The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

A Paris Model dates from between 1897 and 1898. The dress, format and technique confirm a date in the late 1890s. ¹

It was painted in Whistler's studio at 86 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris, at some time between 1895 and 1899, according to a label on the verso written by Harold Wright (1885-1961), probably from information provided by Whistler's sister-in-law Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958).

A Paris Model, The Hunterian

It may have been one of the oval paintings on which Whistler was working in 1898. The frame has the stamp of Claude Chapuis (1829-1908), and Whistler wrote to his sister-in-law on 28 October 1898, 'I want you to drive over to Chapuis ... and say that Monsieur hopes he is getting on all right with the two ovals - and his frames - Ask when I am to have them.' ²

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title has been suggested:

• 'A Paris Model' (1960, Arts Council). ³
• 'A Paris Model' (1980, YMSM). ⁴

Description

A Paris Model, The Hunterian

A half-length portrait in oval, vertical format. It shows a girl with a long face and brown eyes and hair. She has pearl earrings, a blouse with a high-necked collar, several seams down the front of her fitted bodice, and puffs at the top of her sleeves. The background is brown. Only the top half of the canvas is painted.

Sitter

The model has not been identified.

Comments

Whistler painted a number of oval canvases of girls and women from about 1895 on, including A Paris Model y458, The Widow y459, Lillie: An Oval y465, Blue and Coral: The Little Blue Bonnet y500, Rose and Gold: The Little Lady Sophie of Soho y504, Violet and Rose: Carmen qui rit y506, Harmony in Rose and Green: Carmen y507, Ivoire et or: Portrait de Madame Vanderbilt y515, and Portrait of Mrs William Heinemann y531.

Of these, A Paris Model, The Widow y459, Lillie: An Oval y465, Violet and Rose: Carmen qui rit y506, and Harmony in Rose and Green: Carmen y507 are all virtually the same size. Rose and Gold: The Little Lady Sophie of Soho y504 and Ivoire et or: Portrait de Madame Vanderbilt y515 are a little larger, and Blue and Coral: The Little Blue Bonnet y500 by far the largest and most highly finished.

Technique

Technique

A Paris Model, The Hunterian

It was painted on a fine, fairly open-weave canvas and is unlined. It may have been primed first in cream and then grey, the grey brushstrokes following the curve of the canvas, and then possibly rubbed down. Whistler often rubbed down the paint as part of his painting process, and in this case it can be seen in the lower half of the canvas, where the scraping has reduced the priming layer, and taken the top off the weave of the canvas itself. ⁵

The girl's features and the top of the dress were outlined in a crayon-like material, and the head was quite highly finished, although the grey priming is still visible. The background was painted with thinned paint, brushed in lightly, so that it does not drip. ⁶

The Hunterian commented: 'The high level of finish seen on the head in relation to the rest of the picture is unusual. Normally Whistler preferred to establish the overall tonal and colour relationships before filling in the details.' ⁷ However, it is quite clear that the portrait was not finished.

Conservation History

The unlined canvas is rather dry and brittle. ⁸

Frame

A Paris Model, The Hunterian

A Paris Model, frame detail

Oval casetta moulding. The frame has the stamp of the Maison Chapuis, Paris, on the back. ⁹ Claude Chapuis (1829-1908) was making frames for two oval portraits for Whistler in October 1898. Whistler wrote to his sister-in-law on 28 October 1898, 'I want you to drive over to Chapuis ... and say that Monsieur hopes he is getting on all right with the two ovals - and his frames - Ask when I am to have them.' ¹⁰ It is quite possible one of these was for A Paris Model, although it was virtually the same size as The Widow y459, Lillie: An Oval y465, Violet and Rose: Carmen qui rit y506, and Harmony in Rose and Green: Carmen y507.

History

Provenance

• 1903: in Whistler's studio at his death, and bequeathed to his ward and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958), London;
• 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. 458), plate 281, as 'A Paris Model'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Spink, Nesta R., Harriet K. Stratis, and Martha Tedeschi, The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler, (gen. eds, Harriet K. Stratis and Martha Tedeschi), 2 vols., Chicago, 1998, vol. 1, p. 131.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Young, A. McLaren, James McNeill Whistler, Arts Council Gallery, London, and Knoedler Galleries, New York, 1960 (cat. no. 13) as 'A Paris Model'.
• Spencer, Robin, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1969 (cat. no. 50).
• 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. 17).
• Sutton, Denys, and Martin Hopkinson, ホイスラー展. Whistler Exhibition in Japan, Tokyo, 1987 (cat. no. 31).

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• The Hunterian website at http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/41220.
• Art UK website at http://www.artuk.org.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., 'Painting Like Whistler', blog, 8 September 2014, in James McNeill Whistler and his Art, website at https://jmcnwhistler.wordpress.com.

Unpublished

• None.

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.