The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal dates from between 1900 and 1901.

An 'unfinished painting of a young girl or youth in a red cap, which we greatly admired' was seen in Whistler's London studio by Howard Mansfield (1849-1938) in the summer of 1900, and in 1902 by Mr and Mrs Frank Lusk Babbott (1854-1933), after which Mansfield offered to buy it. ¹

Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal, The Hunterian

The model, Lilian ('Lily') Pamington (b. 1887/1888), was posing for Whistler, possibly for this painting, in October 1900 and November 1901. ²

It was first exhibited in the Douzième Exposition, Ouvrages de Peintures, Sculpture, Dessin, Gravure, Architecture et Objets d'Art, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Grand Palais, Paris, 1902 (cat. no. 1195) as 'Grenat et or: Le petit cardinal'.

Images

Subject

Titles

One main title has been suggested, with minor changes:

• 'Grenat et or: Le petit cardinal' (1899, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts). ³
• ' "Grenat et or – Le Petit Cardinal" ' (1904, Copley Society, Boston). ⁴
• 'Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal' (1980, YMSM). ⁵

'Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal' is the preferred title. The title of the 'Cardinal' presumably comes from her deep plum coloured cap, like that of a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church.

Description

Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal, The Hunterian

A half-length portrait of a girl with shoulder-length brown hair, cut in a deep fringe, wearing a black dress and red cap, against a dark background.

Sitter

Lilian ('Lily') Pamington (b. 1887/1888).Whistler painted about ten portraits of Lillie Pamington includingBrown and Gold: Lillie 'In our Alley!' y464, Lillie: An Oval y465 and Girl in Black y470.

Technique

Technique

Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal, The Hunterian

It is painted on an unusually thin canvas, and is uneven in execution. Her arm and hand are very roughly indicated, but her face is carefully worked to an even finish except for a blurring of the area round her eyes. The colours are particularly warm, from the deep brown background and chestnut brown dress, to the tiny coral necklace, and her rich auburn hair touched with yellow tints.

History

Provenance

• 1903: in Whistler's studio at his death and bequeathed to his ward and executrix, Rosalind Birnie Philip (1873-1958);
• 1935: given by Miss Birnie Philip to the University of Glasgow in 1935.

Exhibitions

• 1902: Douzième Exposition, Ouvrages de Peintures, Sculpture, Dessin, Gravure, Architecture et Objets d'Art, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Grand Palais, Paris, 1902 (cat. no. 1195) as 'Grenat et or: Le petit cardinal'.
• 1902: Twelfth Exhibition held at the New Gallery, Society of Portrait Painters, London, 1902 (cat. no. 4).
• 1903: V Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Città di Venezia, Venice, 1903 (cat. no. 41).
• 1904: Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 40) as ' "Grenat et or – Le Petit Cardinal" '.

Panel of five paintings, GUL MS Whistler NB2, pp. 120–21

Whistler asked the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in 1902 to hang the oval portrait below Violet and Silver: The Great Sea y298 and sketched the proposed hang, Panel of five paintings m1706. ⁶ However, according to Gabriel Mourey (1865-1943), his exhibits were badly hung. ⁷ Whistler heard this and asked Inez Eleanor Addams (1874-1958) to check:

'He remarks that some of them think the pictures badly hung, but attributes it to some people not understanding the subdued light. He would like you to send him a word when you have seen the exhibition, as to what you think about this.' ⁸

Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal received varied reviews. In its review of the Paris exhibition, a London paper, Truth, described the painting as 'a boy ... very like a Venetian picture—like Carpaccio, to be precise.' ⁹ The sitter was frequently mistaken for a boy in later newspaper reviews, although some, the Illustrated London News for instance, on 22 November 1902, recognised her as 'a tiny girl, very low toned in its flesh-tints'. One journalist, writing in the Norwich Mercury on 15 November 1902, commented that 'The Little Cardinal is one of those studies which grow upon one, work which true artists will rave over it yet lends itself to that acrid sarcasm which Mr. Whistler so often encounters, and knows so well.'

A couple of days earlier Frederick Wedmore (1844-1921) had written in The London Evening Standard that the picture had been exhibited in the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1902, just before its arrival at the New Gallery: his exact phrase was 'a child in a red cap, the Little Cardinal, which we do not see for the first time.' ¹⁰ On 21 November 1902 Whistler wrote to the newspaper in answer to what he inferred as a criticism of the portrait, saying that it was newly painted when exhibited at the Salon and was now exhibited for the first time in Britain:

'Now, as a matter of mere fact, the Little Cardinal is, in her absolute childhood and complete inexperience of these very sharp gentlemen, only yesterday returning from the Paris Salon, where, in brilliant company, she received her baptism. And this is the first Gallery in the Island in which she makes her appearance, and the busy and correct one has hitherto never set eyes on her!' ¹¹

This was his last letter to the press. Whistler considered publishing the correspondence regarding this painting, and there are proofs of the proposed publication, An Interrupted Correspondence, in Glasgow University Library. ¹²

At the loan exhibition of Whistler's work held in London in 1912, Ezra Pound, describing Whistler as 'our first great', in his poem, 'To Whistler, American', wrote:

'YOU also, our first great, / Had tried all ways; Tested and pried and worked in many fashions, / And this much gives me heart to play the game.

Here is a part that’s slight, and part gone wrong, / And much of little moment, and some few Perfect as Dürer!

“In the Studio” and these two portraits? if I had my choice!' ¹³

The two portraits that he cited were Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal and Brun et or: De race y511.

Due to the terms of Miss Birnie Philip's will, the painting cannot now be lent to another venue.

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 469), plate 301, as 'Grenat et or: Le Petit Cardinal'.

Authored by Whistler

• Whistler, James McNeill, [Letter to the Editor], The Standard, London, 21 November 1902.
• Whistler, James McNeill, An Interrupted Correspondence, Chelsea, 1902.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• Douzième Exposition, Ouvrages de Peintures, Sculpture, Dessin, Gravure, Architecture et Objets d'Art, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Grand Palais, Paris, 1902 (cat. no. 1195) as 'Grenat et or: Le petit cardinal'.
• Twelfth Exhibition held at the New Gallery, Society of Portrait Painters, London, 1902 (cat. no. 4).
• V Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Città di Venezia, Venice, 1903 (cat. no. 41).
• Oil Paintings, Water Colors, Pastels and Drawings: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Mr. J. McNeill Whistler, Copley Society, Boston, 1904 (cat. no. 40) as ' "Grenat et or – Le Petit Cardinal" '.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., Pall Mall Gazette, London, 21 April 1902, pp. 6-7.
• Anon., Truth, London, 24 April 1902, pp. 25-27.
• Anon., Bristol Times and Mirror, Bristol, 13 November 1902, p. 5.
• Wedmore, F., 'The Society of Portrait Painters', London Evening Standard, London, 13 November 1902, p. 3.
• Anon., [Society of Portrait Painters], Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, Manchester, 14 November 1902, p. 10.
• Anon., [Society of Portrait Painters], Pall Mall Gazette, London, 14 November 1902, p. 1.
• Anon., 'Society of Portrait Painters', Western Daily Press, Bristol, 14 November 1902, p. 9.
• Anon., 'The New Gallery Extension', Norwich Mercury, Norwich, 15 November 1902, p. 5.
• 'Mr. Whistler on Podsnapism', St James's Gazette, London, 21 November 1902, p. 12.
• 'Our London Letter', Horfield and Bishopston Record and Montepelier & District Free Press, Bristol, 22 November 1902, p. 4.
• 'Art Notes', Illustrated London News, London, 22 November 1902, pp. 2-3.

Journals 1855-1905

• Mourey, Gabriel, ‘Some Paintings and Sculpture at the Paris Salons’, The Studio, vol. 26, August 1902, pp. 191-202, at p. 196.
• Anon., 'The Society of Portrait Painters at the New Gallery at the New Gallery', The Athenaeum, 22 November 1902, p. 690.
• Anon., ‘Дж. Уистлер - 4 портрета [Dzh. Uistler, 4 Portraits]’, Мир искусства [Mir Iskusstva, 'World of Art'], vol. 8, 1902, pp. 155-59, repr. p. 157.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Anderson, Ronald, and Ann Koval, James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth, London, 1994, p. 455.
• Bell, Nancy R. E., James McNeill Whistler, London, 1904.
• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907, p. 162 (cat. no. 40).
• Fleming, Gordon Howard, James Abbott McNeill Whistler: A Life, Gloucestershire, 1988, pp. 321-22.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 5th (revised) edition, London and Philadelphia, 1911, p. 424.
• Pennell, Elizabeth Robins, and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia, 1921, p. 264.
• Spencer, Robin (ed.), Whistler: A Retrospective, New York, 1989, p. 368.

Books, General

• Pound, Ezra, in: Cookson, William (ed.), Selected Prose: 1909-1965, New York, 1957, pp. 116-17.
• Zinnes, Harriet (ed.), Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts, New York, 1980, pp. 2, 217-18.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• Loan Collection of Works by James McNeill Whistler, Tate Gallery, London, 1912 (cat. no. 30).

Journals 1906-Present

• Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis, 'Whistler', The New Age, 12 September 1912, p. 466 (reprinted in Cookson, William (ed.), Selected Prose: 1909-1965, New York, 1957, pp. 116-17, and Zinnes 1980, cited above).
• Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis, 'To Whistler, American', Poetry, October 1912, p. 7.
• Shaw, Edith, and Margaret F. MacInnes [M. F. MacDonald], ‘Four Years with Whistler’, Apollo, vol. 87, March 1968, pp. 198-201, at p. 201 note 212.

Newspapers 1906-Present

• Anon., 'At the Galleries', Globe, London, 5 June 1915, p. 7.

Websites

• The Hunterian website at http://collections.gla.ac.uk/#/details/ecatalogue/41089.
• Art UK website at http://artuk.org.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 289).

Other

• None.