The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Portrait of Hetty Pettigrew dates from about 1895. ¹ It is dated from Whistler's known association with the Pettigrew sisters.

According to the memoirs of Rose Amy Pettigrew (1872-1958), she and her sisters all posed for Whistler,

'my sister Hetty was a perfect match for him, he admired her, and was very amused by her cleverly cruel sayings, even when it was against himself. He was an exceedingly mean man, paying his accounts as rarely as he dared ... he hadn't paid Hetty for some time, so she waited until he was in the middle of an important picture of her, and ... refused to pose again unless she had her money. We never, never posed under half a guinea a day … she handed him an account for the month. "Oh ! Hetty dear, that is too much", Whistler said. Hetty looked at him with a little sneer and said, "I'm so sorry, I'd quite forgotten you were one of the seven and sixpenny men." Hetty said Whistler laughed until his white lock shook but from that day she got her half guinea.' ²

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title has been suggested:

• Portrait of Hetty Pettigrew (1980, YMSM).

Description

Unknown. The sole information is that it was 'an important picture'. ³ This could mean it was a portrait or a figure study.

Sitter

E. L. Sambourne, Hetty and Lily Pettigrew, photograph, Leighton House

Harriet (Hetty) Pettigrew (1867-1953) was the oldest of the Pettigrew sisters. She was the daughter of William Pettigrew, a cork cutter, and Harriet Davis, a needleworker: they had married in 1853 and had thirteen children in all. Hetty's younger sisters Rose, Amy and Lily were also models. According to Rose, Hetty had 'soft straight hair, like a burnished chestnut, glorious skin, and big hazel eyes.' ⁴

The Arabian, The Hunterian

She posed with her sisters for Whistler for pastels such as The Arabian m1273.

E. L. Sambourne, Hetty Pettigrew, photograph, Leighton House

E. L. Sambourne, Hetty Pettigrew, photo

E. L. Sambourne, Hetty and Lily Pettigrew, photograph, Leighton House

She was a popular model, as were all the sisters, modelling for Théodore Roussel (1847-1926), Edward Linley Sambourne (1844-1910) – who took the photographs reproduced above – and others.

She was a sculptor as well as an artist's model, and exhibited her work in several exhibitions, particularly The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Art, between 1893 and 1898. ⁵

Technique

Technique

Unknown.

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

Unknown.

History

Provenance

Unknown.

Exhibitions

Unknown.

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. 435) as 'Portrait of Hetty Pettigrew'.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 1273).

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• None.

Books, General

• Laughton, Bruce, Philip Wilson Steer, Oxford, 1971, pp. 113-14, 116-17.
• MacDonald, Margaret, 'Pettigrew sisters', in Jiminez, Jill Berk (ed.), Dictionary of Artists' Models, Chicago, 2001, p. 425.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• None.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• 'Harriet S. Pettigrew', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, website at https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk.
• Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2012, website at http://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk (G.363).

Unpublished

• None.

Other

• None.