The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, Fogg Art Museum

Note in Green and Brown: Orlando at Coombe, The Hunterian

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour may have been started in 1884. ¹ On the verso is a graphite sketch that appears to be a study for Note in Green and Brown: Orlando at Coombe y317, which probably dates from 1884 and was first exhibited in 1886.

However, the technique of Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour suggests a slightly later date. The half-seen butterfly signature at left, assuming it belongs to the original composition and was not added later, could indicate a date in the late 1880s, but this is not certain, and again, it could date from later.

Sketch for 'Annabel Lee', The Hunterian

Ariel, The Hunterian

It appears to belong to a group of sketches that are very hard to date either by technique and subject, including Sketch for 'Annabel Lee' y080 and Ariel y318. They may date from the 1870s or 1880s or from the late 1890s, being reworkings of earlier compositions.

Morning Glories, Freer Gallery of Art

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, Fogg Art Museum

Likewise Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour y319 could be a reworking of a composition developed in pastel in the 1870s, such as r.: Morning Glories; v.: Nude study m0410, and may date from the late 1880s or even 1890s in its present condition.

Images

Subject

Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'Violet & Rose "La Belle du Jour" ' (1903, Whistler). ²
• 'A Nude Study' (1903, Studio). ³
• 'Belle à jour, Blue and Violet' (1905, ISSPG). ⁴
• 'Bleu et Violet, La Belle de Jour' (1914, Christie's). ⁵
• 'Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour' (1980, YMSM). ⁶

'Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour' is the preferred title.

According to Mme Marchesi, 'Belle de jour, Whistler explained to us, is a blue and violet flower, which colour scheme he took for that picture.' ⁷

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, Fogg Art Museum

Morning Glories, Freer Gallery of Art

'Belle de jour' is usually translated as a convolvulus, but Whistler probably meant specifically the Morning Glory, a blue flower of the convolvulus family. The subject, pose, and a similar title were used for a pastel on the recto of a sheet dating from the mid 1870s, r.: Morning Glories; v.: Nude study m0410.

Description

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, Fogg Art Museum

A figure study in vertical format. A draped figure, facing the viewer, leans back on a railing. Her left hand is raised to her chin, her right hand possibly folded over her breast but concealed by the draperies. She wears pale pink robes and a lilac cap trimmed with pale green. A lilac/pale plum drapery hangs over the railing. The background is pale turquoise.

Sitter

Unknown. According to Mme Marchesi, 'He [Whistler] told us that he wanted to paint the face a little more but the model vanished.' ⁸

Technique

Composition

Morning Glories, Freer Gallery of Art

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, Fogg Art Museum

Harmony in Blue and Violet, Freer Gallery of Art

A similar pose, composition, and subject, is seen in r.: Morning Glories; v.: Nude study m0410 and r.: Study for 'Morning Glories'; v.: Standing nude m0411, which have been dated about 1873. In both cases the drawing on the verso shows a nude figure.

Similar poses with minor variations occur in numerous pastels from the early 1870s on, such as r.: A woman holding a spray of flowers; v.: A woman holding up a scarf m0401 and – from the mid-1880s – Harmony in Blue and Violet m1076.

Technique

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, Fogg Art Museum

The panel appears to have been partly primed with off-white paint, but areas, particularly around the head and down the right edge, look totally unprimed, revealing the red colour of the wood. It is painted very thinly, and may have been partly rubbed down. There are faint lines that suggest there was a graphite under-drawing. The remaining paint, although loosely applied, is almost iridescent. There are signs that the figure may have originally have been further left. It may have been painted over another figure, either standing or reclining, because some of the brushstrokes make no sense, and some, particularly around the head, appear to be concealing rather than clarifying the pose. The paint does not always reach the edges of the panel. The horizontal brushstrokes that may indicate a rug, or the balcony, are inconsistent, those on the left differing from those on the right.

Conservation History

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, photograph, 1914?

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, photograph, n.d.

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, photograph, 1980

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, Fogg Art Museum

Unknown. Several 20th century photographs do not show any radical changes of condition. It appears to have been scraped and there is some surface abrasion. The edges of the panel have been abraded by a mount or frame.

Frame

Grau-style, made in American by M. Grieve, 1930/1940s. ⁹

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, photograph, frame detail, n.d.

Size: 33.7 x 27 x 4.5 cm (13 1/4 x 10 5/8 x 1 3/4").

History

Provenance

• 1903: bought from Whistler by Blanche Elisabeth Marchesi (1863-1940), who married (1) Baron Alexander Popper von Podhragy and (2) André Anzon, Baron Caccamisi (m. 1894);
• 1914: sold at auction, collection of André Anzon, Baron Caccamisi (1848-1926?), Christie's, London, 6 February 1914 (lot 141) as 'Bleu et Violet, La Belle de Jour', bought by Knoedler's, New York dealers, for £273;
• 1914: sold by them to Hunt Henderson (1869-1939), New Orleans, 17 November 1914;
• 1939: bequeathed to Tulane University, New Orleans;
• 1941: sold by Tulane through the Macdonald Gallery, New York, to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943), New York, April 1941;
• 1943: bequeathed by him to the Fogg Art Museum.

It was bought from Whistler by the singer Mme Blanche Marchesi in February 1903, for 150 guineas, as 'Violet & Rose "La Belle du Jour".' ¹⁰ According to Mme Marchesi, 'We really had to push his hand to sell it to us. He told us that he wanted to paint the face a little more but the model vanished.' ¹¹

Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour, photograph, 1914?

It was sold by her second husband Baron André Anzon Caccamisi (not Caccamini as previously stated) in 1914. The photograph above probably dates from that time.

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. 57) as 'Belle à jour, Blue and Violet'.

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. 319), plate 204, as 'Violet and Rose: La Belle de Jour'.

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. 57) as 'Belle à jour, Blue and Violet'.

Journals 1855-1905

• Scott, William, 'Reminiscences of Whistler. Some Venice Recollections', The Studio, vol. 30, November 1903, pp. 97-108, repr. p. 101 as 'A Nude Study'.

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, p. 217 (cat. no. 409).
• Spencer, Robin, Whistler, New York, 1990, pp. 118-19.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908, p. 173 (cat. no. 174).

Books, General

• Robins, Anna Gruetzner (ed.), Walter Sickert: the Complete Writings on Art, Oxford, 2000, pp. 245-46.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Virginia Anderson, and Kimberly Orcutt, ed., American Paintings at Harvard, Volume Two, 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 (cat no. 452), pp. 425-26, repr. p. 426.

EXHIBITION:

• 3rd Exhibition of Fair Women, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, Grafton Galleries, London, 1910 (cat. no. 44).
• A Century of Progress Art Exhibition, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1933 (ex. cat., label on panel records it as 'Belle a Jour').
• Master Paintings from the Fogg Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, 1977.
• For Students of Art and Lovers of Beauty: Highlights from the Collection of Grenville L. Winthrop, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, 2004.

SALE:

• Christie's, London, 6 February 1914 (lot 141) as 'Bleu et Violet, La Belle de Jour'.

Journals 1906-Present

• Sickert, Walter R., 'Wriggle and Chiffon', The New Age, 9 June 1910.

Websites

• Harvard Museums website at http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/230418.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 264).

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.