The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Note in Green: Wortley probably dates from 1884. ¹

Note in Green: Wortley , Freer Gallery of Art

It is dated from the technique, the form of the signature, and the date of its first exhibition in 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 34).

Images

Subject

Titles

Several small variations in title are known:

• 'Wortley: note in green' (1884, Dowdeswell). ²
• 'Note en vert: Le Village de Wortley' (1887, Petit). ³
• 'Note in Green: Wortley' (1980, YMSM) ⁴
• 'Wortley; Note in Green' (2019, Freer Gallery of Art). ⁵

In 1884, an unidentified newspaper columnist objected to the title: 'I soon got tired of guessing Whistler’s puzzles, for I am an ordinary Philistine, and cannot see why a grass field should be dignified with the name of a "note in green".' ⁶

'Note in Green: Wortley' is the preferred title, consistent with other works.

Description

Note in Green: Wortley , Freer Gallery of Art

A landscape in horizontal format. A green field leads up a hill to trees surrounding a sprawling house, possibly a farm-house, with a narrow track curving into the distance at right.

Site

The view is probably of Wortley, six miles south-west of Barnsley, Yorkshire, the seat of Lord Wharncliffe. Whistler could have known the family through one of his friends, Archibald James Stuart-Wortley (1849-1905), grandson of the first Baron and first president of the SPP in 1891. Whistler also painted a portrait of a house-guest at Wortley, Gay Paget in the garden of Wortley Hall, Yorkshire m0854.

Technique

Technique

Note in Green: Wortley , Freer Gallery of Art

Painted quite boldly and broadly, for all its small scale, in thin, creamy paint. The square ended brush-strokes cross jerkily from left to right, criss-crossing at narrow angles. The houses and trees on the skyline were defined with smaller, rounded and pointed sable brushes. It appears that the trees at upper right were altered, the sky being painted over parts of them.

Conservation History

According to Freer Gallery files, the varnish was removed in 1921, it was cleaned and varnished in 1937, resurfaced in 1938, and cleaned and surfaced in 1951.

Frame

Note in Green: Wortley, Freer Gallery of Art

Small Dowdeswell frame, made for Whistler's exhibition in 1884 [11.1 cm]. ⁷

History

Provenance

• 1885: bought from Messrs Dowdeswell by Henry Studdy Theobald (1847-1934);
• 1902: bought by Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit;
• 1919: bequeathed by C. L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

It was exhibited in Whistler's one-man show 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 34) and bought afterwards by H. S. Theobald, whom Whistler described as 'the man who bought the lot that remained over after the exhibition of the "Flesh color & grey" '. ⁸

In June 1902, Whistler sent C. L. Freer a telegram 'Theobald paintings at Marchants') informing him that the paintings owned by Theobald were apparently for sale. ⁹ As a result, C. L. Freer bought it in the following month, August 1902, for $750.

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 34) as 'Wortley: note in green'.
• 1887: Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 163) as 'Note en vert: Le Village de Wortley':
• 1904: Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 81).

Whistler wrote to Walter Dowdeswell (1858-1929), 'you must arrange with the man who bought the lot that remained over after the exhibition of the "Flesh color & grey", to let his collection go with me to America.' ¹⁰ This did not happen. Instead, in 1887, Whistler requested loans for an exhibition in Paris:

' I am sending some pictures and drawings of mine to a very swell exhibition in Paris - and I am most anxious to borrow from you some 14 or 15 of the little things of mine you have on the staircase and in your dining room, that I may exhibit them at the same time -' ¹¹

Theobald was a generous lender and 'Note en vert: Le Village de Wortley' was among works shown at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1887.

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. 303), plate 215, as 'Note in Green: Wortley'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 34) as 'Wortley: note in green'.
• Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 163) as 'Note en vert: Le Village de Wortley'::
• Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 81).
• The Inaugural Loan Collection of Paintings, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Buffalo, 1905 (cat. no. 167).

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Holden, Donald, Whistler Landscapes and Seascapes, New York, 1969, p. 63, repr. pl. 21.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, pp. 133, 294, pl. 37.
• 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 (02.155).

EXHIBITION:

• Loan Exhibition of Pictures by T. W. Dewing, A. H. Thayer, D. W. Tryon, J. A. McN. Whistler, Montross Gallery, New York, 1910 (cat. no. 21).
• Selection of Art Objects from The Freer Collection, National Museum, Washington, DC, 1912 (cat. no. 14).
• Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915 (cat. no. 261).
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1902.155a-b.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 331).

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.