art

The colours (shades of violet and red, set off by the dark background) fit the Dowdeswell title of 1884, and are painted very delicately with a fine brush. There are pentimenti, for instance below the model's waist and thigh. The area of her hand and chin is rather blurred and it is not clear if this was intended. The area below the figure appears to have been partly scraped with a knife right down to the wood.

Conservation History

There are some tiny cracks, on the face for instance, and deterioration of the paint surface.

According to Freer Gallery of Art conservation files, it was resurfaced and cradled in 1938, and again resurfaced in 1952-1953.

Frame

Note en rouge: L'Eventail, Freer Gallery of Art

1884: Small Dowdeswell, framed for the Dowdeswell exhibition. ⁶

History

Provenance

• By 1905: Henry John Cockayne Cust (1861-1917).
• By 1913: bought by Dr Hogarth (dates unknown), Oxford;
• 1913: bought from Hogarth by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

The early history of this painting, after its exhibition at Petit's gallery in 1887, is unclear. Whistler did tell Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1855-1921) that he had some 'belles choses', not on exhibition, but available for viewing, including 'Une Note Rouge exquise, peinture - que vous connaissez', at the Goupil Gallery in Paris in 1891. ⁷ This implies that the picture had been seen by Montesquiou in Whistler's studio either in London or Paris, which suggests a date between 1885 and 1891.

Several years later, the painting was lent to the Whistler memorial exhibition in Paris in 1905 (cat. no. 54) by Henry John Cockayne Cust, M.P., formerly editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. It was bought from him by Dr Hogarth, Oxford, probably in 1913, and sold by him to C. L. Freer in December 1913 for £350. ⁸

Exhibitions

• 1884: Possibly 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884.
• 1887: Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 170) as 'Note en rouge. L'Eventail'.
• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 54) as 'The Little Red Note'.

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. 256), plate 173, as 'Note en rouge: L'Eventail'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Possibly 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884.
• Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 170) as 'Note en rouge. L'Eventail'.
• Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 54) as 'The Little Red Note'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• None.

Books, General

• Glazer, Lee, Emily Jacobsen, Blyth McCarthy, and Katherine Roeder, Whistler in Watercolor. Lovely Little Games, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2019, p. 191, repr. p. 190.
• Reff, Theodore, Exhibitions of Modern European Art, New York, 1981, p. 29.
• Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr., Virginia Anderson, and Kimberly Orcutt, ed., American Paintings at Harvard, vol. 2, Paintings, Drawings, Pastels and Stained Glass by Artists Born 1826-1856, Harvard University Art Museums/Yale University Press, Cambridge, MA and New Haven, CT, 2008, p. 424.

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. 14 (13.91).
• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 145, 295, pl. 50.

EXHIBITION:

• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, pp. 14, 18, 21, 63, 95.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1913.91a-b.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 177).

Other

• Parkerson, Sarah Lawrence, Variations in Gold: The Stylistic Development of the Picture Frames used by James McNeill Whistlers, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007.