The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Nude Girl with a Bowl dates from the early 1890s, possibly between 1892 and 1894. ¹

Nude Girl with a Bowl, The Hunterian

A label on the verso written by Harold Wright (1885-1961), probably with information from Whistler's sister-in-law Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), states that it was painted in Paris about 1892.

A Nude Model Arranging Flowers, lithograph (C57), The Hunterian, GLAHA 49228

A Violet Note, The Hunterian

Spring, Terra Foundation for American Art

It is close in composition to the lithograph A Nude model arranging flowers (C57), dating from about 1892, and the pastels A Violet Note m1395 and Spring m1397, which are dated between 1893 and 1895. The inclusion of the trellis links it to depictions of the garden of Whistler's house and studio at 110 rue du Bac, Paris, where the Whistlers lived from 1892 to 1894. ²

A nude with a bowl, The Hunterian

The bowl seen in Nude Girl with a Bowl y400 appears in several pastels including A nude with a bowl m1394 and Spring m1397, both thought to date from 1893/1894.

Images

Subject

Titles

Whistler's original title is not known. Only one title is recorded:

• 'Nude Girl with a Bowl' (1970, exhibition catalogue, Nottingham). ³
• 'Nude Girl with a Bowl' (1980, YMSM). ⁴

Description

Nude Girl with a Bowl, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

A figure composition, in vertical format. A young woman, nude, bends over to left, her left hand on her knee, and her right arm stretching down and forward to a pot plant. She has curly brown hair in a fringe that falls forward over her eyes. She wears a dark green cap or kerchief (shaped like a Phrygian bonnet) on the back of her head, bound with pink ribbons, the tag ends sticking out over her fringe. Behind her is a grey wall and either a grey chequered curtain or trellis at left.

Sitter

The model is unknown.

Technique

Composition

Nude Girl with a Bowl, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

This is a variation on a theme that Whistler drew in the 1860s and 1870s and returned to in the 1890s, that of a woman tending flowers in a pot.

Pink and Grey: Three Figures, Freer Gallery of Art

Tillie: A Model, etching, 1873, Freer Gallery of Art, 1898.347 (G113)

Tillie, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

The model's pose is reminiscent of the left-hand figure in Pink and Grey: Three Figures y089, which dates from the late 1860s, and which is also seen in chalk and pastel drawings such as Tillie m0367, Study of a Nude m0368 and Tillie: Study in Pink and Mauve m0370 dating from 1870/1873.

The Lily, Freer Gallery of Art

Related figures include the pastels r.: Crouching figure in 'The White Symphony: Three Girls'; v.: Standing figure in 'The White Symphony: Three Girls' m0359 of 1869/1870, and The Lily m0364, showing a figure tending a flowering lily.

A Violet Note, The Hunterian

The pose is also closely related to that seen in later pastels, such as A Violet Note m1395 and Spring m1397, which are dated 1893/1895.

A nude with a bowl, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

A pastel, A nude with a bowl m1394, signed with a butterfly, is closely related to this painting, and also dates from the early 1890s. The main difference is that the nude faces right in the pastel instead of left, as in the painting. The pastel is also brighter, with cream and light red on her head-dress and light red on the butterfly, and the elliptical flower pot is empty.

Technique

Nude Girl with a Bowl, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

Nude Girl with a Bowl, verso, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

The wood is unusual: it is made of heavy hardwood, possibly mahogany, about 5 mm thick, and may have come from a piece of furniture, since the verso is polished, varnished and naturally grained. ⁵ The grain runs vertically.

Nude Girl with a Bowl (detail of hair, rubbed down to wood, micro x0.67), The Hunterian

There is a very thin grey imprimatura on the unprimed board, and this was rubbed back to the reddish wood in places. There is also some earlier diagonal rubbing-down. The colour of the wood shows through where the paint is slightly abraded around the head and bowl, and later varnish makes it appear redder. The panel provided a much smoother surface for painting that even a fine canvas could.

Nude Girl with a Bowl (ultra-violet image), The Hunterian

A full technical examination was carried out in February 2020 in the School of Culture and Creative Arts Technical Art History laboratory in the Hunterian at Kelvin Hall. Professors Joyce H. Townsend and Margaret F. MacDonald examined the painting under a microscope. A high resolution camera for infra-red reflectography (IRR) was operated by Tess Visser, a PhD student supervised by Professor Christina Young, assisted by Alicia Hughes, Hunterian curatorial assistant. Images were also made of the verso, and of the recto in normal, raking, and ultraviolet light. The results are summarised here.

The grey background has bone black as the only added pigment, modified by yellow varnish to a greenish grey shade. This grey forms much of the background. Fine, sharply pointed, hard graphite pencil under-drawing is visible for the arms and legs, and may originally have outlined the whole figure. Above her back, where there are several painted outlines, some graphite was picked up by the paint as the pose was altered. The bowl was also outlined, possibly in graphite reinforced with paint. In addition, the body may have been outlined with a brush in a fluid drawing medium, or dark paint, but that was completely scraped out, down to the wood, below her face. ⁶

Nude Girl with a Bowl (detail of head), The Hunterian

The paint is fairly smooth, that for the figure having a slight thickness, giving the impression of a thin megilp-like material. The figure is very thinly painted and has been partly rubbed out and altered. The head was moved to the left and possibly moved down. The arms were originally much higher, and her back was also higher. The trellis is thinly applied, the verticals first and then the horizontals, in rather irregular fashion, and with no preliminary drawing. Its lines stop short of the figure, indicating it was painted at a late stage. The flowers are only lightly indicated over the bare wood, but more attention was given to the pot, outlined on the left with a light stroke of dark grey thinned paint. A similar stroke emphasises the outline of the otherwise unfinished left heel.

Nude Girl with a Bowl (detail, 'Phrygian' cap ribbon, micro x0.67), The Hunterian

The colours are sombre, with shades of greenish grey and low flesh tones relieved only by the pink ribbons on the girl's dark green kerchief or 'Phrygian' cap. A small brush was used here and for the flesh paint, and the bodied appearance of this paint is particularly suggestive of an added medium such as megilp. The green of the cap must be a mixed green made from fine-grained yellow and blue particles, possibly Prussian blue and chrome yellow, sold as a premixed green paint known as ‘chrome green’. The pink ribbon on the green cap is mixed from white, bone black, and probably a rather orange shade of vermilion. ⁷

Conservation History

The panel is not warped, and is in sound condition. The surface has numerous abrasions. and the glossy varnish, applied vertically over the whole, is somewhat yellowed, particularly at the edges where a frame previously covered 18 mm of the panel at the left side, 12 mm at the top, 19 mm at the right side, and 9 mm at the lower edge.

Microscopical examination of varnish losses at the left edge make it clear that the background was originally a cool grey, mixed from white and bone black. The paint for the flesh is pale, and it would have looked cooler and more pearly when painted. The green of the cap is the area least affected by the yellow tone of the glossy, natural resin type varnish.

The ultraviolet image suggests that the glossy varnish overlies an earlier, likely thinner, varnish that had been applied in the frame and did not reach the outermost edges. Since this composition was not exhibited in Whistler’s lifetime, both of these natural resin-type varnishes are likely to be posthumous. ⁸

Frame

72.9 x 53.4 x 5.0cm. There is a Chapman Bros Ltd label on the verso, with the address of 241 King's Road, Chelsea.

History

Provenance

• 1903: in Whistler's studio at his death and bequeathed to his ward and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958);
• 1958: bequeathed by Miss R. Birnie Philip to the University of Glasgow.

Exhibitions

It was not 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. 400) as 'Nude Girl with a Bowl', plates 250 and 429.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. nos. 1394-95).

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Anderson, Ronald, and Ann Koval, James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth, London, 1994, p. 363.
• Getscher, Robert Harold, James Abbott McNeill Whistler Pastels, New York, 1991, pp. 138, 194 note 60.
• Enaud-Lechien, Isabelle, 'Whistler et la France', Le musée miniature, Paris, 1995, p. 48, repr.
• Spencer, Robin (ed.), Whistler: A Retrospective, New York, 1989, repr. p. 356, pl. 113.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Spencer, Robin, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1969, (cat. no. 14).
• Pickvance, Ronald, and Andrew McLaren Young, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903): An Exhibition of Works from the University of Glasgow Collection, Nottingham, 1970 (cat. no. 4) as 'Nude Girl with a Bowl'.
• Young, A. McLaren, Glasgow University's Pictures, Colnaghi, London, 1973 (cat. no. 112).
• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, p. 271, repr. fig. 269.2 (not exhibited).
• Getscher, Robert H., 'Whistler's Puritanical Nudes', in Zelman, Anita, and Angela De Tolla-Smyth, A Symposium Window on Whistler's World, Held in Conjunction with Drawing Near: Whistler Etchings from the Zelman Collection, 15 September 1984, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Graphic Arts Council; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, American Art Council, Los Angeles, 1984, p. 81 (not exhibited).
• ホイスラー展. Whistler Exhibition in Japan, Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo; Shizuoka Prefectural Museum, Shizuoka, 1986 (cat. no. 25).

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• The Hunterian, University of Glasgow website, at http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/41230.
• Art UK website at https://artuk.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 603).

Other

• None.